LIMUHAG
DISCUSSION
I was surprised that what I understood as an essay— which is supposed to follow a proper format, it needs to have a clear argument, and a persuasive content—was deemed to be “untentative” and uninviting. Another is the statement; essays should be written as loosely as how a human mind functions, which is against on what I used to understand of what an essay is and how it is supposedly written.
I am intrigued by the application of the ambivalence and looseness in writing an essay in an academic paper when we’re taught and accustomed to what is already established. Also, considering that these works are graded or criticized based on how we perceive an essay should be.
I was disturbed by one thing out of three in the three things that predicated essayism that is “personal stability.” For the reason that not everyone is privileged to get a proper education and an idle time to contemplate about life, then write about it which only favors the people who belonged to upper and middle-class families.
I have known the term “essay” since I was still in elementary school. It was a common term, yet its origin and meaning had not been discussed at all. That’s why, while reading the article, I was surprised to see that the term basically means “attempts,” and I do agree that the meaning makes sense because an essay is usually written as an attempt to seek answers or to discover something along the process of writing. I remember how one professor told me before that when I write an essay, my mind should always be in a constant process of discovering something, until those discoveries get solidified into good points in my essay. Connecting what he said before and the article I just read, I guess, I finally understood him now.
Reading through the text, I got intrigued with the idea that essays have this distinct quality which is, all of them “self-consciously hide the I under the shroud of objectivity.” When I read that part, it captured my interest because unbeknownst to me, I have been doing that at times already. Sometimes, I do pretend that my opinions have emanated from some higher truth when in fact, I am just spitting what I am thinking and feeling.
I am kind of disturbed with the idea that essays, like most of us, are notoriously noncommittal. Learning about that left me puzzled because I cannot fully comprehend how an essay, in any way, cannot commit. Also, I never thought that essays could be described in that manner, however, the article became an eye opener for me that I know only a few things about what an essay is, and that I could know better as I get to read more about this genre.
I was surprised to learn that the essay was only properly recognized as a literary genre during the 16th century. I always thought that since the essay has grown into such a diverse and free-ranging form of writing, its inception would have probably been sometime long before the 16th century. The term “Essais” was also new to me and I think that its meaning, ‘attempts’, captures how I feel when trying to come up with what to fill the page with whenever I write an essay. Lastly, I was surprised with how the article defines the essay as its mentioned qualities and characteristics differ severely from what I was taught.
I was intrigued with how the article differentiates the essay from texts that are essay-like or those masked as an essay. Qualities such as being ambivalent in nature and being tentative are not characteristics that I would normally use in describing my personal process in crafting an essay. My views on what an essay is and what its purpose should be were challenged, and I was intrigued by this new viewpoint which has led me to question what I was once taught. I found it intriguing and also highly agreeable, Wampole’s criticism of many essay-like texts as being “fortresses” that only aims to be air-tight in their arguments without it actually being an attempt at textually engaging the reader.
The thing that disturbed me the most was my realization that my definition of an essay was always blank or generally vague, despite me having to submit essay after essay in my academic endeavors. Continuing this line of thought, I asked myself- If what I was writing before were essentially non-essays or only essay-like, then what have I been writing about? How do I write an essay? Lastly, I was set into contemplation by Wampole’s identification of the factors for essayism, namely the personal and technocratic stability. Of course, these propositions and claims only brought up more questions in my head, but I think that’s a good place to start for now.
Allito
What surprised me is how “essay” is actually more that what I thought. I have never really learned thoroughly anything about essays, and the whole article just left me dumbfounded. All I thought, essay was just about dumping information or merely just the equivalent of the fiction’s exposition. I was surprised with how it “attempts” to sort out an idea or a topic despite the uncertainties.
What intrigued me the most is how essay tends to go for “what sense it makes” on something rather than making something make sense because it doesn’t impel but rather focuses on the progression of something.
Although this fact is no longer new to us, I am still disturbed with how “personal stability” greatly affects one’s literacy because it is undeniable that only the privileged ones get the choice and the “unprecedented access to technologies of communication and reserves of knowledge.”
Given the etymology of Montaigne’s personal choice of describing his prose-work, I was surprised by how an essay can be easily defined as an “attempt” – a subjective piece – personal and uncertain. This proves how time has covered the essence of writing an essay: as Wampole posits, writing an essay is a “process of trying something out.” This, when paralleled to my educational background of the genre, is surprising, if not disturbing, as to how I was taught essays are all but unsure. It opened to more questions as to how I have utilized the genre and what other aspects of it have I misunderstood.
