One of my favorite quotes: When, for example, we ask students to write about texts, the tyranny of the thesis often invalidates the very act of analysis we hope to invoke. Hence, in assignment after assignment, we find students asked to reduce a novel, a poem, or their own experience into a single sentence, and then to use the act of writing in order to defend or support that single sentence. Writing is used to close a subject down rather than to open it up, to put an end to discourse rather than to open up a project [quoting David Bartholomae and Anthony Petroski, Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts (1983)]. The curious misdirection of the thesis-control essay is suggested by the clear requirement to students that the essay be used to back up the thesis. The reader is expected to move forward in a text that is continually backing up. Creativity goes forward associating one thought with the next, too, like the reader. In an essay, we want to see the writers mind at work. No wonder no bookstore carries anthologies of thesis-driven essays or five-paragraph essays. Theyre as deadly to read as they are to write.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 03:38:50 +0000
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