Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts

3 Countering

54 3 Countering Palin: Oh look, this isn’t an argument. Cleese: Yes it is. Palin: No it isn’t. It’s just contradiction. Cleese: No it isn’t. Palin: It is! Cleese: It is not. Palin: Look, you just contradicted me. Cleese: I did not. Palin: Oh you did! Cleese: No, no, no. Palin: You did just then. Cleese: Nonsense! Palin: Oh, this is futile! Cleese: No it isn’t. Palin: I came here for a good argument. Cleese: No you didn’t; you came here for an argument. Palin: An argument isn’t just contradiction. Cleese: It can be. Palin: No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. Cleese: No it isn’t. Palin: Yes it is! It’s not just contradiction. Cleese: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position . Palin: Yes, but that’s not just saying, “No it isn’t.” Countering 55 Cleese: Yes it is! Palin: No it isn’t! Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. (short pause) Cleese: No it isn’t. —Monty Python,“Argument Clinic” Always, no sometimes, think it’s me But you know I know when it’s a dream I think I know I mean a “Yes” but it’s all wrong That is I think I disagree. —John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Strawberry Fields Forever” Irecall writing an essay in graduate school in which I did everything I could to rebut the views of a certain scholar. I was determined to prove my opponent wrong, and I seized upon every gap, contradiction , or misstep that I could find in his text in order to do so. After reading my essay, my professor evidently agreed that I had won the imaginary debate I had set up, since he made no effort to find fault with my argument or examples. But rather than congratulating me, as I had expected and hoped, he asked instead:“Why are you spending so much time discussing the work of somebody you seem to think isn’t very bright?” I often think back to that moment when I find myself locked in argument with a text that I am trying to write about. The question I’ve learned to ask myself at such times is: What do I hope will result from pursuing this disagreement? If the answer is simply that I think I can prove that the text I am reading has certain shortcomings or limits, then I try to set aside the temptation to argue. All texts have their moments of blindness. Simply to note them is to do little. But if I can use certain problems in a text as a springboard to get at something I couldn’t otherwise say, to develop a line of thinking of my own, then I try to note those problems in a way that allows me to quickly move on to my own counterproposals or ideas. 56 Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts Or, to put this another way, the aim of academic writing should not be simply to prove how smart you are but to add to what can be said about a subject. To do so, you may sometimes need to identify the weaknesses or limits of other writings, but that shouldn’t be the sole point of your writing. Critique needs to lead to alternatives. Correcting the ideas of another writer may seem an intuitive way of rewriting their work—you identify what they’ve gotten wrong and then you show them how to get it right—but the sort of countering I want to talk about in this chapter differs from such verbal swordplay. As I use the term, to counter is not to nullify but to suggest a different way of thinking. Its defining phrases are On the other hand . . . and Yes, but . . . (In contrast, the defining phrase of forwarding is Yes, and . . .) Countering looks at other views and texts not as wrong but as partial—in the sense of being both interested and incomplete. In countering you bring a different set of interests to bear upon a subject, look to notice what others have not. Your aim is not to refute what has been said before, to bring the discussion to an end, but to respond to prior views in...