Beyond the Dialectic of Work and Play:A Serio-Ludic Rhetoric for Composition Studies

Albert Rouzie

Ina computersandwritinglistservdiscussiona fewyearsago,the topicof play provoked an interesting eruption of discourse. One participantcalled play "one of the dragons of our culture." Another participant beganto rant, blaming a perceived privileging of play in education for manyproblems of learning, literacy, and discipline. The play element ineducation, he claimed, leads to the expectation that the hard work ofliteracy should be fun-a dangerous expectation because it dooms thesystem and students to failure by creating a demand for entertainmentwhen education is, in fact, the result of years of blood, sweat, and tears.

This pitting of hard, meaningful work against the empty frivolity ofplay is endemic in our culture's thinking about play, not only in theworkplace, but also in literacy education. This way of thinking can beseen in the extent to which play has been purged from much language use,reflecting both the rationalist clarity demanded by objective science andthe legacy ofTaylorist efficiency in our educational systems. The modelof the academic print text, as Richard Lanham points out, has repressedthe playful tendencies of language in favor of a "just the facts, ma'am"monotony of presentation. While some elementary educators embracethe role of play in the learning activities of the young, college writinginstruction continues to maintain a fairly rigorous separation betweenserious, persuasive, utilitarian writing and creative, expressive, play­ful writing.'

Yet, play in language is the undeniable id, bubbling up no matter howstringent the control. When the medium expands beyond the austereconventions of the book, as it has with the computer, the suppressed playof language and its users moves to the foreground. For this reason, thecomputer writing classroom presents a compelling test case for exploringthe value of what I will call the play element in writing instruction. In thelate 1980s, Marcia Peoples Halio noted that students in her classes who

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sat at Macintosh computers played with fonts instead of working on theirwriting. Play, she claimed, negatively affected the quality of her students'writing. Because of the distractions of the graphical capabilities of theMacintosh, she concluded, the IBM was more appropriate for computerwriting pedagogy.' Halio drew a line in the sand, so to speak, betweenwriting and playing with the computer's liquid interface, between thebusiness of literacy and the leisure ofplayful exploration, between text asthe main course of literacy and graphics as unnecessary gravy. Halioviewed the intrinsic pleasures of playing with font size and style as adistraction from rather than an enhancement of student work. This tensionreflects the culture's pervasive separation ofwork and pleasure as well asits anxieties about the effects of technology on learning, work, and humanrelationships.

Online play has become a litmus test for conservative versus progres­sive educational philosophies. Conservatives decry the use of play,claiming that it panders to demands for entertainment instead of support­ing the hard work of learning. The conservative position appears toassume that play is undifferentiated, frivolous, and irrelevant to learningand literacy practices. Any use of play in serious education becomes a sopto the shortened attention spans of our media-soaked youth and amistaken shift of focus from skills- and content-based education tostudent ...centered approaches. On the other end of the spectrum, politicallyradical educators, such asJames Berlin and Teresa Ebert, are also criticalof play, claiming that ithas nopolitical impact because it is non-rhetorical.Progressives who land in between these poles view playas the naturalmode of cognitive development through which intrinsically motivatedactivity can free us from the oppressive, authoritarian traditions epito­mized by the conservative approach. Some progressives view playas astage of cognitive development, while others see it as an elastic mode ofcognitive perception or engagement that endures throughout life. Notsurprisingly, the use of technology is at the crux of this debate. Mediacritic Neil Postman-the quintessential spokesman for the conservativeview-first attacked educational television (such as Sesame Street) inAmusing Ourselves to Death before focusing his criticisms on computersin Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. On the progres­sive side, Seymour Papert champions playful scenarios involving com­puter programming as the best hope for authentic, unalienated cognitiveadvancement.

The deeply entrenched divisions between work and play, seriousnessand frivolity, and order and chaos inherited by educators ultimately

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impoverishour culture's approachto literacy.By now it is a truism thatcomputertechnologyhas addednewdimensionsandrequirementsto ourconcept of literacy. Deborah Brandt suggests that "literate ability hasbecome more and more defined as the ability to position and repositiononeself amidst literacy's recessive and emergentforms" (666). Despitetheemergenceofcomputertechnologyanditspotentialforenhancingtheplay elementin literacyeducation,anormativeideologyofwork,reality,seriousness, practicality, and adult behavior continues to rule post­secondaryinstitutions,blindingmosteducatorsto the significanceof theplay that is alreadyoccurringin their classrooms,preventingthem fromaddressing it as a productive force for change and learning and fromperceivingit as an interestingphenomenonin itsownright. In this essay,I arguethatthedichotomybetweenworkandplayinourculturecontinuesto contributeto our alienationfromcreativeconnectiontoboth work andplay and that this dichotomyin Englishstudies is further institionalizedin composition studies. Althoughplay may appear to exist outside therealmofrhetoric,whereit is limitedto"creative"or"expressive"writing,Iarguethatcertainformsofplayarehighlyrhetoricalandthatanemergentformof literacymust includefluencywiththeplay elementin thewritingof both traditional and electronicdiscourse.Furthermore,in discussingplay in the contextof criticalpostmodemism,I argue that play does nothave to be apolitical,that its dialecticalqualitiescan make it a powerfulforce for resistanceand change.

Theorizing the Work/Play DichotomyPlay is a complex,overdeterminedterm fraughtwith contradictionsandambiguities;it isused in awidevarietyof ways,often for the purposesofinvokingthe binary oppositionsI havenoted. Speakingcolloquially,wesay that we were "just playing" but now are not "playing around." Inromance, if I say that I am "playing the field," I indicate that I am notseeking a serious relationship. Yet, many uses of the word arguablysuggest serious implications."You played me for a fool" is a seriousaccusationofmanipulation,ofnot"playingitstraight."Someusesofplayplace it squarelyin a rhetoricalsituation.Rhetorically,the outcomeofasituationoftendependson"howyouplay it." "Playingto theiremotions"suggeststhatwethinkofplayas intimatelyconnectedto the communica­tive/rhetoricalact,metaphoricallyrenderedindramaticterms.Thenotionof "playingto an audience"or "playingup apoint" is fundamentalto theoften"makebelieve"sceneofrhetoricalpersuasion,the stagingofwhichcasts rhetors as players or actors who enact a dialectic between the

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"authentic" self and the self as player of roles in an unfolding drama.Even though the complexity of the wordplay itself suggests considerableslippage across the binary oppositions between work/play and serious­ness/frivolity, the prevailing dichotomy between seriousness and play hasbeen our culture's most persistent approach to defining play.

The binary opposition of work/play privileges work, a situation thatresults from a combination of historical forces. The Protestant work ethicand socio-economic structures and pressures have understandably placedwork above what is perceived to be its opposite, play. In mainstreamacademic treatment, play is ultimately trivialized, its importance limited.The derogation of play relegates play's most serious function to child­hood social and cognitive development. This is, in part, the legacy of JeanPiaget, who found a close parallel between children's play and theirdeveloping structures of thought. Play, in Piaget's view, is the action ofassimilating the world to the child's ego. In this schema, play causes itsown obsolescence, since as children play and grow, they begin toaccommodate their actions to the serious demands of adult life. Withmature adult cognitive behavior, play falls off like a burned up rocketbooster-it is no longer needed. Piaget's theory has its uses; unfortu­nately it has helped to maintain our culture's problematic separationof play and work.

