How to Open an Academic Essay, Part III: Good Sir, I Implore You! vs. The Historical Anecdote

Since John Holbo over at the Valve was kind enough to mention my humble little project I thought it best to hop back on the horse and continue working on it.  Today I'll discuss two more introductions to my dissertation that differ not in content but in the way they address the reader.  Good Sir, I Implore You! entails forcing a particular series of impressions upon the reader in the most obvious possible manner:

Imagine an educated reader, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, glancing past the soft leather spine of a first edition On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and briefly mulling its ambiguous title. A student of philosophy might think it a treatment of the Platonic Ideas, Forms, or Species, an examination of the apodictic reality beyond the illusions of human experience. A logician might expect a discussion of the second of the five Predicables, that “Term affirmed of several things, which must express their whole essence, which is called a Species”; a Catholic, a treatise on the transubstantiation of bread and wine, the Eucharistic species, into the Very Body and Blood of Christ Himself; a politician, a banker, or a metallurgist, an account of “the different Rates at which the same Species of Foreign Coins do pass,” or of how “paper securities [are] held out as a currency … in lieu of the two great recognized species [gold and silver] that represent the lasting conventional credit of mankind.”    Darwin frustrates potential readers, then as now, because, as John Dewey says, “few words in our language foreshorten intellectual history as much as does the word species.” In the Aristotelian tradition, ειδοσ—later translated into Latin, then English, as species—referred to the “formal activity which operates through a series of changes and holds them to a single course; which subordinates their aimless flux to its own perfect manifestation; which, leaping the boundaries of space and time, keeps individuals distant in space and remote in time to a uniform type of structure and function." The Scholastics “deepened the force of the term” by applying it “to everything that in the universe observes order in flux and manifests consistency through change,” including the Platonic Forms, the second of the five Predicables, and the Very Body and Blood of Christ Himself.

For readability reasons I've omitted the citations, but I assure you of their existence and commend you on that tiny twinge of doubt you felt when you realized I hadn't reproduced them.  By forcing my readers to imagine the confusion felt by a hypothetical contemporary of Darwin, I'm able to traverse, quickly, the history of "species" as a term and melt its various possible meanings into the confusing pulp with which Darwin's contemporaries would've been confronted.  The intent is to militate against the associations that normally accompany discussions of Darwin and the species concept; that is, I'm out to confuse the reader in a manner that's compelling and historically accurate. 

The problem with this approach is that it's awful cute.  Not cute like a bunny, a pony, a puppy or a kitten, but cute like a bunny, pony, puppy or kitten who reads Derrida, mistakes academic puns for scholarly insights, and loves little more in life than jamming dashes, brackets, and parentheses into words.  Cute like a critic who thinks appending a definitive article to a word transforms it into a concept--e.g. "the preposterous"--and who, unable to leave well enough alone, then demonstrates how "the preposterous" is a function of the anticipation and subsequent disappointment of sexual gratification; that is, how "the preposterous" is really the "the pre/post(Eros)."  Cute like that.

Since Good Sir, I Implore You! forces readers to understand the complexity of a historical moment, all the potential excessive cuteness can be shoved aside by transforming it into its more pedestrian counterpart, the Historical Anecdote:

Darwin’s Origin of Species by National Selection is exciting much interest from the novelty of his views and the ability with which they are set forth. The work has been republished in America.

-Anonymous Review, The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, March 1860

Shortly after reading this review of Darwin’s new work in the current Eclectic, Theophilus Parsons found himself glancing past the soft leather spine of a first edition On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), mulling its ambiguous title. He knew Darwin’s work was “exciting much interest,” brimming with “novelty” and written with “ability.” But what, exactly, was it about? Were he a student of philosophy, he would have thought it a treatment of the Platonic Ideas, Forms, or Species, an examination of the apodictic reality beyond the illusions of human experience. Were he a logician, he would expect a discussion of the second of the five Predicables, that “Term affirmed of several things, which must express their whole essence, which is called a Species"; a Catholic, a treatise on the transubstantiation of bread and wine, the Eucharistic species, into the Very Body and Blood of Christ Himself; a politician, a banker, or a metallurgist, an account of “the different Rates at which the same Species of Foreign Coins do pass,” or of how “paper securities [are] held out as a currency … in lieu of the two great recognized species [gold and silver] that represent the lasting conventional credit of mankind.”  Darwin frustrates potential readers, then as now, because, as John Dewey says, “few words in our language foreshorten intellectual history as much as does the word species." In the Aristotelian tradition, ειδοσ—later translated into Latin, then English, as species—referred to the “formal activity which operates through a series of changes and holds them to a single course; which subordinates their aimless flux to its own perfect manifestation; which, leaping the boundaries of space and time, keeps individuals distant in space and remote in time to a uniform type of structure and function." The Scholastics “deepened the force of the term” by applying it “to everything that in the universe observes order in flux and manifests consistency through change," including the Platonic Forms, the second of the five Predicables, and the Very Body and Blood of Christ Himself.*

*Theophilus Parsons was, in fact, an early reader of On the Origin of Species. While serving as the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University, Parsons wrote one of its first American reviews in the American Journal of Science and the Arts, November 1860, 30: 1. His review concludes with speculation similar in form, though not chosen personage, to that with which I open this chapter.

I've included the explanatory footnote because it captures the difference between the hypothetical general reader I wrote into existence above and the actual historical figure, Theophilus Parsons, through whom I focalize all the confusion here.  Among the various families of Historical Anecdotes, the one I've written here belongs to the species Anecdota relevanta.  I could have begun this essay with a discussion of Balinese cockfighting or tourist attractions in natural parks, but I didn't.  (Don't worry: Greenblatt's on the agenda and will be discussed in time.   By which I mean "tomorrow.")  I chose instead to embody the confusion I earlier implored me readers to feel in an actual person who was, as it turns out, actually confused.  The strengths of this approach--besides the unbridled joy I feel whenever I type "Theophilus Parsons," a.k.a. the Second Stuffiest Man Alive as Judged by Name Alone--are in its conventionality.  It's not cute so much as appropriate.  Dull and appropriate.  But appropriate nonetheless.

Stay tuned, folks, as tomorrow I'll move away from navel-gazing and return to scholar-hazing as I discuss the relative merits of the Balinese Cockfight and the Call to Arms.

Comments

[Some Canadian Guy]

I'm surprised that you haven't yet mentioned the classic "first person anecdotal" opening for an academic essay. I.e.,

"I first became interested in evolutionary theory when, as a child growing up in a strict Baptist community in Mississippi, I discovered a reference to Darwin in my father's newspaper. 'Daddy, what's evolutionary theory?' I asked him. 'That's the work of Satan, son,' he replied, and reached behind the couch for the strap. For the next three hours, he mutely whalloped my bare ass, while my mother and sister looked on, clutching their bibles and solemnly intoning the psalms. He meant to drive evolution out of my soul forever, but with each stroke of the leather, Darwin was driven further in. Two decades later, I was in graduate school, searching about for a thesis topic with which to masochistically punish myself for the next several years. Darwin was indelibly associated in my mind with the pain and pleasure of the leather on my ass, and thus I came to write this study."

[A. Cephalous]

Look: just because you were the inspiration for this thread doesn't mean you can horn in on it. As I said, I'll talk about what you call "the First Person Anecdotal" but I call "the Balinese Cockfight" tomorrow.

[Some Hyper Guy]

Gah!!!