Case Notes for the Impeachment of an Ability Traitor: A Textor’s Inquiry

Abstract

These case notes are a response to “An ability traitor at work: A treasonous call to subvert writing from within.” The notes analyze Holbrook’s treachery despite her own admission of guilt. The inquiry is meant to provide firmer grounds for impeachment. The main accusation is that, as an able teacher and writer, Holbrook appears guilty of a trahison des clercs. The case writer is, like Holbrook, a textor, a weaver of threads, a fabricator of texts. The four main allegations woven into the text examine Holbrook as a writer who apparently betrays the essay form, a traitor who disrupts the view from nowhere, a promoter of assemblage as another betrayal of writing, and as a treasonous producer of a “dis/comfort text.” The main outcome of this textor’s inquiry is that the only treachery committed by Holbrook is more apparent than real.