Although largely responsible for countering the view that play istrivial and frivolous, Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens has also beensimilarly effective in divorcing play from material reality. Brian Sutton­Smith notes that, in Huizinga's view, play is "outside of ordinary life, ... immaterial, disinterested, nonutilitarian, voluntary, spatially and tempo­rally separate, childlike, nonprofane, governed by rules, and utterlyinvolving." This view, in effect, idealizes and sacralizes playas art forart's sake in the manner of aristocratic rhetoric of the later nineteenthcentury (Ambiguity 203). This legacy has powerfully influenced manyhumanistic play scholars. Huizinga's thinking is reflected in the follow­ing definition of play, which is espoused by recent play theorists:

Play is a voluntary and distinct activity carried out within arbitraryboundaries in space and time, separate from daily roles, concerns, andinfluences and having no seriousness, purpose, meaning, or goals for theactor beyond those emerging within the boundaries and context of theplay act itself. (Stevens 240)

This restricted definition expresses the fissure in our culture betweennecessity and enjoyment. We construct reality on the basis of work

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versus play, the elective versus the required, as if our attitudes andperformance were prescribed by these categories: now we play; nowwe work.

Two alternative and interrelated perspectives on play make it moreclosely connected to work and suggest some avenues toward creating adifferentrelationshipbetweenthem.Thefirstpresentsan imageof whatcould be: work as an unalienated, engaged activity. The second suggeststhat play can be a significant rhetorical force, that play performs rhetoricalwork. In both perspectives, the play element plays a central role in theexperience of work: the first is focused on the individual's experience ofabsorbed engagement, andthe second suggests that play isreally interplayinasmuch as it is interactive and social.

The perspective on work as unalienated activity is characterized bywhat Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the "flow experience": the pleasur­able feeling of total absorption in an intense and challenging activity. Thisexperience isalso marked by "intrinsic motivation," where the drive to dosomething has less to do with extrinsic rewards than with the actor's desireto do it for its ownsake. The flowexperience may occur in work or in play.What is significant is that it describes an experience that collapses theirabsolute separation. Csikszentmihalyi asserts that when areas for enjoy­ment are kept separate from the rest of life, we are "not likely to heal thebasic split between 'what needs to be done' and 'what is enjoyable to do '"(201). When the separation is absolute, Csikszentmihalyi warns, weare left with a degraded, "hedonistic escapist notion of what enjoy­ment is" (205).

The flip side of hedonistic, escapist leisure is the experience of workas drudgery. Hans Ostrom writes that most college writing is a "joylessaffair. We might as well all dress as Puritans" (77). As if diagnosing adisease, Ostrom states that in "the cultureof collegewriting, there's achasmbetweenwork andplay," pointing out that play is not "incidentalbut vital" (81). In "Fun?" Lex Runciman calls attention to the work/playdichotomy in composition studies. He asks why academics portraywriting as relentlessly problematic, difficult, and serious, why fun andpleasure are absent in most discussions ofwriting as is the recognition thatwriting is often a satisfying and rewarding activity (157-59). Runcimanobserves (accurately I think) that one "trouble with pleasure (even thatresulting from a demanding and rigorous mental activity) is that it'ssquishy, it's difficult to predict, and talking about it seems vaguelyunprofessional. It seems frivolous" (159). Runciman calls for encourag­ing "student writers to discover and even savor the range of large and

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smallrewardswhichattendtheirownwritingandthinking,"aprocess thatshouldbeginwith "rediscoveringfor ourselvesthe internal,even intrin­sic, rewards of the single, marvelously complicated process we callwritingand thinking"(161-62).Moreplayfully,Ostromcalls for a viewof writingas "play-work"or "plerk," and suggests an attitude of whathecalls "off-beatedness"-or, "a deliberate, built-in, serious-and-playfulirreverencetowardreceivedform"(81).

AsCsikszentmihalyiandRuncimansuggest,intrinsicmotivationcanleadto somehealing of thenecessity/pleasuresplit,while Marx seesthissenseofalienationasa serioussocialproblem,the legacyoftheformationof laborby capital.Theconceptofalienatedworkiscentraltounderstand­ing why the dichotomyof work andplay in our culture is debilitatinginthecontextofcollegecomposition.TherootsofthisconceptlieinMarx'snotionthatcapitalistproductiondrainsmeaningfromlabor, preventingasenseof authenticconnectionbetweenoneselfandone's work. InMarx'sanalysis of capitalism, the worker is alienatedboth from what he or sheproducesand fromtheprocessofproduction,of labor. Theproduct is "analienobjectexercisingpowerover [theworker],"while in theprocessofwork, the worker is estranged from him or herself.Marx writes, "labourin which man alienates himself . . . is a labour of self-sacrifice, ofmortification"(74). Alienatedlabor existsnot to satisfy intrinsic needsbut to satisfy needs outside the worker: "Its alien character emergesclearlyin the fact that as soonas no physicalor othercompulsionexists,labour is shunnedlike the plague" (74). Alienatedworknot only createsa sense of absoluteseparationbetweenhome and work, it estrangestheindividualfromhis or her senseof connectionwith natureand thehumanspeciesas a whole.AsMarxsays, "estrangedlabor ... makesindividuallife in its abstractformthe purposeof the life of the species,likewiseinits abstractand estrangedform" (75).

In moreorless acceptingthisseparationofworkandplay intodiscretespheres, we also embrace the corollary to this version of labor, thecommodifiedplay of the leisure industry.In the twentiethcentury, thisindustryhas becomea dominantforceshapingeverydaylife: we crowdthemeparksandotherhavensofplay inwhatlittlefreetimewehaveafterthe consumingdemandsof work. It is not, however, in this ghettoized,commodifiedexperienceofplaythatwe findthemeaningnowlackinginourjobs. If, in our work,we are alienatedbecausewe arenot engagedincreative activity, we arelikewisealienatedfromformsofplay offeredbythe leisure industry in which we are mere consumersof prefabricatedpresentations. If one connotationof play is the freedom to engage in

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creative activity, the leisure industry offers not the freedom to be creative,but the freedom from the control of the work environment. Yet,commodified play is nothing if not a controlled activity designed toproduce a predictable experience of "fun." Work and play have beengutted of their creative value so that each is reified-we experience bothas "other" rather than as part of our selves-while the separation ofworkand play into these spheres of activity helps to maintain this sense ofalienation.

Ifwe are to become more creatively engaged in work and play, thenthere must be some way to move beyond the dichotomy imposed by yearsofTaylorism. Play in the context of work can help to recapture aspects ofcreative activity that have been denied to labor. The quality of play weneed is not the passive consumption offered by the theme park but theinteractive play that has the potential of enriching work. Just as play canbe serious, work can be playful, a quality I call "serio-ludic." This kind ofplay promises some closing of the work/play gap. It is interactive andcreative, performative and unalienated-and rhetorically significant.Serio-ludic play can achieve both serious and ludic purposes without thekind of polarization that leads to the exclusion of one purpose or the other.Serio-ludic play can lead to a richer conception of work that has clearrelevance to the future of composition studies, because it opens up a spacefor the ludic impulses we all feel; it allows us the possibility of the creativeengagement with writing that is all but lost in composition.

The second perspective on play asserts that some forms of play­particularly serio-ludic play-do rhetorical work. We may experience theflow of unalienated work as serio-ludic, but serio-ludic play extendsbeyond the individual's felt sense to his or her interactions with others.This interaction displays a rhetorical dimension of obvious relevance tocomposition, for some theorizing of play strongly suggests its connectionto rhetoric. In UnderstandingMedia, Marshall McLuhan suggests thatplay is fundamentally social and rhetorical, providing reflexive perspec­tive on the situation in which it emerges. Play, he writes, "must be give andtake, or dialogue, asbetween two or more persons and groups." Play, then,is interplay, an activity that McLuhan associates with performance andespecially with the reaction of the audience- a reaction that is capturedin the rhetorical concept ofpathos. McLuhan writes, "the very medium ofinterplay is the feeling of the audience" (241).

