In this course you will be producing argumentative writing based on close textual readings. As a first approximation of what I mean I offer you these four general guidelines I will want you to apply to your writing this term. If you can incorporate these four writing practices into your future work you will have mastered the task of producing a competent argumentative paper for just about any discipline that would ask you for one.
A First Habit
An argumentative paper will have a thesis. A thesis is a claim. It is a statement of the thing your paper is trying to show. Very often, the claim will be straightforward enough to express in a single sentence or so, and it will usually appear early on in the paper to give your readers a clear sense of the project of the paper. A thesis is a claim that is strong. A strong claim is a claim for which you can imagine an intelligent opposition. It is a claim that you feel a need to argue for. Remember, when you are producing a reading about a complex literary text like a novel, a poem, or a film the object of your argument will be to illuminate the text, to draw attention to some aspect of the wider work the text is accomplishing. Once you have determined the dimension or element in a text that you want to argue about, your opposition might consist of those who would focus elsewhere or who would draw different conclusions from your own focus. Your thesis is your paper's spine, your paper's task. As you write your papers, it is a good idea to ask yourself the question, from time to time, Does this quotation, does this argument, does this paragraph support my thesis in some way? If it doesn’t, delete it. If you are drawn repeatedly away from what you have chosen as your thesis, ask yourself whether or not this signals that you really want to argue for some different thesis.
A Second Habit
You should define your central terms, especially the ones you may be using in an idiosyncratic way. Your definitions can be casual ones, they don’t have to sound like dictionary definitions. But it is crucial that once you have defined a term you will stick to the meaning you have assigned it yourself. Never simply assume that your readers know what you mean or what you are talking about. Never hesitate to explain yourself for fear of belaboring the obvious. Clarity never appears unintelligent.
A Third Habit
You should support your claims about the text with actual quotations from the text itself. In this course you will always be analyzing texts (broadly defined) and whatever text you are working on should probably be a major presence on nearly every page of your papers. A page without quotations is often a page that has lost track of its point, or one that is stuck in abstract generalizations. This doesn't mean that your paper should consist of mostly huge block quotes. On the contrary, a block quote is usually a quote that needs to be broken up and read more closely and carefully. If you see fit to include a lengthy quotation filled with provocative details, I will expect you to contextualize and discuss all of those details. If you are unprepared to do this, or fear that doing so will introduce digressions from your argument, this signals that you should be more selective about the quotations to which you are calling attention.
A Fourth Habit
You should anticipate objections to your thesis. In some ways this is the most difficult habit to master. Remember that even the most solid case for a viewpoint is vulnerable to dismissal by the suggestion of an apparently powerful counterexample. That is why you should anticipate problems, criticisms, counterexamples, and deal with them before they arise, and deal with them on your own terms. If you cannot imagine a sensible and relevant objection to your line of argument it means either that you are not looking hard enough or that your claim is not strong enough.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Co-facilitating Discussions and Writing a Precis
One of the key assignments for our course is to generate a précis for one of the texts assigned over term. You should post this precis to the class blog -- ideally, but not necessarily before we discuss the text in class. Be sign it with your name if you post pseudonymously, to ensure you get credit for it.
One way to think of a precis is as a basic paraphrase of the argumentative content of a text. Here is a broad and informal guide for a precis, consisting of questions you should always ask of a text as you are reading it, and again after you have finished reading it. Don't treat this as an ironclad template, but as a rough approach to producing a precis -- knowing that a truly fine and useful précis need not necessarily satisfy all of these interventions.
Although you are only responsible for one precis over the course of the term, you can post as many as you like, and I think it is a fine idea to interrogate every assigned text -- at least in a quick informal sort of way -- according to the following guidelines.
A precis should try to answer fairly basic questions such as:
1. What, in your own words, is the basic gist of the argument?
2. To what audience is it pitched primarily? (Do you see yourself as part of that intended audience, and how does your answer impact your reading of the argument?) Does it anticipate and respond to possible objections?
3. What do you think are the argument's stakes in general? To what end is the argument made?
4. Does it have an explicit thesis? If not, could you provide one in your own words for it?
5. What are the reasons and evidence offered up in the argument to support what you take to be its primary end? What crucial or questionable warrants (unstated assumptions the argument takes to be shared by its audience, often general attitudes of a political, moral, social, cultural nature) does the argument seem to depend on? Are any of these reasons, evidences, or warrants questionable in your view? Do they support one another or introduce tensions under closer scrutiny?
6. What, if any, kind of argumentative work is being done by metaphors and other figurative language in the piece? Do the metaphors collaborate to paint a consistent picture, or do they clash with one another? What impact does this have on their argumentative force?
7. Are there key terms in the piece that seem to have idiosyncratic definitions, or whose usages seem to change over the course of the argument?
