Analytical Essay II (Project 6)

• due 5/15

Synthesis of a Debate

Write an five-to-seven-page essay in which you synthesize a debate between two critics in the Trend collection by looking in details at one Web site.

Introduce the debate by presenting two quotations as epigraphs from Trend that contradict one another about the nature or consequences of digital/Web culture.

In your essay,

develop the meaning and significance of the "debate," explaining how these quotations express these critics' larger visions, points or purposes and how these differ. Unpacking the debate suggested by the quotations helps the reader see exactly why the debate is interesting, and to understand how you see

synthesize the debate by looking in detail at one actual Web site. By synthesize, I mean you take the contradiction posed by the two quotations (the "thesis" and "anti-thesis") and reconcile it in a new, higher understanding ("synthesis"). The synthesis doesn't decide who's right, but includes and transcends the opposition by coming to a higher understanding.

Looking at one actual Web site will help you synthesize this abstract debate by looking at actual practice, and enable you to explain your synthesis in concrete terms. Basically, you're taking the reader by the elbow and saying, "both these critics are right in their ways, but here's the bigger picture, which I'll illustrate with this specific example."

Example

Consider these two quotations as epigraphs for a "Synthesis of a Debate" Essay:

...[C]yber entities appear under the sign of Eros. The fictional characters of Neuromancer experience the computer matrix--cyberspace--as a place of rapture and erotic intensity, of powerful desire and even self-submission. In the matrix, things attain a supervivid hyper-reality.... On the primal level, Eros is a drive to extend our finite being, to prolong something of our phyiscal selves beyond our mortal existence. But Eros does not stop with the drive for physical extension. We seek to...heighten the intensity of our lives...by conceiving ideas and nurturing awareness in the minds of others as well our our own. - Michael Heim (72-73)

What are representations good for? Aristotle defined catharsis as the end cause of a play and saw it as the pleasureable release of emotion...evoked by...a play. The early twentieth-century dramatist Bertolt Brecht extended the notion of catharsis...[insisting] that catharsis isn't complete until audience members take what they have assimilated from the representation and put it to work in their lives. In Brecht's hypothesis, the representation lives between imagination and reality, serving as a conductor, amplifier, clarifier, and motivator. It seems to me that computer-based representations work the same way: a person participates in a representation that is not the same as reali life but which has real-world effects or consequences. [T]he nature of human-computer activity can be...[best understood] by thinking about it in terms of theatre, where the special relationship between representation and reality is already comforably established, not only in theoretical terms but also in the way that people design and experience theatrical works. - Brenda Laurel (112)

Micheal Heim and Brenda Laurel look at the basic motivations and functions of cyberspace in widely divergent ways. Heim is a philosopher who sees "the matrix" as a simulation of a Platonic realm of forms, the place of stable truths, transcendent beauty, and selfless fulfillment, of which the online experience gives the individual soul or consciousness a taste: "With an electronic infrastructure," he says, "the dream of perfect FORMS becomes the dream of inFORMation" (74). Laurel is a social scientist whose analogy of the theater results in a vision that is much more social and instrumental, following Aristotle and Brecht in explaining the important societal and cultural function of the "entertainment" of the theater. Computers, according to Laurel, don't give us access to divine truth or transcendence, but serve like the theater as a "representation" space where real-world feelings and ideas are developed, exercised and rehearsed before being applied in real life. Heim says that cyberspace is a transcendence of physical and social life, Laurel that its a lens for really understanding it.

Format:

1. Introduction. Begin your essay by giving away your ending. That is, once you've introduced and developed the debate, very briefly state the new, higher understanding that syntheses the "thesis" and anti-thesis" of the debate. You may need to write the whole essay first before you're able to say what this higher understanding is. Also mention in the introduction what Web site you'll use as an extended example to illustrate your synthesis.
2. Body. Within the first few paragraphs, you should get down to the business of reconciling the tension or opposition of your two quotations by showing--using detailed observations of the Web site you've chosen as an example--how the two critics are right in their ways, but that your new, higher understanding is needed to complete the picture. In my example above, for instance, I'd want to explain how the computer experience is both individual transcendence (Eros) and a socially useful process (catharsis).
3. The Ending. End the essay by briefly summarizing your synthesizing point presented in the introduction. A good ending will often addg something extra (a "kicker"), perhaps an example, detail, quotation or observation that's interesting, funny, or thought provoking which you didn't include in the essay so far, but which suggestions a further implication of your analysis, or that illustrates or crystallizes your overall point.

Quotations, Citations and Documentation

Be very scrupulous about putting quotes around other writers' words and crediting the quotations with in-text citations. Failing to do so, even accidentally or ignorantly, is plagiarism, and is grounds for failure of the paper and the class. If you paraphrase an author, be sure to use your own words and sentence structures.

Cite the authors and page numbers parenthetically in the text--at the end of the sentence where the quotation appears--and document the source in a "Works Cited" page at the end of the essay using MLA format.