November 24, 2015 - 22:50
Wendy Brown offers a counternarrative to the popular way of talking about silence in terms of silencing, arguing that silence can protect one in ways that voice is incapable of. I want to look at my last post to serendip through her words, looking at my words, but also at my silences to see in what ways my experience align with what Wendy Brown is arguing. I also want to push back against the notion that silence has to be either or. After looking back at my experiences with silence surrounding my last post, I found I could not place my silence in either category; what began as a protective mechanism, evolved into something that was crippling. I want to use Wendy Brown because I think using her frame has allowed me to understand my motives more, but I don't think using her frame alone will give me a complete picture, so I intend to use her argument as a starting point, allowing that to take me where it may.
Does this paper have to be in an essay format?
Comments
re-reading your own writing
Submitted by Anne Dalke on November 25, 2015 - 08:24 Permalink
resistance5--
I'm very much liking your proposal to carefully re-read what you yourself wrote, through the lens that Brown provides, and making this bi-directional: both opening up both what you did, with help from her, and pushing back on/complexifying her claims, through the lens of your own text. So: go for it!
and, no...it doesn't have to be in essay format. Whatever enables you to say what you have to say (esp. if part of this exploration is about language's limits...) See what one of my frosh did last week, after she'd written a closely argued analytical paper and wanted to "expand" it: Contemplate. I think she got her inspiration from another first-year student, who had been putting up scans as preludes to complete papers....
Both of these say more than words, set out linearly, might do (in line with the exercise you and Han posed to us y'day)....