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Online Critical Writing 800 Words TAKE ONE
A NOT SO ALTERNATIVE FORM OF EXPOSITION
Essay (vb)
1. To make an attempt at; try.
2. To subject to a test.
3. From the French essayer, to trial, to attempt.
From http://www.thefreedictionary.com/essay 12 October 2009
The traditional essay is a mode of exposition rooted in the serial, linear technology of language and writing. Read from A-Z, left to right, top to bottom. Written in a timely fashion from the hypothesis– the formula, the question, the call you have not yet anticipated the answer for, the naive moment before analysis before the main event, before the text. To the conclusion - the answer, the proof, the final position, the end point that closes the argument and seals the deal. Essays are contrary to our rather more untimely, creative and lived experience.
How analysis is done or shown in essays (and reviews) is also dictated by market, history, language, and the Academy. In short, what essays are and how they are written is political. And yet, essays - defined as literature which has something other than itself at its heart, as opposed to fiction and poetry- are frequently considered neutral, a scholarly – and so direct - form of exposition, and are globally taught, produced and used as such.
The naturalisation of the essay form is itself tied back to the politics of the Academy; to how- and by whom- knowledge is created, how it is judged and disseminated. So too, anything which questions or differs from that mode is equally politicised and falls into the category of ‘experimental’ – untranslatable, niche, unserious or unscholarly. In the introduction to ‘Essaying Essays: alternative forms of exposition’ 1975 Richard Kostalanetz cites Richard Burtons’ 1901 ‘The Essay as Mood and Form’
“It’s odd that while the essay as a distinctive form in modern literature is so well cherished and enjoyed, it has received so little expert attention. Books upon the drama, upon poetry in its many phases, upon the novel even, a thing comparatively of yesterday, are as leaves in Vallembrosa for number, but books on the essay - where are they?”
Referring back to the rather more speculative, active definition of the verb ‘to essay’ from the French – to try, to attempt - we can see that, (art) historically, the essay is a form only a comparative few ‘experimentalists’ have tried or attempted. George Mancunias, Richard Kostalanetz, Bruce Andrews, Vito Acconci, Bernadette Mayer, Robert Smithson, Mel Bochner and Carl Andre and so forth.
Bear with me, I’m trying to get us both to the question ‘How and why should we essay, try or attempt critical writing’ and de-naturalise the essay as a transparent or direct form of communication. Moreover, ‘how can we try or attempt the essay online?’
The irony of the above has not escaped the author.
Online Critical Writing 800 words TAKE TWO
Online Critical Writing 800 words TAKE THREE
By Rachel Lois Clapham
First published: a-n.co.uk October 2009
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