Play's rhetorical power lies in part in how it can reflect our mostserious activities, but with a parodic twist, as in a funhouse mirror.McLuhan writes that the elements of play "must stand forth from the over-

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all situation as models of it in order for the quality of play to persist" (240).These ideas are compatible with Gregory Bateson's point that the distin­guishing feature of play is the metacommunicative signal, "this is play"(41). Bateson points out that play parodies not reality itselfbut an idea orimage of reality held by players, participants, and audiences. Reality,then, is put into play and reframed in the context of the rhetor/player andthe audience. When we step out of ordinary roles and into what we thinkof as play roles, we activate the subjunctive "as if' that is associated withplay. This quality accounts for play's power to critically comment onreceived roles and reality; but it also accounts for how easily play isdismissed and constitutes a central paradox of play-namely, that playderives some of its power to alter the world from the perception that it isseparate from it.

Some scholarship in rhetoric and composition explores the connec­tion between play and rhetoric. Huizinga's concept of homo ludens canserve, Kenneth Burke writes, "as an instrument to warn against an overlyinstrumentalist view of man's ways with symbols" in which the conceptof action is reduced to work (61).3 Burke's dramatism construes languageas a mode of symbolic action rather than as a means of conveyinginformation (see Foss et al. 181). The dramatistic model suggests particu­lar and shifting roles for writers and readers throughout the process.Building on Burke and Huizinga-particularly on the concept of homoludens-Lanham places the ludic impulse in dialectical relation to theserious purposes of the Western intellectual tradition. He makes homorhetoricus the playful counter to homo seriosus , thus making a strong linkbetween play and rhetoric (Motives).

The fluidity of shifting roles in peer conferencing links the revisionprocess in composition to elements common to play. Peter Elbow's role­play technique of reading as a believer and a doubter has gained consid­erable acceptance in the field. Walker Gibson sees the writer as a "play­actor" assuming various roles and masks in "dramatic play throughlanguage" and thus functions as an antidote to the model of the writer asobjective mapmaker (284-86). Both play and writing can, in this view, beseen as forms of "symbolic action" through which individuals encounterand negotiate socio-cultural structures of meaning. This sense of play asaction connects it explicitly to the exigencies of rhetorical situations andbridges the gulf created by the distinction between serious and frivolousdiscourse.

The process approach supports the practice of playing around withideas by viewing writing as provisional, deferring performance anxiety

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by involving students with the associative, constructive, and discursiveprocesses of writing in the hope that they feel a sense of intrinsicmotivation. Drafting is a rehearsal in which the writer plays the role ofrhetor in a fictional situation with an imagined audience. The associa­tional quirkiness of some invention heuristics reintroduces play into thecomposing process (clustering, conceptual mapping, freewriting, andtagmemics are a few examples). Recursiveness suggests that the play ofinventio can and should reenter the process at any stage. Role-play,dramatism, and the creative loopiness of the composingprocess are suchaccepted elements of the composition canon that we no longer acknowl­edge their essentialplayfulness. If that acknowledgment is necessary forbridging work and play in college composition, then these ideas andtechniques alone cannot be sufficient to the task.

Enter the personal computer, first connected through local areanetworks and then through the Internet. More than any other develop­ment, the use of computers in compositionhas brought the play elementin writing into the foreground. Until recently, the use of computer andnetwork technologyin compositioncourseshas supportedthe productionof serious, mostly monological print discourse; lately, the explosion ofplayful modes of online conversation and writing are forcing us toreconsider the place ofplay in our interactionsand inwriting in computeror traditional classrooms.

The two perspectives on play just discussed-playas unalienatedactivity and playas rhetorical-eome together in serio-ludic play, whichis the most educationallyrelevant quality of play because it can result infruitful discourse that combines serious and playful purposes. This viewcontrastswithwhat iscommonlyreferredto as"mereplay" orpure play­play whose effects are irrelevant to the desired goals of a specificeducationalmoment.Ofcourse,there isno consensusonwhat constitutespure play. Halio thought ofplaying with fontsas"mereplay," while manyothers stronglydisagreed."Serio-ludicplay calls attentionto itself asplaywhile achieving rhetorical purposes by conveying content of a seriousnature through playfully stylistic means.

In electronic writing, serio-ludicplay finds expression in the organi­zation of the text through playful metaphors and narratives that providereaders with a dramatic experience of information, featuring interestingtransitions, puzzles, conundrums, odd yet meaningful juxtapositions,collage effects, and fancifulgraphics."In the online discourseof synchro­nous conferencing, the play element is, like Robert Brooke's concept ofunderlife, more eruptive and spontaneous.In real-time online discourse,

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serio-ludic play is expressed through metacommunicativejokes thatmediate conflict and through group improvisation on emergent themes.Brooke points out that underlife-the supposedly off-task talking andactivities performedby students during class-is not the mere play manyhave assumed, but is important in the developmentofstudent roles andidentities distinct from those expected and rewarded in the institu­tional setting.

Underlifecertainlycan be playful,but since it accomplishesseriouspurposes, it is a good example of serio-ludic play. In the computerclassroom,underlifeblossomsandistransformedasit istransferredtothesurface of online discourse,resulting in multiple levels of underlife inbothverbalandwrittenforms.Thus,thecomputerbringsplay into relief,forcing educators to reconsidertheir assumptionsabout what forms ofplay are legitimate.Yet, ifBrooke's accountis accurate,mostinstructorsassumearigid stanceonthis issue: any playisseen asludicandbesidethepoint of instruction.

The Work/Play Dichotomy in English StudiesThe rigid stanceon play thatpersistsin compositionis in part the legacyof the historical separation of work and play in English departments.Serio-ludicplay has thepotentialto help annealthisgapby openingup aspaceforreflective,social,rhetorical,andunalienated creativity. Howthechasmbetweenworkandplay developedinEnglishstudiescontinuestocontributeto its power.According to Richard Ohmann,whatwe knowasthemodemEnglishdepartmentwasformedinthe latenineteenthcenturyat a time when corporatecapitalismdemonstratedto educatorsthe needforatrainedprofessionalmanagerialclass."Departmentswereorganizedfor the purpose of teaching the reading of literature-a subject uponwhichprofessionalexpertiseonabodyofknowledgecouldbebuilt-andits more "useful" partner, composition6 Other possible contents of thefield such as rhetoric and oratory,Ohmannnotes, were deemedarchaic(17). Teachingliteraturerapidlygainedprestigebecauseprofessors likedteaching it better and, more importantly,because "English literaturecarriedwith it theprestigeof the leisuredclassforwhomithad longbeena 'natural' accomplishment ... It seemedfittingthat the birthrightof anold elite shouldbe codified and promotedas cultural validation for thenewly credentialedprofessional-managerialclass" (18). This pairing ofliteratureandcompositionwassoldinthe 1890sasaunified fieldofstudy;yet, as Ohmannobserves,the realitywas "less a unity than an unhappyyokingof alienatedtounalienatedlabor."Theresultwasa "felt division"

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between work and leisure, especially since "the goalofliterary instructionwas to improve or perfect a self that could exist only in the realm ofleisure" (20). Meanwhile, no rhetoric about higher cultural goals sur­rounded the discussion of composition. Ohmann notes that the discardingofrhetoric "left composition without foundation," and made it an elemen­tary and practical skill to be taught through ceaseless practice (21).

