Simple Arguments

An argument can be simple, easy to understand, without being simplifying or simplistic. For example, I want to argue that Valente's move toward mysticism occurs by the early 1970s, rather than mostly in the 1980s, as other critics have suggested, and that this fact has certain consequences for the reinterpretation of Spanish literary history. That the shift in his perspective does not involve writing a new kind of poem, but rather in his decision not to write another type (as often). It's not a particularly profound point, and might even seem obvious once I point it out, but it will have implications for the larger shape of my project.

You don't have to be afraid of pointing out the obvious, or even rehearsing knowledge that might seem basic. A really convincing synthesis of existing knowledge can be useful.

Lazy Arguments

I know a little something about laziness. Here are some habits to avoid:

"X is inseparable from Y..." Ok, but what is the actual connection? What are you really saying about the connection between X and Y? Only that they belong in the same conversation?

"It is no coincidence that X and Y arise at the same time..." Once again, you are arguing that X and Y belong together. You are asserting that their co-incidence (occurring at the same time) is no accident. But, once again, what is actual link? Language poetry and Reaganism both occur in the 1980s. Could it be an accident? Yes, it could. Or LP is a reaction against Reagan, or the two could have a third, shared cause, etc...

"Z is no exception..." You state a general trend, and then introduce your own topic with a phrase like this. No problem, except that you aren't stating a very interesting connection between the general trend and your own topic, are you? (You are also using a cliché.) How about situating your topic in relation to the trend by saying that it is a particularly relevant example because it seems to illustrate the trend but really doesn't? Or call into question the relevance of the trend?

Instead of saying: "Avant-garde movements spread through the entire world. Latin America was no exception." You could say, "When Latin American artists became engaged with the avant-garde, they introduced a fundamental element absent from European movements: ..." You can see how much stronger that is. The reader wants to know what the element is.

So a strong argument argues for a relation between two elements that is not simply inseparability, coincidence (or the lack thereof), or the exemplification of a general trend. Weak arguments tend to point to potentially exciting juxtapositions without really articulating what kind of relation there is.

Show of Strength

At some points you will want to provide a show of strength in an article you are writing. By this I mean an overwhelmingly convincing demonstration of your knowledge of the subject matter, a particularly strong argument, something that establishes your authority. I'd say one of every three or four articles needs such a display.

The Smoking Gun

The smoking gun is the piece of evidence, the example or anecdote, that is the most convincing. The term comes from police forensics, where the murder weapon that is still smoking serves as the example of the best possible evidence.

I found such a smoking gun once after I had finished the book and it was too late to include. It came in the form of Billy Strayhorn's settings of Lorca's songs from a play.

Argumentative Styles

We all know academic arguments come in different flavors. For example:

(1) X and Y have always been lumped into the same category, but actually Y has distinctive qualities that make it very different.

(2) People have claimed that Z is superior to A, but actually Z is just a subcategory of the larger category A.

(3) A particular quality (didacticism, sentimentalism, ornament) has often denigrated because it is associated with a particular group of people (women, people of the lower class, etc...). Therefore we should no longer denigrate this quality.

(4) A work that seems safe and conservative is actually subversive (or vice-versa: the power of a subversive work has been overrated, and a conservative ideology underlies it.

(5) The key to this literary work is the philosophical tradition of P. The author studied P as a young student in T. Previous critics have overlooked this, preferring to attribute his interest in Q to his training in U.

I could go on and on. It's not that any of these argumentative forms is inherently flawed, but I think we need to be a bit more self-conscious about them. An argument that takes a cliché form ready-made without an interesting twist will seem kind of lame. It also might be helpful to analyze your argument and see what it's type is.

Our graduate students sometimes come up with argument like

(6) This work is a feminist work that subverts the patriarchy.

Worse, sometimes they don't have an argument, only a description.

I think getting to know one's argumentative style is important. What kind of arguments do you favor? Do you always go after the same kind of point? I should actually try this with myself and see whether I have varied arguments or whether I'm pretty much stuck with a single style.

Not How We Read But What We Read

Gerald Graff makes an argument in the 2008 or 2009 issue of Profession that it doesn't matter what we read so much as how we read: in other words, texts of little or no intrinsic value lend themselves just as well to formulating acceptable academic-style arguments as works of great literature. He develops a rather trivial argument about Vanna White's autobiography in order to prove his point. He does concede that trivial texts cannot serve the purpose of learning to make such arguments. In other words, literary critics can make sophisticated arguments about trivial texts because they have first learned to make sophisticated arguments about sophisticated texts.

