Today’s Plan:
- Intellectual Wandering
- Research Hub
Intellectual Wandering
It is almost impossible to define what good writing is, but if I had to try, I would argue that good writing is “engaging.” It commands attention, draws a reader in. But into what? I would argue that it draws us into a conversation at the same time that it drags us across a map. A map of a conversation.
Here it might help to recall rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s famous parlor metaphor:
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. (Philosophy of Literary Form, 110-11)
Here Burke isn’t necessarily describing what it means to write a paper–his aim is more ontological–that is, he is describing what it means to be a thoughtful human being trying to fit oneself into an ideology, a society, a world, that come pre-loaded with expected roles and notions (Burke would reject Emerson and Thoreau’s ideas that we can forge our own world as naive and childish, even if he appreciated the passion of their desire for independence). I digress. The point here is that writing comes from listening to a conversation. Mapping its participants. Tracking its twists. And then positioning oneself in the matrix. Engaging writing articulates one’s own attempt at engagement.
The problem with many writing classes, especially argumentative writing classes, is that they ask writers to articulate a research question (or even a thesis) before they have done sufficient listening. Before they have had an opportunity to wander around the territory. This is why I am going t have us spend the next two to three weeks “aimlessly” reading a wide variety of material on games and game studies. We want to explore as much territory as possible. My hope is that you will have a kind of eureka moment, one in which you recognize the potential markings of an “oar.”
I have begun compiling material in the research hub below.
Research Hub
Homework
Read Moyer (2018) “Do Violent Video Games Trigger Aggression?”. Find one other article on video game violence and add it to the research hub (follow my format).
In your game journal, title this Video Games and Violence response. Let’s approach this as a two paragraph summary. In the first paragraph, summarize Moyer. This summary should highlight two things: what does Moyer conclude? (What does she argue, what is her purpose?).
In the second paragraph, respond to Moyer. Give me gut response here. It can often help to focus on a specific part of the article.
Finally, read whatever article and situate it alongside the Greenwood and Moyer.
