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In his article “Underlife and Writing Instruction” (first published in College Composition and Communication, Volume 38, Number 2, May 1987), Robert Brooke makes some fascinating observations about writing and identity. Using the sociological concept of underlife—defined (by Brooke) as “those behaviors which undercut the roles expected of participants in a situation”—the author describes writing as a form of resistance, inasmuch as it “involves living in conflict with accepted (expected) thought and action.”

He then discusses his observations of underlife in the writing classroom, noting the creative aspects of what might seem like disruptive behavior: in many cases, private conversations during class, for example, showed students applying class concepts quite accurately to their own interests. The suggestion is that these “disruptions,” actually assertions of creative independence, are vital steps in the process of building identity, which, in the end, is “the business we [as writing teachers] are in.”

The question is how to foster this tendency toward creative distancing, how to capitalize on the underlife so essential to writing. Brooke’s answer is that the institutional model has to be changed, from one where students learn from the “authorities” to one favoring more “student-directed projects, peer interaction,” and so forth.

I wonder, though, whether such reform is necessarily in the best interest of students. If learning to write is a process of building identity, couldn’t one argue that students in fact need the authority figure, with all of her rules and judgments, in order to find their own voices? Isn’t separation effected most successfully when one knows precisely what he is separating from? Is there a danger here that by dulling the sharp points of resistance we may be engendering a new kind of conformism?