Now anyone who knows how I think will predict that I will disagree strongly with Graff. The main point is not to make an argument that might count as acceptable to the academic community, but to transform our reactions to the best products of the human intelligence into meaningful arguments that actually contribute to the appreciation of these products. In other words, it's what we read, or listen to, or look at, that is fundamental. Almost any serious reception of a great work is worthy of being transformed into a scholarly argument. It doesn't matter *how* we read in this sense, as long as we follow the general principle of receptivity: being available for the work to make an impact on us. Works of art teach us how to receive them, so we don't really have to worry about how we read at all.

We do have to worry about how we construct our arguments about our reception in order to make them meaningful and convincing in the academic environment--or wherever they are received. In other words, we can't just appeal to the meaningfulness or our response. As scholars, it is our responsibility to articulate these things.

This is not an argument for studying or not studying any particular thing. The ethos of receptivity entails a potential openness to everything. It does mean, however, that the value of the work is in the response to the work itself--not in the trivial fact that you can develop an argument about a work while conceding no value at all to it. Otherwise, literary criticism is just an exercise in making arguments about anything, or nothing in particular.

This is the difference between cultural studies that views its products as shit, essentially, but argues that there is relevant information to be found in this shit (there is nothing wrong with this approach, except that it leaves the hierarchy between high culture and popular shit wholly intact; It's Hamlet or Vanna White) and the approach to popular culture that is actually receptive to the aesthetic value of popular culture.

Thomas's "10 steps to an argument" in practice

I thought I would see whether Thomas's "Ten Steps to an Argument" would work in practice. This is not how I usually work but I'm always open to trying new things. My notes on the process itself are in brackets.

T: The practice of literary criticism should be based on the principle of receptivity: an openness to the greatest products of the human intelligence; the problem of literary criticism, then, is how to translate the experience of this receptivity into acceptable scholarly arguments that do not betray it too much.

What I want my audience to do with this: I want them to be convinced that this way of framing the problem of scholarship in the humanities should supersede more conventional views. I want them to understand that this is already what they aspire to do, even if they don't know it yet.

Three sentences about why my audience is not able to do this:

(1) Paradigms for research in the humanities emphasize the application of grand theoretical schemes, not the receptivity of the reader.

(2) Moreover, an emphasis on the inherent value of the "raw material" in the humanities reminds too many people of an outmoded "Arnoldian" approach that takes for granted to value of the literary canon of "the best that has been thought and said."

(3) The main reason to anticipate resistance to my thesis, however, is that scholars in the Humanities are too eager to look for the political alibis in order to justify the importance of their work.

Step 4: write three sentences that state the background assumptions against which the sentence can be believed, agreed with, or understood
:

(13) The humanities are inherently devoted to the study of the products of human intelligence and culture; even arguments that oppose particular views of the canon (or the privilege enjoyed by particular canonical works), still take for granted the value of other kinds of cultural products.

(14) The advantage of the idea of receptivity is that it is not tied down to any particular view of what kind of works one should be receptive to, actually privileging receptiveness to work outside one's own zone of comfort.

(15) The ideal of receptiveness is thus sufficiently broad to outweigh the suspicions of Arnoldian elitism.

Step 5: write three sentences that state your direct evidence for T. Number them 7, 8, 9.

[Gee, I thought up my thesis with no supporting evidence at all; I'm going to have to scramble a bit here]

(7) The paradigm I am proposing is already at work in the most satisfying existing scholarship, which opens up "channels of reception" rather than shutting them down.

(8) We feel, intuitively, that the best scholars are finely attuned "receptors" rather than mere accumulators of information.

(9) The value of scholarship depends, logically, on some notion of being able to transform the raw materials of the humanities into convincing arguments.

Step 6: write three sentences that explain how someone whose mind looks like 1,2,3 would be convinced of 7, 8, 9. Number them 4, 5, 6.

[This step is freakin' hard!]

(4) Some scholars might not realize that there is even a better way of doing things; these should be exposed to the debate in the way I am framing it.

(5) Many scholars already probably distrust their own working paradigms but lack the perspective to transcend them; they need to hear an eloquent statement of what the real aim of work in the humanities ought to be so they can clarify their own aims.

(6) Even if some scholars are not convinced by my arguments here, they will be able to fine-tune their own practices by becoming more conscious of some underlying issues at stake.

