1. Begin by describing the novelty of your essay, and how it disrupts the conventional view of a text, history, identity, etc.
2. Draw out the essential core of the text, or history, or culture.
3. Do this by first introducing disparate phenomena and demonstrating how what appear to be disparate are actually part of the same pattern. Or...
4. Introduce a pattern and demonstrate that what appears to be homogenous is in fact marked by rupture.
5. Anything you treat seriously, treat as a tool to be used. Do not contextualize it.
6. Contextualize anything you do not treat seriously. Philosophers you disagree with are artifacts of naivete.
7. Make sweeping generalizations about how history led, necessarily, to the pattern or disruption that you've described.
8. Dismiss disciplines you know nothing about.
9. Use penetrating metaphors to maximize your audience's pleasure.
10. Finish like you begin, with your own novelty. You are the hero, and you're saving everyone else.
That's what I learned in college.
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3 comments:
like.
Steps 8 and 9 are the best steps out of all the steps. Wait, I mean "eight" and "nine".
The essay is a terribly erotic enterprise, isn't it?
Maximize pleasure, indeed. But only if they do yours back.
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