My grading lexicon

Over the years, I’ve developed a kind of personal jargon for grading papers. They are little metaphors or turns of phrase that I use in an attempt to get at common failings of student writing in an economical and somewhat humorous way — not to make fun of them, but hopefully to get their attention more effectively. Here are three of the main ones:

• Paper in search of a thesis — this describes a paper that starts with a vague or tautologous thesis (e.g., “the authors are similar in some ways, but there are also important differences”) and only comes to a more concrete position in the conclusion, after working through the material. While an inductive approach has its virtues, it seems to me that this type of paper is a second-to-last draft handed in as a final draft — once they’ve found their thesis, they need to put it at the beginning and then focus their exposition on it.
• The silo effect — this is a typical feature of a “paper in search of a thesis.” It describes a tendency in comparison-contrast papers for students to summarize one topic, then summarize the other, without any immediately apparent connection between the two (e.g., each exposition has a parallel structure, each refers to the other).
• The “and another thing!” style of organization — papers suffering from this affliction have no real flow or overall organizational scheme, abruptly moving from one topic to the next. Often the word “another” will literally be present in most or all of their transitions. While it can’t always be avoided, a transition that can do no better than “another” in order to make a connection is basically an open seam.

How about you, dear readers? Do you have any similar shorthand phrases for common pitfalls?

The time that remains

I realized early this summer that the end of this calendar year would represent a major clearing of the decks in terms of my academic obligations. Some of the finishing touches of my translations may filter into early January, but those are basically done, and I also had to work a couple articles and a conference paper into the mix. At this point, I only really have two near-term writing obligations left for this year, and I thought you, my readers, might be amused by them:

• An article for Speculations on Speculative Realism/Object-Oriented Ontology (the topic was open, and I am planning on focusing on the effects of the movements’ blog-based natures on their reception — arguably marking my first foray into “digital humanities”)
• An entry on Milbank for the forthcoming Zizek Dictionary

I can think of no better way to round out the year.

Always the low price. Always.

In the midst of one of my Twitter rants, it occurred to me that the Walmart slogan is actually really menacing, and I proposed that someone should find disturbing images and label them, “Always the low price. Always.” Since I’m procrastinating on revising an article today, I thought that someone should be me, at least at first. I encourage all of you to make your own and share them!

All I want for Christmas is books

There’s more to us than joyless cynicism here at AUFS — we also want stuff, we want things. In the last couple years, for instance, I’ve started to want a lot of clothes. I suspect that this is a desire that can be satiated, since I experienced a similar lust for shoes for a while there, which calmed down once I obtained my rather minimal idea of a “full set” (one casual and one dressy in black and brown; one set of tennis shows).

My clothing drives would have to reach truly pathological levels, though, to reach the intensity of my desire for books. Every time I’m at Anna Kornbluh’s house, for instance, I long for her full sets of Lacan and Freud in the original. And this leads me to my proposed open thread today: what gift of books would be your wish come true? (Assume money is no object.)

For me (sorry, Lacan!), I think it would be the Corpus Christianorum edition of Augustine’s De Trinitate, along with a gift card good for ten volumes in the Sources Chrétiennes series.

A Very AUFS Thanksgiving

Yesterday Brad sent me this Thanksgiving prayer by William S. Burroughs, and I thought it fitting to share it with you, our readers, on this day of Thanksgiving:

Early creative outlets

Brad and I were just chatting about our early creative outlets, and I thought it might be interesting to hear what some of our readers did while generating the “juvenalia” volume of their complete works. As for me, I’ve been publishing more or less continuously since age twelve. I began drawing comic books in sixth grade, starting with “The Adventures of Mr. West,” based on one of my teachers. As I recall, I originally started it because I felt that he had unfairly denigrated a timeline that I was working on, so he was something of an “anti-hero.” Other stars included Mr. Wilcox, who was quickly reduced to a head in a jar. It was a more innocent time — I’m sure if I were in school today and drew such things, I’d be institutionalized.

Eventually it somehow evolved into a sci-fi series starring the crew of the S.S. Swift: Swifty (the incompetent captain), Ensign (the second-in-command who was always covering for him), Drago (who looked like a dragon and was often treated as their pet or child), and Paddy (an Irish character who was frequently killed off and resurrected).

It’s a jungle out there: The precarious labor of Monk

MacGyver isn’t the only questionable show The Girlfriend and I watch — we’re also getting close to the end of Monk, a Sherlock Holmes variant starring Tony Shalhoub as a detective with OCD. Those who aren’t familiar with the premise can read the exhaustive Wikipedia page, but in this post, I’d just like to highlight a few salient features.

The more we watch, the more bizarre the show becomes.

An und für sich: the TV adaptation?

I don’t want to muscle in on jms’s and Craig’s territory by posting something about TV on a Thursday, but ABC’s new show Revolution does touch on a few themes which struck me as of interest to AUFS. The show is about a post-apocalyptic future in which electricity no longer works. This is a pretty neat idea, although it falls apart at the slightest scrutiny (if “electricity” doesn’t work, how come “nervous systems” still do?); unfortunately, the show does seem to be encouraging scrutiny of the premise by making the characters’ attempt to discover how the apocalypse happened an ongoing plot thread. High concept aside, Revolution isn’t really a “good” show; its post-apocalyptic hardships are pretty off-the-shelf, as are the characters (idealistic teenagers, surly dudes with a soft heart, etc), but there are a couple of interesting things about it. One is its presentation of cities as objects of nostalgia; the main character, who was a toddler when electricity stopped working, keeps an illicit collection of post-cards of the major American cities (I’m reminded of David Simon saying he made Treme in response to people who asked him why anyone would live in the city depicted in The Wire); indeed, on one level at least, the show presents an argument against the lo-fi localism which is something of a liberal consensus.

Being-toward-birthdays

I once wrote that Melancholia provides the only possible answer for what to do when you know for sure you’re going to die and yet you still have agency up until that moment. In that situation, where every action would be meaningless, there are no good options — indulging in one last pleasure would be hollow, pretending everything is normal would be pathetic, etc. The only possible choice is to make a gesture that is consciously meaningless, like the building of the shelter at the end of Melancholia.

In many ways, adult birthdays share a similar structure with the apocalypse of Melancholia. They are inevitable and utterly meaningless, and yet we are forced to respond in some way. Why not, then, take a parallel strategy by consciously choosing to do something just as contrived and silly as the convention of birthday observance is after the age of 21? Why not — as The Girlfriend suggested and as became inevitable the second the idea left her lips — celebrate my birthday this evening by going to Olive Garden?

Whose voice?

The other day I was reflecting on how, unlike retinas and fingerprints, voices do often sound alike — that, indeed, there are probably only so many permutations of sound the human vocal chords can manage. As such, it is surely conceivable that not only could somebody pretend to be me, to raise or lower their pitch so as to imitate mine, there has to be someone (undoubtedly more than a few) who sounds exactly like me. I simply don’t know enough people actually to daily deal with this potential bit of confusion.

Similarly, the voices we inhabit in our writing are rarely our own. They are sometimes an immature aping of that of another, and sometimes even our genuine “voice” is indistinguishable from immature aping. By way of confession, for a long time, during my graduate school years, I was considered to be mimicking Mark C. Taylor. (I have since murdered all who made that observation, but am today comfortable enough in my own skin to mention it as an example. ) These days, I suppose the accusation might be that I am merely striving, and poorly at that, to write like William Gass. Though, mind you, I would be far more pleased to be mistook for John Hawkes or Katherine Anne Porter.

What about you? Whose “voice” do you inhabit or inhabits you — whether as a welcome guest or a demon eventually to be cast?