As you see, a piece that interrogates a text from these angles of view will yield something between a general book report and a close reading, but one that focuses on the argumentative force of a text. For the purposes of our class, such a precis succeeds if it manages
(1) to convey the basic flavor of the argument and
(2) provides a good point of departure for a class discussion.
One way to think of a precis is as a basic paraphrase of the argumentative content of a text. Here is a broad and informal guide for a precis, consisting of questions you should always ask of a text as you are reading it, and again after you have finished reading it. Don't treat this as an ironclad template, but as a rough approach to producing a precis -- knowing that a truly fine and useful précis need not necessarily satisfy all of these interventions.
Although you are only responsible for one precis over the course of the term, you can post as many as you like, and I think it is a fine idea to interrogate every assigned text -- at least in a quick informal sort of way -- according to the following guidelines.
A precis should try to answer fairly basic questions such as:
1. What, in your own words, is the basic gist of the argument?
2. To what audience is it pitched primarily? (Do you see yourself as part of that intended audience, and how does your answer impact your reading of the argument?) Does it anticipate and respond to possible objections?
3. What do you think are the argument's stakes in general? To what end is the argument made?
a. To call assumptions into question?
b. To change convictions?
c. To alter conduct?
d. To find acceptable compromises between contending positions?
4. Does it have an explicit thesis? If not, could you provide one in your own words for it?
5. What are the reasons and evidence offered up in the argument to support what you take to be its primary end? What crucial or questionable warrants (unstated assumptions the argument takes to be shared by its audience, often general attitudes of a political, moral, social, cultural nature) does the argument seem to depend on? Are any of these reasons, evidences, or warrants questionable in your view? Do they support one another or introduce tensions under closer scrutiny?
6. What, if any, kind of argumentative work is being done by metaphors and other figurative language in the piece? Do the metaphors collaborate to paint a consistent picture, or do they clash with one another? What impact does this have on their argumentative force?
7. Are there key terms in the piece that seem to have idiosyncratic definitions, or whose usages seem to change over the course of the argument?
As you see, a piece that interrogates a text from these angles of view will yield something between a general book report and a close reading, but one that focuses on the argumentative force of a text. For the purposes of our class, such a precis succeeds if it manages
(1) to convey the basic flavor of the argument and
(2) provides a good point of departure for a class discussion.
Syllabus
[NOTE THAT THIS IS THE SYLLABUS FOR THE VERSION OF RHETORIC TWENTY WHICH I TAUGHT IN SUMMER 2009, AND IT IS DIFFERENT IN CERTAIN KEY RESPECTS FROM THE SYLLABUS FOR THE 2010 SUMMER COURSE -- DO NOT CONFUSE THIS ARCHIVAL SYLLABUS WITH THE CURRENT ONE -- d]
Rhet 20: The Rhetoric of Interpretation
Summer 2009
Instructor: Dale Carrico, dalec@berkeley.edu
Course Blog: http://rhettwenty.blogspot.com
7/7-8/13 T-W-R 3-5.30 130 Wheeler
Att/Part, 14%; Precis, 14%; Mid-Term, 36%; Final, 36%. (Rough Basis for Final Grade, subject to contingencies)
Provisional Schedule of Meetings
Week One
July 7 -- Administrative Introduction
July 8 -- Introductions
July 9 -- Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Week Two
July 14 -- Nietzsche: Ecce Homo, Preface
Why I Am So Wise
Why I Am So Clever
Why I Am a Destiny (or Fatality)
June 15 -- Marx, from The German Ideology, Idealism and Materialism
Marx on Commodity Fetishism from Capital
June 16 -- Sigmund Freud, on "The Psychotic Doctor Schreber" [reader]
Week Three
July 21 -- Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry
Walter Benjamin, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility
July 22 -- Roland Barthes, Mythologies [Purchase Book]
Kobena Mercer, On Mapplethorpe [reader]
July 23 -- Naomi Klein, No Logo One
Two
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
Week Four
July 28 -- Carpenter (dir.), They Live In-Class Screening -- First Essay Due (4-5pp.)
July 29 -- Michel Foucault, What Is An Author? [reader] James Boyle, from Software, Shamans, and Spleens [reader]
Jacques Derrida, Ends of Man [reader]
July 30 -- William Burroughs, "Immortality" [reader] Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto
Week Five
Aug 4 -- Hannah Arendt, Conquest of Space
CS Lewis Abolition of Man
Aug 5 -- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks [Purchase Book]
Aug 6 -- Paul Gilroy, from Postcolonial Melancholia [reader]
Carol Adams, “Preface” & “On Beastliness and Solidarity" [reader]
Week Six
Aug 11 -- Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs
Aug 12 -- Bruno Latour, A Plea for Earthly Science
Aug 13 -- Conclusions -- Second Essay Due (5-6pp.)
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