A collaborative faculty project was something of a failure for one instructor. About a year ago, the instructor invited everyone in the department to meet in her office every third week to talk about teaching literature and composition. The immediate concern was the use of writing in three general education literature courses that had been designated as "writing emphasis" courses: members of the discussion group wanted to exchange ideas about the types of writing that were possible in general education literature courses that were listed as part of the writing program. Beyond the exchange of ideas, the group functioned as a pedagogic encounter group where adjunct, tenured, or tenure-track faculty could testify or complain. Every meeting gathered about 6 or 7 department members, but by the end of the semester, people in the department started to drop notes of apology when they could not attend. The potential for this group to materialize into a grassroots effort with some political power and the promise of curricular reform seemed enormous. So what went wrong? Its goals were to initiate a common departmental language and to channel discursive energy into curricular revision. These were very specific goals, but they were complicated by the choice of a common language. Though most attending were composition scholars, the common language was not that of rhetoric and composition. Critical theory is an elite language and a highly contested one, and therefore the common language was one that was essentially conflicted. (TB)