The privileging of literature was maintained, in part, by defining itagainst the everyday realities of rhetorical persuasion, evanescent populargenres, andjoumalistic writing. The bifurcation of English studies intoone activity associated with leisure and one associate with work wouldbe maintained so long as teaching composition remained subordinateto teaching literature. The fact that writing instruction continues to be 'more difficult than the teaching of literature indicates that work andplay in English departments still split along these lines.

This asymmetry persists in the increasing workload for all academics.In "The Way We Work Now," Mara Holt and Leon Anderson note thatthe typical academic works a fifty-plus hour week (132). Holt andAnderson call for an expansion of time away from work and for the"reflective leisure" that is "central to intellectual work because itprovidesthe mental space for free play essential to the cultivation of criticalcreativity" (138). Recognizing the need for reflective leisure, they write,"undercuts the dichotomy of work and play" (139). These conditionsapply to both tenure-track and adjunct faculty, but genuine leisure andother material conditions necessary for play have been withheld fromhistorically disadvantaged groups, especially women and minorities. AsTheresa Enos and othershave documented, women form a largeunderclassin the field of composition, serving mostly as adjunct instructors, and theyare even more susceptible to academic overwork since the privileging ofliterature in English departments guarantees an onerous load of compo­sition courses. The gendered nature of composition studies represents amore generalized dynamic in American culture whereby women arerelegated to subordinate roles in the workplace and assume heavier labordemands in the home, even when they are employed full-time, as ArlieHochschild, among others, has demonstrated. Men, then, may have moreleisure time than women whose access to play is more constrained.Certainly, play styles differ across genders and races; however, thefundamental dynamic of seriousness andplay that defines serio-ludic playis expressed within and across these divisions, and its benefits areavailable to all. Furthermore, while the asymmetry of power relations mayimpede play and influence the nature of its expression, as Erving Goffman

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has noted, the mutual enactment ofplay tends to mediate (at least to somedegree) power differences among play participants. Given this, the mostimportant factor impeding play is not the asymmetry of power relationswithin play, but the material and structural discrimination that hasresulted in the formation of overworked underclasses for whom play is astructurally less available activity.

The field of composition has played its own part in the persistentassociation of teaching collegewriting courseswith alienatedgrunt work."Current-traditional" rhetoric focuses on the mastery of certain well­worn modes and forms. The objectivist assumptions on which thisrhetoric operates has contributed to limiting the leisure of reading andinterpretation to literature courses. With the advent of what MaxineHairston has called the paradigm shift to the process approach, a studentsubject has emerged: seemingly for the first time students might focus onthe intricacies of their experiences of writing rather than solely on thefetishized product. Although the 1960s' view of the composition courseas "a happening" may have been a blip on the screen, it playfullychallenged the hegemony of received forms and roles for students andinstructors. As Berlin notes, the oppositional potential of expressivistrhetoric appeared to dissipatewhenprocess andcollaboration culminatedin the apotheosis of the writer as individual, romantic explorer of the self.Even though expressivism succeeded in expanding the repertoire ofstudent writing and interactions beyond the conventions of academicdiscourse, it ultimately played into a version of the self that has nosocialsense of rhetoric.

InBerlin's history ofcomposition, socialepistemicrhetoric views theromantic self of expressivism as, at worst, an ideological fiction and, atbest, as just one part of a larger rhetorical economy. Social epistemicrhetoric could possibly free composition of the split between objectiveand subjective rhetorics by offering a more complex model of the socialconstruction of the self that is thoroughly grounded in poststructuralisttheory. However, rather than freeing composition to explore discoursethat might cross the work/play gap, the legacyof social epistemic rhetorichas often been a narrow focus on political consciousness-raising, closingoff consideration ofplayas anythingbut a ludicescape fromthehard workof analyzing dominant ideologies. In rejecting expressivist rhetoric,adherents of social-epistemic rhetoric appear to have thrown the baby ofplay out with the bath water of the romantic subject.

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Healing the Work/Play SplitSome rhetoricians whose work is based on postmodernist rhetoricaltheory see benefits in a ludic approach that critical postmodernists havenot acknowledged. In making playa central element in writing ~instruc­tion, William Covino and James Seitz, for example, suggest that playoffers valuable resistance to the nonnative expectations of traditionalwriting instruction. From the perspective of postmodern literary theory,the radical relativism of the linguistic sign makes play language's primarycharacteristic. Using language is playing, whether or not one wants to seeit. Building on the slippery play of the signifier associated withdeconstruction as aprecondition of the rhetorical situation, Covino placesthe "rhetoric of free play [in opposition] to the valorization of truth," ofopen, uncertain, discourse to closed, instrumental writing (312). Covinosuggests that in composition's usual emphasis on the completion ofwriting, "speculation and exploration remain subordinate to finishing"(316). His alternative is a writing "informed by associational thinking, arepertory of harlequin changes, by the resolution that resolution itself isanathema. This writer writes to see what happens" and maintains theattitude of "thoughtful uncertainty" that "informs full exploration andmotivates wonder." Now is the time, Covino adds, "for writing teachersto point out that the world is a drama of people and ideas and that writingis how we consistently locate and relocate ourselves in the play" (317). Inshort, Covino moves play from the periphery to the center of writing.

Although less apparently ludic in his approach to composition, Seitzcalls for a similarly hypertextual approach to fragmentary texts but, likeCovino, without any mention of hypertext or electronic discourse. Hechallenges compositionists to "broaden the range of texts we elicit fromour students to include the fragmentary as a legitimate means to rhetoricaland aesthetic effects" (819). Seitz proposes that the partial, fragmentary,and difficult be juxtaposed to conventional forms in order to "exploreagonistic possibilities" (821). Current composition practices, accordingto Seitz, cover only "half the game" in which students construct harmo­nious wholes, leaving out "the attempt to arrange pieces of language sothat the gaps between them leave more for readers themselves to con­struct" (820). The other half of the game alters the reader/writer contractto require active co-construction of meaning by the reader via explorationand play. Seitz notes that without an expansion of the boundaries of textsand the roles of readers and writers, "[r]ole without play ... is merely areinforcement of the status quo," all accommodation and no assimilation(821). The value of fragmentary texts, in Seitz's view, is that they

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establish "an extremely subtle tension between the familiar and thestrange," a tension that the student must learn to manage through astuteanticipation of the audience.

Seitz's call for composition to consider more "mobile, heteroglot,polyphonic formsof writing" has been takenup by manypractitioners inthe sub-field of computers and writing (824). Joseph Janangelo, forexample,hasofferedthoughtfullyplannedcollageasapossiblemodelforhypertext composition.Many of Jay Bolter's claims for hypertext focuson the qualities of compositionfavoredby Covino and Seitz.Accordingto Bolter, "[w]riting is the creativeplay of signs,and the computeroffersus a new field for that play" (Writing 10).He adds that "[p]layfulness isa defining quality of thisnew medium" (130). These approaches to therhetoricof computer-basedcompositionacknowledgethe importantroleofplay in the constructionofa criticallynuancedaestheticandrhetoricofelectronic composition.What Bolter calls "the breakout of the visual,"greatly accelerated by the computer, has placed the play element incomposition in stark relief from print literacies traditionally taught incompositioncourses,bringing its controversiesto the foreground ("De­grees"). The visual element of hypertext-that is, the composition ofrelationshipsbetweenwordsand imagethroughbricolage-has becomeindispensableto itsplayelement.Asavisually-orientedmedium,hypertextincreasinglyrelies on graphics to convey meaning.'

