| This is a discussion that theorizes the epistemology of racism and incorporates it into a critical writing pedagogy. It uses primarily a critical sophistic pedagogy, a set of community-based assessment practices, and a rhetoric of hard agreements, all theorized. This discussion draws primarily from three areas: (1) sophistic rhetorical and pedagogical theory, primarily discussions around nomos-physis, Protagoras' man-measure doctrine and his antilogical heuristics for rhetorical invention; (2) cultural theory and theories surrounding the ideological and rhetorical construction of race, class, and power; and (3) composition theory, primarily assessment theory and critical pedagogical theory.;The epistemology of racism attempts to reveal the consubstantial, social matrix that forms hegemony (like epistemology of whiteness) and personhood by connecting habitus (dispositions acquired historically through one's life experiences engrained in the body), common sense (discourse and logics circulating in societal networks), and institutions (ministering structures that validate authority and agency to people, ideas, logics, and knowledge). This interconnection offers a set of concepts that aid in addressing race in the classroom by discussing racism as structural and epistemologically constructed in discourse and material practices. It shows how assessment can be a powerful way to critically interrogate knowledge in the classroom if reflection is used to help students theorize their practices. Sophistic antecedents of antilogic and Protagoras' "measuring" are translated to contemporary understandings of writing assessment, so that a community-based assessment pedagogy is promoted, one that incorporates writing for peers, focused peer assessment practices, class-constructed rubrics, a portfolio system, and public reflection that allows students to theorize their own practices in order to make these practices more critical, forming critical praxis.;Finally, a rhetoric of hard agreements, one not based on notions of "consensus" but on conflict through discussions of epistemology and hermeneutics that are informed by the epistemology of racism, is defined. This rhetoric attempts to address some of the important objections and concerns that many may have about community-based assessment practice, the encouragement of conflict in the classroom (particularly surrounding race and the epistemology of whiteness), and the call for critical resolutions by students around race, writing, and assessment. |
