Paper Topics!

Essays are due at 3pm on Friday, February 27 in either Hui-Hui or Ben’s mailbox in 7408 Dwinelle. Your essay should be 4-5 pages long (minimum 4, maximum 5), and should employ standard formatting (double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman or equivalent, standard margins, etc).

Choose one of the topics below, or feel free to make up your own. If you choose to write on a topic of your own creation, you must get your topic approved by either Hui-Hui or Ben.

1. Despite their varying approaches to the problem, in all the texts we’ve read this semester the issue of contradiction seems to play a constitutive role. One could perhaps even argue that the arguments of all three thinkers – Nietzsche, Emerson, Whitman – gain a great deal of force from their inner contradictions. A few examples (out of many):

- Nietzsche explicitly tells us that “truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are,” yet seems to ask us to accept his word on the issue as final (and thus truthful, it would seem).

- Emerson describes his ideal self as willing to “speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words … though it contradict everything you said to-day,” but at the same time tells us that “the actions” of this character “will be harmonious, however unlike they seem.”

- A number of Whitman’s poems announce themselves as “singing” a new notion of the self into existence, yet they often do so with lines and words that are about as un-song-like as one could imagine.

- Both Emerson and Whitman work hard to celebrate the power of the individual, but both eventually, almost grudgingly, have to acknowledge that “individual” means nothing if it is not defined in relation to something like the “collective.”

Take a single contradiction from one of these three figures (the contradiction you identify may be one of the above, or may be something else entirely) and write a paper exploring the implications of that contradiction for the figure you analyze. After locating and fleshing out the contradiction, that is, you want to provide a reading of the importance of that contradiction for the argument as a whole. Does the existence of a contradiction mean that we need to toss the argument as a whole out the window (a hint: the answer probably isn’t “yes”)? Does is lessen the force of the argument in question, or does it ask us to respond to the argument in a new, perhaps unanticipated way? Is the contradiction you identify at end only superficial, or does it rest at the core of the argument you’re engaging? If the latter, what are we supposed to do with it? The key here is to go beyond merely stating that there is a contradiction and then saying something like “therefore, contradiction is important to Whitman,” but to show how it is important.


2. Given that the theme of the class deals in part with figuration, it is not surprising that the figural as such (figural language, metaphor, analogy, etc) does important work for all of the texts we’ve read. In your paper, take one of the figures put into play in either the Nietzsche or the Emerson and explain how that figure works to assist, complicate, deepen, modify, cut across, define or otherwise engage the argument of the work as a whole. Whatever you choose, your goal should be to show both how the figure you’ve selected works as a piece of the larger text and why it matters to the argument. Your discussion may open itself up to the job “figuration” as a category does in the work you analyze (this might be especially helpful if discussing Nietzsche), but it need not do so.

Just to be clear, by “one of the figures” I mean one of the uses of figurative language found in the essay you choose. For example, Nietzsche’s opening “fable,” his claim that truth is a “mobile army” and his description of man as a “herd animal” all fit, as do Emerson’s claim that “every heart vibrates to that iron string,” his comparison (which we discussed in class) between society understood as a “joint-stock company” and the individual as an “eater,” or his description of memory as a “corpse.” There are many many more, so you should have no trouble finding one that is compelling to you.


3. Perform a close reading of one of the poems in the packet (whether we discussed it in class or not) with an eye towards the way the poem complements, complicates, contradicts or can otherwise be read in conjunction with either Nietzsche or Emerson (or if you choose Langston Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America,” how it matches with Whitman). As a good close reading, your analysis of the poem should attend to one or more of the poem’s formal elements - syntax (word order), diction (choice of words), rhythm, meter, enjambment (line breaks), structure or punctuation, among many others. Whether you use those formal names or not isn’t important (i.e. we don’t care if you call what you describe “syntax” or not); what is important is that you show how the elements you’ve selected help us understand how the poem works, what it communicates, and how this understanding links up with either Nietzsche or Emerson (or Whitman).