Step 7: write three sentences that explain why someone who knows 7, 8, 9 will henceforth assume 13, 14, 15. Number them 10, 11, 12.

[Piece of cake; child's play; easy as pie. First I have to go back and look at 6 other sentences.]

(10) Since the principles I am proposing are already inherent in the best practices of scholars, there is no obstacle left standing in the way of the acceptance of my thesis.

(11) The only plausible obstacle would be the accusation of Arnoldian elitism, but the principle of receptivity is the polar opposite of this.

(12) The only thing they (Mayhew's principle of receptivity and Matthew Arnold) have in common is the assumption that there is some value to human culture that makes it worth studying.


Now we order the sentences like so and have an epiphany:

Paradigms for research in the humanities emphasize the application of grand theoretical schemes, not the receptivity of the reader. Moreover, an emphasis on the inherent value of the "raw material" in the humanities reminds too many people of an outmoded "Arnoldian" approach that takes for granted to value of the literary canon of "the best that has been thought and said." The main reason to anticipate resistance to my thesis, however, is that scholars in the Humanities are too eager to look for the political alibis in order to justify the importance of their work.

Some scholars might not realize that there is even a better way of doing things; these should be exposed to the debate in the way I am framing it. Many scholars already probably distrust their own working paradigms but lack the perspective to transcend them; they need to hear an eloquent statement of what the real aim of work in the humanities ought to be so they can clarify their own aims. Even if some scholars are not convinced by my arguments here, they will be able to fine-tune their own practices by becoming more conscious of some underlying issues at stake.

The paradigm I am proposing is already at work in the most satisfying existing scholarship, which opens up "channels of reception" rather than shutting them down. We feel, intuitively, that the best scholars are finely attuned "receptors" rather than mere accumulators of information. The value of scholarship depends, logically, on some notion of being able to transform the raw materials of the humanities into convincing arguments.

Since the principles I am proposing are already inherent in the best practices of scholars, there is no obstacle left standing in the way of the acceptance of my thesis. The only plausible obstacle would be the accusation of Arnoldian elitism, but the principle of receptivity is the polar opposite of this. The only thing they (Mayhew's principle of receptivity and Matthew Arnold) have in common is the assumption that there is some value to human culture that makes it worth studying.

The practice of literary criticism should be based on the principle of receptivity: an openness to the greatest products of the human intelligence; the problem of literary criticism, then, is how to translate the experience of this receptivity into acceptable scholarly arguments that do not betray it too much.


The humanities are inherenlty devoted to the study of the products of human intelligence and culture; even arguments that oppose particular views of the canon (or the privilege enjoyed by particular canonical works), still take for granted the value of other kinds of cultural products. The advantage of the idea of receptivity is that it is not tied down to any particular view of what kind of works one should be receptive to, actually privileging receptiveness to work outside one's own zone of comfort. The ideal of receptiveness is thus sufficiently broad to outweigh the suspicions of Arnoldian elitism.

That took me just over an hour and I would give myself about a C-. The sentences are not at all well-written; the argument is still weak, largely because of the lack of clarity in the prose itself and the fact that the sentences do not flow into each other. To really do this well would have taken probably four hours I don't have right now. The advantage I see with this method is that it forces you to make certain assumptions explicit, thinking very deliberately about how to get your audience from where it is to where you want it to be. The feeling of not knowing how to do this is very bracing.

Contexts and Frames

All good scholarly arguments, at least in the kind of work I do, are contextual. The context, however, is never simply given: it is a frame that the scholar must construct.

A paragraph at the beginning of a paper giving a summary of the author's life, or some sociopolitical information, is not good contextual framing--if what follow has no relation to this information.

A little better would be an argument that relates the context to the analysis of texts using a kind of one-to-one correspondence. Here the context enters the argument rather than remaining apart from it, but the argument itself remains simplistic.

The next step might be crafting a more subtle or surprising argument, constructing the context as a frame for the argument rather than as something simply provided by the available information. After a certain point in literary criticism it is assumed anyone can do a close reading of something; the trick is making this reading meaningful. Close readings that aren't connected to larger arguments just sort of sit there on the page inertly. The trick is relating the reading convincingly to a meaningful context.

In graduate students I like to see the arguments that are interesting but not yet convincing. This shows that the student is stretching a bit, getting the idea of what needs to be doing and maybe trying a little too hard.