The expansion of writing media to include the extensive palette ofnon-alphanumeric signs-graphics, audio, and video--creates a newrhetorical exigency for play. The document as site, as virtual space,demands that we conceive of presentation as performance, and it castsreaders and writers in the role of actors in unfolding dramas, makingmanifest Burke's concept of language as symbolic action. Serio-ludictextsincorporateasoneoftheirrhetoricalfeaturesthemetacommunicativesignalthatplay ispresent,markingthediscourseasperformativeby virtueof its display of the play signal.Playfulcomputermedia reintroduceandexpand the need for an aesthetic of compositionin dialectical interplaywith the substanceof the text..Thequality ofhypertextual play can be, inL.M. Dryden's words, "remarkablycomplexand witty-the result of anintegrationof work andplay at high levels of cognition,"madepossible,in part, because the medium holds "the potential for a polyvalent andunpredictableplay of ideas" (299).

Richard Lanhamis perhapsthe best-knownrhetoricianadvocatingapostmodemist approach to computers, rhetoric, and play. In The Elec­tronic Word, he notes that writing with computers brings play into a

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dialectical relationshipwith the serious, rational instrumentalism, andpresumablywiththestabletransparentlinearityofprint media.Computertechnology,accordingto Lanham,returnsrhetoricto a fruitfuloscillationbetween truth and style that has always been one of its disturbing andenablingtensions.Westernthoughthasbeenconstitutedby "two clustersof motive" (game/playand "being serious") that the computer's liquidinterfacekeeps in productiveoscillationin a more or less sustained andself-conscious way (57). Lanham stresses the dialectical energy un­leashedby theelectronicword.TracingthecurrentrebellionagainstprintbacktothetextualdeformationsoftheItalianFuturists,LanhamnotesthattheWesternintellectualtraditionhas alwaysfeatureda collisionbetweenseriousnessand play, content and style, fixity and fluidity.The didacticvalue of this interplay, Lanham argues, is revealed in the dialecticalmovementbetweenourmostpersistentoppositions.Theelectronicword,hetellsus, instantiatesthisdialecticin its surfaceby encouragingstylisticdeformationsof print conventions,and thus is the mediapar excellenceforinstitutingprofitableandpleasurableboundarycrossings.LikeCovino,Seitz, and Bolter, Lanham resists composition's presumption thatessayistic literacy should be the goal of college writing courses, andhe fully integrates computers and play in a postmodemist rhetoric forcomposition.

Whilethecognitivevalueofplay is evidentin the argumentsof somepostmodemistrhetoricians,the ludiccharacteristicsof language(as theyaremanifestincomposition)areviewedmoreskepticallyby somecriticalpostmodemists. Play, as they view it, is non-rhetorical and apolitical,lacking or blunting any critical edge. Yet, as I will argue in the nextsection,thecriticalandpoliticalimplicationsofplayaregreaterthanwhatcriticalpostmodemistshave perceived.

How Critical Is Play?My argument that play is critical depends in large measure on theconnection I am making between play and rhetoric. I am claiming thatmuchplay is not isolatedfromand in oppositionto work; rather, it existswithinandtransformsrhetoricalsituationsand,at itsbest,combinesludicand serious purposes through sophisticated rhetorical strategies andeffects.The theorists I draw on to make this case offer an array of waysof connectingplaywithrhetoricalwork.Burkeviewslanguageuse as theperformanceof symbolicaction,andMcLuhantiesplayto the reactionofan audience.The composingprocessitself is rifewith role-play.In termsof peer critique,thinkof Elbow's "metaphoricalquestions"(if thispaper

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were an article of clothing, what would it be?). Bateson's example ofpuppies at play (nipping, but not really) calls attention to themetacommunicationthat accompaniesplay(41). Brookelinkstheplayfulstudentunderlife that teacherswitnessor ignorewith students' refusal tosubmitto rigid institutionalroles.Lanhamattemptsto foregroundplayasthe repressed element in rhetoric that has recently been given newexpressionthrough computers,while Covino's metaphorof magic linksplay to a model of composing that is open-ended exploration.For bothcritical and aesthetic effects, Seitz and Janangelovalidate experimenta­tion with fragments.Play theorists explore the ways that play performsreflexive functions within cultures. My concept of serio-ludic playgroundsplay in a combinationof serious and ludic purposes and effectsin rhetorical writing and communication situations. Play of this kindconnects writers and audiences in novel ways by healing the work/playdichotomyandtheparalleldichotomyinEnglishstudiesbetweenrhetoricand poetic.

The conceptof playas dialecticalespousedby postmodemist rheto­ricians such as Covino, Seitz, and Lanhamhas also been recognized byculturalanthropologistswhoemphasizetheroleofplay insocialtransfor­mation.A strongcurrentinplay studiesviewsplayas acriticaltoolor toy,a paradoxicalelementresistantto easydominationby hegemonicforces.Victor Turner-the eminent anthropologist of ritual, play, and"liminality"-personifies playas amockerof acceptedrealities: "Play isa light-winged,light-fingeredsceptic,putting intoquestionthe cherishedassumptions of both hemispheres. There is no sanctity in play; it isirreverent,and protected in the world of power strugglesby its apparentirrelevanceandclown's garb" (223).This"apparentirrelevance"sets thestagefor its irreverencetobeheardratherthandrownedoutor assimilatedinto the power structure." The player as trickster suggests a strongperformativefunctionforplaythatservesasamodeof socialcritique.Theanthropologist Dwight Conquergood eloquently summarizes thisperformativefunctionofplay in aparagraphwellworthquotingat length.Play, he writes,

is linked to improvisation, innovation,experimentation,frame, reflec­tion, agitation, irony, parody,jest, clowning,and carnival, As soon as aworldhasbeenmade,linesdrawn,categoriesdefined,hierarchieserected,then the trickster, the archetypal performer, moves in to breach norms,violate taboos, tum everything upside down. By playing with socialorder, unsettling certainties, the trickster intensifies awareness of the

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vulnerability of our institutions. The trickster's playful impulse promotesa radical self-questioning critique that yields a deeper self-knowledge,the first step towards transformation. Appreciation of play has helpedethnographers of performance understand the unmasking and unmakingtendencies that keep cultures open and in a continuous state of productivetension. The metacommunicative signal "this is play" temporarily re­leases, but does not disconnect, us from workaday realities and respon­sibilities and opens up a privileged space for sheer deconstruction andreconstruction. (83)

Far from simply reveling in the ludic, these researchers see the ludicimpulse as intimately connected to processes of individual, social, andcultural renewal.

The paradoxical and oppositional nature of play enables it to parodyreality, and thus opens up a space for reflexivity. Sutton-Smith foundthrough his research on children's games that in play children "bothmimic and defy reality. Being paradoxical means that play is always bothof its own society and beyond it at the same time" (Toys 252). These"games of order and disorder" reveal the ways that play inverts, chal­lenges, or reverses the social order (see Schwartzman 217). Variability,Sutton-Smith suggests, is the key to play, which is "characterized byquirkiness, redundancy, and flexibility" (Ambiguity 229). One of play'simportant functions is that it acts as "an exemplar of cultural variability,an available alternative for behavior, just as are music, dance, song, andthe other arts" (230). Play, then, can introduce novel forms, challenge thereceived order, and affect the larger society.

