Additional Assignment Sequences

ADDITIONAL SEQUENCE FIVE

The Art of Argument

Anne Carson

Judith Halberstam

Alison Bechdel

Jonathan Lethem

Errol Morris

Writing courses have traditionally included a unit on argumentation. The assignments in this sequence ask you to consider arguments in unusual settings. The assignments ask you not only to identify and explore writers’ arguments but also to explore how they are enacted. You don’t need technical terms for these assignments (like induction and deduction); you will be asked to develop your own terms, your own ways of describing the arguments you find.

ASSIGNMENT 1

Short Talks

ANNE CARSON

Carson, we might assume, writes these short talks with a purpose, perhaps to say something, to persuade her readers, or to take a stand on an issue or a subject. In this sense, we might think of Carson’s “Short Talks” as an argument, or as a series of arguments. Below are two options for writing about “Short Talks.” Choose one.

a. Select one of the short talks and write an essay in which you explain what you see as its argument. Is Carson writing to persuade you about something? What does she assume it is that keeps you from thinking as she does? Who would disagree? Why argue, in other words? What features of Carson’s writing in this short talk indicate to you that an argument is being made — what words or grammatical constructions suggest this? How might this particular short talk raise questions about what it means to make an argument in the first place?

b. Think about Carson’s “Short Talks” as a coherent whole, as an essay. Imagine that the short talks are making one argument or (perhaps) a series of connected arguments, an argument by steps or stages. What is the argument as you understand it? To whom is it addressed? Who would disagree? What strategies does she use to bring a reader to her side?

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ASSIGNMENT 2

Animating Argument

JUDITH HALBERSTAM

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ASSIGNMENT 3

Engaging Visual Pathways

ALISON BECHDEL

Although Bechdel is exclusively a cartoonist, you might consider her alongside some of the other authors in this book who pair their textual writing with images. Errol Morris, Edward Said, and Susan Bordo each make use of images as they compose their individual writing projects. Although each of these writers’ texts differs from the other ones in many ways, all of them try to engage both visual and textual pathways in order to enact their various lines of inquiry.

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ASSIGNMENT 4

Secondhand Ideas

JONATHAN LETHEM

Here is Lethem in the final section of his essay, “Give All”:

Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself are stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-paste ourselves, might we not forgive it of our artworks? (para. 57)

This is a long, rich, and complicated (and even “ecstatic”) passage. And it comes close to bringing together all the threads that make up the argument of this essay. What is this argument as you understand it? How might you explain it to others? Where do you locate yourself in relation to what Lethem has to say?

Write an essay in which, essentially, you do all of this — where you present Lethem’s argument, explain it to others, and take a position of your own. You can imagine that your audience is made up of smart and interesting people, but that they haven’t read Lethem and might be a bit suspicious of the notion that we all “cut-and-paste.” You will, in other words, not only need to provide summary and paraphrase, but you will need to work with Lethem’s text, presented with block quotation and followed by your version of what it says, followed, that is, by translation.

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ASSIGNMENT 5

A Magic Path to Truth

ERROL MORRIS

Here is Morris:

Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies. Why my skepticism? Because vision is privileged in our society and in our sensorium. We trust it; we place our confidence in it. Photography allows us to uncritically think. We imagine that photographs provide a magic path to truth.

What’s more, photographs allow us to think we know more than we really do. We can imagine a context that isn’t really there. (paras. 50–59)

These are strong and categorical statements. And there are more in the essay; there is more to Morris’s argument about the power of photographs.

Take time to locate a photograph that circulates in your world, one that seems powerful, one that has garnered substantial attention. Use that photograph to consider Morris’s argument, to extend it, and to put it to the test. If you work from within Morris’s argument, if you work with some of his key phrases and key terms, what might you see in this photograph and what might you say about its status in relation to “reality”? What might you say about its effects on viewers?

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