Ever since the “social turn” in composition, at least, compositionists have tended to agree that textuality and identity are intimately related; indeed, one can probably follow this long thread of ethos back to its classical roots. The discussion of identity/textuality formed one of the key arenas for composition scholarship during the ‘90s, at the moments before (and during) that time when our field became enamored of computer network-based curricula. It was a time of great scholarly synergy. Given what we think we know about identity and textuality, we asked, how will the different textual possibilities of cyberspace affect our identities? In cyberspace, will anyone know you’re a dog? Can you be a dog, a man, a woman, a bot, a borg, or something of all of these multiplicitous textual identities at once?

The possibilities were alternately terrifying and exhilarating, but most of us agreed—and still tend to agree—that such shaping of self through text is problematic mostly if what we’re looking for is a unified, coherent self. We see our students’ (and our own) writing being into multiple existence as a potential source of great discursive energy. In many ways, however, these celebrations of new textualities celebrate the disruption of “self” in its material sense. We push the writing body to the side of the stage, perhaps even into the orchestra pit to sit and applaud our brain’s star turn.

We'd like to push back.