Taking An Approach, Harris style

According to Harris, there is a "weak" way to taking an approach and a stronger way to taking an approach. The weak way in one in which "one assumes the role of a disciple, adopting (rather than adapting) the moves and interests of another thinker". In this taking an approach, "little knowledge is created. Instead the disciple simply shows that the master is correct" (74). I don't know how many of these papers I have written, but the number is probably in the millions.

I really understood what Harris was saying when he used the Jane Eyre example. It  is one of my favorite books, so it really caught my eye, and explained "taking an approach" in a way that I could visualize. This is the quote: "Jean Rhys offers a new and dark subtext for Jane Eyre in Wild Sargasso Sea by imagining the first wife of Rochester as a girl torn from her home in the West Indies..." (76). But Harris also makes an important distinction between creative artists taking an approach and academic writers taking an approach. He says "While artists often take new approaches to familiar materials, intellectuals tens to embrace an approach in order to extend it to new questions and texts" Academic writers use a great deal of countering in their approaches and forward the mode of the original writer while also defining his or her concerns, methods, and values.

When taking an approach one must...
 --acknowledge influences (nothing those writers whose work has in some way provided a model for your own)
-- turn an approach on itself * I thought this one was most interesting. I think that this distinguishes a good writers from an mediocre writer* (asking the same questions of a writer that he or she asks of others)
--reflexivity (nothing and reflecting on the key choices you have made concerning method, values, and language while constructing your text)



I think that the Onion takes an approach to stories that are "big enough". They are capable of embracing other writings in order to extend it to new questions and texts, but often does it an a satirical way. The Onion take national news stories and applies the same techniques that the larger company uses, to its own blog. But the difference is that they do this in order to poke fun at how the larger company dishes out the news. An example of this would be the article "Media Reminds Public Not To Overemphasize Super Tuesday Results Or Draw Any Sort Of Wide-Reaching Conclusions". They include some real quotes from CNN newscasters and then add in some more fake quotes of their own in order to extend the conversation to new ideas and questions. 


This is the Onion article quote: "Let's remember not to place too much importance on anything that happens tonight, or act like any single event could make or break a candidate, signal the overall direction of the Republican Party, or sum up the opinions of voters in general," CNN's Wolf Blitzer said as the results trickled in during his nonstop, seven-hour coverage of the voting. "Come to think of it, even the phrase Super Tuesday may be a bit unfair, as it makes the ballots cast on this day seem more important than others, which is frankly a sensationalist way of looking at things considering we still have 28 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories left to go." Blitzer later added that presenting extended coverage and analysis of Super Tuesday at all was ultimately unnecessary given that "realistically speaking, Romney pretty much has this thing wrapped up."

The New York Times takes an approach to other academic writings as well. I found the most examples in the Opinion pages, which makes sense. The NYT approaches other texts in an academic way because they like to be fancy and stuff like that. It explains the issue at hand and then goes into further insight, relating the story with other relevant ideas and questions.

The NYT can only gain when they take an approach to other academic writing. They bring up great new dimensions to the story while acknowledging influences of the original writer. The Onion only really gains a laugh and loses most credibility. I would ague that sometimes they can add in something new to the conversation, but those instances are few and far between.