AnnoBib -- “Inventing the University”

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Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” When a Writer Can't Write: Studies in Writer's Block and Other Composing Problems. Ed. Mike Rose. New York:Guilford, 1985: 134-65. Rpt. in Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997. 589-620. Print.
Deep within this canonical essay, Bartholomae addresses Flower's assumptions that struggling writers are not engulfed within “writer-based” prose or are egocentric; instead, such writers simply are not initiated or are comfortable with academic discourse. Whereas Flower sees the struggling student as having difficulties negotiating writer-based and reader-based prose, Bartholomae sees the student as shut out from the privileged languages of public life. As students navigate their way through the university, they essentially have to pretend they know how to do the writing they are being asked to do, before they actually know how to do it. Students are tormented by the fact that they know they are being asked to speak as if they were an authority, when they know they aren't. The student is approximating the voice they need to be writing in, basically giving it their best guess. But students cannot know all the reader knows and he instead invites the student into a discourse of his own

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