Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [91]
In applying a reading as a lens, think about how lens A both fits and does not fit subject B: use the differences to develop your analysis.
Uncover unstated assumptions by asking, “Given its overt claim, what must this reading also already believe?”
A provocative way to open up interpretation is to try reading against the grain of a reading. Ask, “what does this piece believe that it does not know it believes?” Using The Method to uncover obsessive repetitions will sometimes provide the evidence to formulate against-the-grain claims.
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Assignments: Writing Analytically About Reading
Apply a Reading as a Lens. Use a reading as a lens for examining a subject. For example, look at a piece of music or a film through the lens of a review that does not discuss the particular piece or film you are writing about. Or you might read about a particular theory of humor and use that as a lens for examining a comic play, film, story, television show, or stand-up routine.
Analyze a Challenging Paragraph and Apply It as a Lens. In a recent book on representations of the public and the private in contemporary American life, law professor Jeffrey Rosen offers the following discussion of political scientist Daniel Boorstin’s analysis of heroes and celebrities:
In The Image, Daniel Boorstin explored the way the growth of movies, radio, print, and television had transformed the nature of political authority, which came to be exercised not by distant and remote heroes but instead by celebrities, whom Boorstin defined as ‘a person who is known for his wellknownness.’ ‘Neither good nor bad,’ a celebrity is ‘morally neutral,’ ‘the human pseudo-event,’ who has been ‘fabricated on purpose to satisfy our exaggerated expectations of human greatness’ (11). While the heroes of old exercised authority by being remote and mysterious, modern celebrities exercise authority by being familiar and intelligible, creating the impression—but not the reality—of emotional accessibility. Heroes were distinguished by their achievement, celebrities by their image or trademarks or ‘name brands’ (The Naked Crowd, Random House, 2004).
Bring the tools for reading analytically to bear on this passage in the following sequence:
a. Use paraphrase to restate both Boorstin’s claims and Rosen’s exposition of it.
b. Then locate the dominant binaries in the paragraph and articulate these to help you determine what is at stake there.
c. Once you’ve done these tasks, take Boorstin’s theory and use it as a lens to examine the presentation of a public figure of your choice, whether a politician, a contemporary hero, a celebrity, a musician, a sports star, and so forth. As you write about this figure, seek to explore not only how your subject fits the lens but also how he or she does not fit. Use the Whiston essay on talk shows as a model for negotiating complication in both the lens and the primary material.
3. Apply the Lens of Ritual to Daily Life. In her book, The Rituals of Dinner (1991), Margaret Visser discusses table manners as a form of ritual:
Rules of politeness tend to cluster round moments of transition, of meeting others, making decisions, conferring, parting, commemorating. Rituals are there to make difficult passages easier. They include the gestures—waving, nodding, smiling, speaking set phrases—which daily smooth our meetings with other people; the attitudes and postures we adopt when standing or sitting in the presence of others, especially when we are talking to them; the muttering of ‘excuse me’ when interrupting others or squeezing past them. Full-dress celebrations of coming together, of marking transitions and recollections, almost always require food, with all the ritual politeness implied in dining—the proof that we all know how eating should be managed. We eat whenever life becomes dramatic: at weddings, birthdays, funerals, at parting and at welcoming