The role of playas a dialectical force in critical literacy can beclarified by considering its role in composition "A Class of Clowns,"Chris Holcomb claims that successful use of spontaneous humor in onlinesynchronous discussion demonstrates "a competency in a new form ofliterate practice .... [S]tudents use joking to accomplish a variety ofinteractional tasks: to build rapport with other students, to save face, andto explore and negotiate (in a relatively safe way) thresholds betweendifferent ways of thinking and behaving (4). Conflicts are spurred andmediated by play in online dialogue, suggesting that the invocation of theubiquitous play frame- "justkidding"-perfonns as a limited license totransgress that, according to anthropologist Roger Abrahams, "oftenleads to the extension of that license to depict and explore motives that weare not permitted to examine through enactment outside that speciallydistanced, stylized, and intensified environment of the play-stage." The"play-stage" of the networked computer classroom provides a relatively

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safeplace fortransgressivebehaviors,wheretheyare"exemptedfromfulljudgment on moral grounds." Abrahams comments, "If play involvescommitting such transgressions even while we are saying 'just kidding,only kidding, only kidding,' . . . the study of the processes and theexpressive repertoire of playing then provides a primary means ofmapping the transgressionspermitted and even encouraged by a group"(30). Thus, if the play of computer-mediated communication in thecollege classroom leads to a variety of transgressivebehaviors in textualform,then that disorder is, as John Shotterpoints out, "the provenance oforder ... found in disorder, on the edge of chaos, in spontaneity andplayfulness" (165). Out of the relational tensions and releases that playfosters, new and refreshing forms, even subject positions, can emerge.Theplay elementiscriticalto thisprocess.Themoreand lessspontaneousnegotiations and group improvisationsthat result from the use of play totest discursive boundaries can yield significant movement in studentsubject positions through the collective emergenceof the individual andgroup's political unconscious.

Brooke validates the serio-ludicplay that he calls underlife (follow­ing sociologist Erving Goffman), underscoring a connection betweenplayful resistance and individual and group identity, and supporting mycontention that serio-ludic play is highly rhetorical. Brooke definesunderlife as "the activities (or informationgames) individualsengage into show that their identities are different from or more complex than theidentitiesassignedthemby organizationalroles" (142).Brookenotes thatunderlife in college composition is a "contained" form of underlife that,as Goffman says, attempts to fit into "existing institutional structureswithout introducing pressure for radical change" (Goffman, Asylums199).This form of underlife is distinct from "disruptive underlife" thatmilitates for structural reform (Brooke 143). The student diversionsthat Brooke discusses perform at least two functions: they developstudent identity through the expressionof distance from expected roles,and they activelyconnect"ideas in the classroomto [students'] own livesoutside the classroom" (145). These instancesof underlife are rhetoricalinthe senseofcommunicatingameaningfullanguagegame,andthus theyhelp to overcome alienation that springs from disconnection betweenclassroom content and life outside it. In Brooke's analysis, it is notunderlifeitselfthatmustbeovercomebutthealienatednatureofacademic"gamesplaying" that results incynicalmanipulationof classroombehav­ior and writing for external rewards that prevents the commitment toexaminingroles and identitynecessaryfor growthas a writer.Even more

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significant for my claim that play is critical is Brooke's contention thatwriting instruction itself can be a form of disruptive underlife withinEnglish departments and universities when it "tries to undermine thenature of the institution and posit a different one in its place" (151). Thiscan only happen, Brooke argues, if writing instructors' approach tounderlife provides opportunities for students to substitute their "naive,contained form" of underlife with a disruptive form in which theyquestion, explore and write about their social world.

Underlife and, more broadly, serio-ludic play are not inherentlydisruptive of the social order; rather, they open up a space, an opportunityfor critique, while they help to connect that process with what we think ofas "real life" and help make the work of composition less onerous,alienated, and drudgelike. From this perspective, play does not stand inthe way of critical agendas; rather, it is a necessary but not sufficientelement of social change. Play can, of course, be a force for containmentrather than subversion, since, as Sutton-Smith points out, "games ofdisorder" are balanced out with "games of order." The outcome of playdepends on what you do with it, on your goals and values, as well as onthe cultural and material conditions within which it is enacted.

If, as Brooke claims, composition studies itself can be a disruptiveform of under life in the academy, Lanham's vision of the future of thehumanities certainly disrupts the status quo relationship between workand play. Lanham's proposed focus on the "rhetoric of the digital arts" isa deliberately strategic attempt to form a philosophy on which a rhetoric­based community of readers and writers might use the unsettled textualityof the moment as a dialectical tool for prying open the curricular divisionsof the disciplines by envisioning a means of instituting a rhetorical anddialectical mode of reading, writing, and teaching across the university.The nature of digital rhetoric, Lanham asserts, is such that collaborationacross disciplines would be necessary to do justice to the expressive andrhetorical potential of our "bi-polar" media.

In Lanham's view, play must be integral to the new curriculumbecause it is always already integral to all communication. Lanham asks,what "kind of stylistic training might equip students for this polyglotvoyage" through the very different discourses of the disciplines? (142)."For a start," he writes, "it should teach the sensitivity and adaptabilityneeded to move from one discourse-community to another. It will have tobe some sort of rehearsal education, one that imagines particular occa­sions and then tries to formulate a discourse appropriate to them" (142;emphasis added). The idea of rehearsal suggests maintaining some

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distancefromtheconventional,epistemicperspectiveofaparticular fieldso as toprevent "referential reality" from supplanting"rehearsal-reality"(150). Rhetoric-coupled with the vitality of the computerscreen's "bi­polar stability"- places utilitarian conventionsof disciplinary thinkingandwritinginconversationwith ludicdisruptionsofthosemodesthroughplayfulrepresentationsofthedigitizedwordandimage.Inthisview,thereis no need to move educationalphilosophy toward one pole or the otherbecause the power of each is checkedby the denaturalizingeffect of theother.

Throughout this essay, I have argued that the institutionalizedoppo­sitionbetweenworkandplay hashadadebilitatingeffecton composition,maintainingthe alienation in work and obscuringthe rhetoricalpower ofplay.. The serio-ludic qualities of much play suggest that dialecticalenergy isone of themostpowerfulbenefitsof puttingplay towork. Ihavenoted that social epistemic rhetoric has precluded playas a tool ofresistance and social transformation. This is apparent in Berlin's andEbert's distinction between ludic and critical (or resistance)postmodemism.Berlinwarnsagainstenthusiasmforludicpostmodemism,noting that somehavemistakenlyfound it "an exhilaratingand liberatingingredientof ourhistoricalmoment"(65).Ludicpostmodemists, accord­ingtoBerlin,revel inthe freeplay oftheDerrideansignifier,seeinginfreeplay "an opportunity to construct new subject formations" that aredetrimental to a critical practice attuned to both the rhetorical construc­tions of reality and its material, especially economic, conditions (66).Likewise, in Ebert's view, ludicpostmodemismundercutsa focuson thematerial circumstances needed for a politics of feminist liberation. Inthese versions, ludic postmodemism is without an activist politics andthus is incapable of meaningful critique.

Ifkept in opposition,however, the terms ludic and critical representa dichotomy that impoverishes both. A viable critical postmodernismmust incorporate the ludic in its toolbox of strategies in order to keep itspolitical focusfromshuttingoff creativity.Play-the realmoftheludic­needs criticalpostmodemismto revealthe relationshipbetweenplay andpower, tokeepplay frombecominga separate,escapistrealmofirrespon­sibility. Practicing a dialectic between ludic and critical postmodemismcan strengthen both.

