The Case for Reviewing as Collaboration and Response

Abstract

The writers whom Sheryl Fontaine surveyed generally agreed that the reviewing of manuscripts for journals in composition produces an antagonistic relationship between writer and reviewer. This should seem surprising given that our discipline has been defined as collaborative and dialogic. Andrea Lunsford distinguished our field from others when she claimed that are non-hierarchical and exploratory, intensely collaborative. . . . dialogic, multivoiced, heteroglossic (76). We enact these disciplinary characteristics in the ways we value collaborative writing and learning in our classrooms, writing centers, and research styles (McNenny and Roen), as well as in the body of research on teacher response to student writing. If our pedagogical and theoretical beliefs extend beyond the classroom and beyond our research sites, we should expect the peer review process to be yet another rhetorical site where we distinguish ourselves from those in other disciplines. The process of rhetorical interaction between editor and author, reviewer and author, editor and reviewer could lead to what Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford call dialogic collaboration and co-authorship (136) or what James Reither and Douglas Vipond call synergy (858). Further, reviewing should fall within the purview of response to writing. Stressing the social context of response, David Bleich claims that

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