Muchof thediscussionof ludicversuscriticalpostmodemismcenterson the questionof the subject.The subject in ludicpostmodernismis saidto be fluid and to defy stable definition through its embrace of multiple,oftencontradictorypositions.The subjectof criticalpostmodemism flies

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inthefaceof thisfluidity,insteadgroundingthe subjectmoreinsocialandmaterial conditionsthan in discourseand language.Acrossthese discus­sions, a pattern emergesthat recapitulatesthe binary oppositions I havediscussedin this essay.As JoanneAddisonand SusanHilligosssuggest,theories of ludic postmodemists "become lost in a play of rhetoric thatinhibitspoliticalagencyandcoIlectivesubjectivity"(AddisonandHilligoss31). In ludicpostmodemism,languageisplay. Incriticalpostmodemism,languageis understoodas a site for socialstrugglethat is groundedin thematerial realities of race, class, and gender. Critical postmodemism"insists that difference is social and historical, instead of simply discur­sive." The problem with ludic postmodemism, Nedra Reynolds pointsout, is in the denialof agencythat results from conceivingof the subjectas fractured and dispersed. Extreme forms of ludic postmodemism incomposition studies-such as Victor Vitanza's "third sophistic rheto­ric"-base their theoriesprincipallyon Baudrillard's conceptsof seduc­tion and hyper-reality,and promote ideas that challengethe existenceofor at least any access to material realities, making activist interventionineffective and, more seriously, making them complicitous with domi­nant hegemonicthought structures.

I find this formof ludicpostmodemismproblematic;however, thirdsophisticrhetoriccomprisesasmallcontingentof theoristswhoinnowayexhaust or fully represent how play can inform composition. Further­more, the distinction between ludic and critical postmodemism iscomplicitous with the separation of the playful and the serious in ourculture and in higher education. Academic activism is once again pre­sentedas deadlyserious,an approachthat is no longerpracticedby eventhe most committedyoung activists.Andplay is once againpresented asthe other of work-that is, as an escape from harsh realities.

Someof the tensionsmade visibleby the play element in computer­mediatedcommunicationcanbe exploredthroughdiscussingtwo articlesabout the online research project, woman@waytoofast.The projectprovided a listserv forumfor a group of women compositionscholars todiscuss issues of common concern over a period of thirty days. In"Womenon the Networks,"GailHawisherandPatricia Sullivandiscussthis space as a version of Foucault's notion of heterotopias-or"countersites where culture is represented, contested, and inverted."Hawisher and Sullivan claim that such countersites "can transformwriting classes, subverting dominant power structures and traditionalclassroomroles" (173, 174).At one point in the discussion, the partici­pantsbegantodiscusstopicsthatcollapsedthedistinctionbetweenpublic

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andprivate spacesandworkandpersonalexperience.Thisoccurredwhensome women sent e-mail representations of themselves to the list. Theauthors explain:

For some, the faces, piets, or e-art, as the women called them, were funandforegrounded woman@waytoofastasa safe placein whieh to play­an e-space where they might risk seeming foolish. Yet they immediatelyconnected the personal and playful aspects of e-space with serious,professional and scholarly thought. E-art, used as a platform for self­representation and for self-critique, was also used to cantilever thediscussioninto the areasof howone representedoneself in e-space or inone's department,as ajob candidateor as an untenuredfaculty member.

(190-91)

Hawisher and Sullivan note that e-spaces that fulfill various functions­including playgrounds and masked balls-"can also function as spacesforpolitical action" (193). Their exampleofplayfuldiscoursethat seguesinto serious discussion is an apt example of how play can productivelyopen discussion of topics that maynot have arisen without the spark ofplay. Yet, some members were unable or unwilling to participate in thisaspectof the discussion.Hawisherand Sullivannote that "online andoff,the strains of women's academic lives take their toll. Thus the playfulresponses of some to those pressures ... were seen by others as anotherresponsibility" (191).

In an article that presents a dramatically different view of thediscussion, Addison and Hilligoss present their refusal to participate inthe playful posting of imagesand the subsequentdiscussionas a politicalresponse to what they saw as the subtle heterosexism of the group'snorms. Moved by a lack of response to some early postings on lesbianissues, they assumedthat forthrightpostings on their appearanceand theproblems of self-presentation specific to lesbians would be poorly re­ceived-that is, they sensedanunspokenheterosexismin thegroup.Thissense drove them to communicate with each other off of the list. Theytheorize their refusal in the context of the debate on ludic and criticalpostmodemism, categorizing the open-ended,non-gendered identity ofqueerness and assumptions about play in cyberspace (for example,gender-swappinginMOOs)asa formof ludicpostmodernismthat resiststhe social and material conditions that affect identity on and off-line.Addison and Hilligoss advocate the political necessity of claiming alesbian identity that reflects the oppressive conditions in which theywork.

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Anotherwayofreadingboththesilencesofthemajorityofthewomenonthe listandAddisonandHilligoss' refusaltoput their lesbianidentitiesfurther into the discourseof the group is to see both silencesas a failureof nerve. The "silent majority" could have been hesitant to speak fromwhat they mayhave perceivedas their heterosexualsubjectpositions onissuesof lesbianidentity.AddisonandHilligoss' choicetobe silentintheface of this also suggestsa loss of nerve. Their willing retreat into theirowncommunityamountstoacapitulationto theroleofthesilencedother:their silence fulfills that role and inadvertently reinforces the closedcategoriesof the majority, allowingno one the chance to take responsi­bility, to refuse the straight-jackets of identity. An example of lostopportunity on both sides is the use of the term coming out by somemembers of the group, which wasjustifiably criticizedby Addison andHilligossas an appropriationof an importantterm for publicly claiminghomosexual identity. The playfulness of appropriating coming out todesignate various forms of self-revelation clashed with Addison andHilligoss' desire to preserve its originalmeaning. If the group had beenmore responsive to the posts on lesbian issues, Addison and Hilligossmight have challenged this playful appropriation, and their challengemighthaveopenedthewayforfurtherdiscussionratherthansilence.Thisconflict demonstratesthat play usually does involve taking risks (con­sciously or not) in asserting license to play with language that may stepon toes and cause dissent. I can only wonder what might havehappened if Addison andHilligoss had felt they could intervene in thatappropriation."

This lostopportunityis alsoan aptexampleof theneed forboth ludicand critical,resistantdiscourse.Ratherthan see these as separate,mutu­ally contradictoryand opposingstrategies,I see them as interdependentand mutually defining social discourses.The worst outcome of such adebatewould be the victory of one over the other. I make this claim notoutof a commitmentto liberalpluralism-in otherwords, a commitmentto two perspectivesthat are of equalvalue-but fromthe standpointthatcompositionstudiesneeds the dialogicand dialecticalenergy of the twoinproductiveoscillation,thatplaysometimesembodiesresistance,whileat other times it calls for resistanceto its expression.

It is importantto note that someattemptshave been made to open aspaceforplaywithinthe discourseaboutpostmodemismin compositionstudies.Reynolds,for example,clearlysupportscriticalpostmodemism,calling for "interruption" as a tactic for resisting dominant discourses.Significantly,in applyingthis tactic to writing, she advocatesthe "culti-

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vationofpostmodemism-inspireddiscourses... besidesthe formalessayorwrittenstandardEnglish"asa"greatermeansofresistance,"notingthepotential for this in conversationaldiscoursevenuessuchas Interchange(71). CatherineChaput,inarguingagainstthedenialof anactivistagendaby proponents of third Sophistic rhetoric, quotes recent arguments byDerridathatactsofresponsibilitystillhaveaplaceinapost-metaphysicalphilosophy. Similarly, Addison and Hilligoss use some of the ludicpostmodernistthinking of Sandy Stoneto discussonline agency.

In my view, postmodem identity(or the erasureof such) is compli­cated substantially by the historical situation, and students' multiplesubjectpositions can interactwith each other playfully to inform them­selves and each otherpolitically,particularlyif the teacher foregroundsthehistoricallysituatednatureofmultiplesubjectpositions.EveSedgwickprovides a concrete exampleof the conceptof situatedmultiple subjectpositions in her essay"WhiteGlasses,"in whichshe describesherself asa woman,a gay man, a feminist,a healthyperson,an ill person, and a fatperson. She performs a playful dialogue amongthese identities whilesituating each of them in relation to the others and to the politicalsituations that they represent.The seriousnesswith which she takes thehistory, the politics, and the emotionof eachposition is undeniable.Buther representationof the dialogic relationshipsamong these issues andsubjectpositions is also inarguablyplayful. The interactionof the ludicwith the seriousmakesher accountcompellingand, I would go so far asto say,makesit comprehensibleandmotivatingwithinthe frameworkofpolitical activism.

ConclusionThe recognition of the need for further researchand thinking about theplay element in compositionstudieshas been slowly emerging.WendyBishop's ElementsofAlternateStyleoffersoptionsforinstructorswillingto release students from the traditional discursive constraints of theacademicessay, to allowplay to enrichcomposingprocess andproduct.This work suggests that adherents of playful creativity in compositionhave begun to theorize its place in composition and to explore thesometimesdifficult means of integratingplay in such a work...intensivecontext.Despitethis encouragingsign, it is my contentionthat composi­tionstudiesis stilldeeplyensconcedina disabling,alienatingbifurcationof work and play.

The computerclassroomhas unleashedanefflorescenceof play thatmay force us either to find a legitimate place for play in composition or

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to suppressor ignoreitsexpression.It seemslikelythatwritinginstructionwill becomemore and more computerized.What is not certain is the fateofplay in thiscontext,sincecomputermediaincreasinglyare tied into theburgeoning commercialculture of computerizedproducts and the Web.The promise of hypertext to playfully expand composition could bethreatenedby the expansionof commoditylogic to the Web. On the onehand, progress in the technologicalsophisticationof computers and theInternet leadsus closerto embracingtheplayfulyet substantivepotentialof a mediumthatjuxtaposes the visual and the verbal.On the other hand,the interactive quality of play is threatened by the use of this sametechnicalsophisticationby thepurveyorsofcommodifiedleisureto createyetanotherdeliverable,passiveexperienceof "fun."If the fateoftheWebfollows that of television, the promise of computersfor exploration andproductiveplay couldbe lost.We cannotaffordtopassivelywait and seewhat happens. The play element could become co-opted as the latestcommodity,unlesscompositionistspursueaninteractivemodelof "plerk"with computers.

There are few easyanswersto questionsthatwriting instructorsmayhave abouthow to fosterproductiveplay in their classroomsand in theirstudents' writing;however,someuneasy answersare possible. One stepis to reverse the bias against the interanimationof work and play in ourculture and to explorethe implicationsfor the academic lives of facultyand students.Alongwith Brooke,we might expectwriting instructiontoenablestudentsto articulatetheirdifferencesfromprescribedrolesaswellaspossible alternativesto thoseroles; likewise,compositionprofession­als ought to engage more deeply the disruptive potential of their ownunderlife in order to open up a space for expressionof and reflection onserio-ludicplay. Studentsmay need to feel some permission to experi­mentwith theaestheticandrhetoricalpossibilitiesofplayfuldiscourse,toexperiment with a variety of roles and subject positions. This can befacilitated if major project assignments provide room for the creativelicense needed for the play element to emerge. Instructors may wish toprovide modelsof theirown serio-ludicdialogueandwriting; evenmorecrucially, studentsmay need to see and discussexamplesof studentplayin the context of compositioncourses. Because license to play is oftenkeyedintohierarchicalpowerstructures,studentsmaynot feelentitledtoincorporateplay: theymay feel that instructorsare entitledto play, whilestudentsmust maintain serioussubjectpositions. Of course, the reverseis just as often true: our students invoke the license to play in resistanceto the serious, instrumentalconventions of classroom discourse, work,

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and instructor subject positions. In this sense, it may be important forinstructors to enable student resistance by choosing when to play theseriousrole. Instructorscan experimentmorewiththeirown"instructor"subject positions, using their ability to model discourse, thought, andresponsivenessto includesomeof theplay elementsthat mightenrichtheclass experience for all.

Finally, serio-ludicplay has a criticalpoteritialbeyondits pedagogi­cal implications.If play is going to have any chance to thrive and makean impact on our work, we must move toward a more sophisticatedunderstandingand practice of play within academicenvironments.Thenotion of serio-ludicplay sensitizesus to the need for ludic activity andreflective leisure across the ranks of faculty in the academicworkplace.Such sensitivity further challenges the inequity between literature andcomposition in English departments and the enduring gap betweenrhetoric and poetic that isolates the play of language in poetic and thepractical work of language in rhetoric. I hope that serio-ludicplay willexertsignificantdialecticalandcriticalforceandleadto somerapproche­ment between critical and ludic positions within this conversation inEnglish studies and that this might result in further interest in theliberatingpotential of play in work.10

Ohio UniversityAthens, Ohio

Notes

1. Somearticlesdealingeither directlyor indirectlywith the play elementindiscourseandcomposition(mostlybutnotexclusivelycomputer-based)havebeen published. See Anderson; Bartholomae; Rickly and Crump; Daisley;Harris; Holcomb;Mathews-DeNatale;Millard;Ostrom; Sire.

2. At the time, IBMusers had extremelylimitedabilityto change font andfont sizes.

3. Burke's use of the word instrumentagainst instrumentalismis a goodexampleofa certainkind of ironicwordplay.

4. See Slatin et a1.;Kaplanand Moulthrop;Anderson.5. See Rouzie,"Composition."6. By this time, Taylorismhad removedthe worker from the need to think

or create, while the goods created by corporationswere being sold throughadvertisingin new nationalmagazines.Ohmannassertsthat thepolarizationofproductionand consumptionwascoterminuswith thepolarizationof work andleisure (18).

7.Theadventofgraphics-richcompositionenvironments,suchas theWeb,suggestsa needfor furtherresearchintovisualliteracy,especiallyin termsof its

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implicationsfor rhetoricand composition.The notionof visual literacyhas metwith someresistanceinEnglishstudies,wherewrittentext is stillprivilegedoverthe visual. The close relationship between visual perception and high-levelcognition, however, has been thoroughly establishedby Arnheim and Lemke.

8. MargaretSyversonwrote inapersonalnote:"My sister lived inJapan formany years as the wife of a Japanese businessman.The custom there is for thebusinessmento gooutdrinkingtogether;under theseauspices,underlingscouldsay things to their bosses they would never dare to say in the office; no matterhow outrageous or confrontational,this discoursewas accepted as both 'truth­ful' and 'nonharming' because of course the messengerwas' drunk.' This wasthe only medium for underlings to deliver unpleasant news, complaints, etc.There were absolutelyno consequences,and I mean no consequences for thisbehavior,becauseof course it was all in the contextof 'play.' Bosses cherishedthis source of discourseunfetteredby the ritual courtesiesof the office. I thinkof it as a safetyvalve forpeoplebuttonedsotightlyintocarefullydefinedroles."Used with permission.

9. My ostensiblytough stand on Addison and Hilligoss's choice of silencecauses me some anxiety. My anxiety stems from my self-consciousness assomeonewho wouldbe positionedas a straightmale.My engagementwith thisissue is, in a sense, a protest against the power of these categories. Mine is not,however, a rear-guard assaultagainst the insidiousconcept of reverse discrimi­nationbutresultsfroma wishformoredialogue,spurredbythe nervinessofbothludic and resistant impulses.

10. I would like to thank Lynn Worshamand the anonymous reviewers ofJAC for thoughtfulresponsesto earlierdraftsof this essay.Mara Holt and LeonAnderson also read drafts and offered invaluable advice on revision. Theirunflagging support made all the difference.

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