The entirety of the essay, Essayification of Everything, employs the author’s philosophy of an essay as full of ambivalence. Yet, I was all the more intrigued by how the essay pronounced the modern works that are essays or essays-like “[as] anything but.” This, in Wampole’s whole prose, is one of the few certain statements posited. It is intriguing because the statement questions my present perspective on how essays are employed in this contemporary time.
Probably one of the many things the essay has disturbed something in me is how an essay is predicated on: personal stability, technocratic stability, and societal instability. With Wampole asserting how essay argues dogmatic works, I am left unsure (probably because I have yet to comprehend it fully) as to how an essay can be founded on personal stability – a paradox since the essay made it clear how ever-changing an essayist should be.
I didn't expected for Christy's essay to renounce the very notion of essay of many a student. I, myself, was surprised, thus. Although I did already had some doubts about the the "correct" form of an essay as essays in high school really weren't much great of an example in comparison to college's, the origin of essay was really from a man's musings. My notion of essay was given new clothes, and a familiar one at that. Essay, as it turns out, encourages writers and readers to interact and produce as much content as they can from it in order for it to become fruitful. Questions should be raised and subjects should be bound to change without leaving one rock unturned.
As silly as it sounds, I am more intrigued by how Montaigne's essay didn't became more famous as it should be. Considering the English, of course they would gatekeep everything they could get their hands into (kind of prejudice here; I'm sorry) and turn into something fancy only the elites could understand. Maybe that's why it's "obstinate." That being said, I am more intrigued by essay's history than the essay of Christy. However, it doesn't mean her essay isn't intriguing in itself.
As well as other things, essay can also be sort of a breeding ground for egotism and senseless musings that offer no insights. That's the most important part of the essay after all: insight. If this essence is removed, what's there to read about? This might be the reason why some people like reading essays. As long as it's well-written and offers new ideas and concepts to tinker about, this part of the essay shouldn't disturbed someone as it should be.
In all honesty, I was surprised by how this essay urges us to get uncomfortable with its ambivalence. During my younger years, I was taught to be very sure of my topic before writing my prose for me to appear certain of whatever it is I’m trying to talk about. I was taught that the lack of clarity makes room for my readers to question my credibility so I should be as convincing and as objective as I can be. Little did I know that essays should actually encourage readers to question more.
I am very intrigued by the idea of essay as “a constructive approach to existence” for it allows me to see essays as attempts to make sense of life’s senselessness and not those unquestionable essay-like texts I’ve read and written about. It allows me to view essays as a medium to a curious way of life.
I was disturbed by how essays become a medium of comparison and egotism when not meditated enough as well as the notion that we abandon our experiences as soon as we experience them. I used to be guilty of both because I noticed when I did write about a certain experience in my life, I no longer write about it as if there’s only one way of looking into that situation. I still cannot fully wrap my head around those notions which makes it very disturbing for me.
I am surprised by the whole idea corresponding to what does essay mean: (1) Robert Musil's concept of "essayism," and those who live by it, whom he called "possibilitarians," which I never thought of because, in writing essays, I always prioritize sounding conclusive and dogmatic. (2) Michael de Montaigne's "skepticism," which connects with the essay's purpose-- "attempting" to explore concepts and offer endless possibilities to the readers. In this idea, I am surprised that the essay instead gives questions and ambivalence as a solution more than it offers certain and precise answers, which I think is different from being assertive.
I am intrigued with the idea of the essay as made to solve ambiguity with ambivalence because it allows me to question the "true" way, purpose, and intention of writing an essay. I write an essay with a practical sense and leaves "no room for uncertainty," which Wampole considered an "essay-like" rather than an essay itself. Now, I am intrigued about what makes an essay successful--is it allowing the reader to be confident in a particular concept which was my initial idea of an essay's purpose, or allowing them to be "comforted with ambivalence" instead?
I am disturbed by the term "essay-like," which the author had mentioned. Maybe because it's the way I write an essay, and I never thought that this way of writing makes the readers "uninvited," suggesting that an essay must instead involve its readers by exploring different and possible concepts by having the spirit of "open-endedness." This argument questions my idea about other types of essays such as argumentative and persuasive essays because I thought they sound "untentative" henceforth, are they considered essay-like instead? Or is it just the way they're delivered, and I just never thought and felt that it "forces us (me) to face the undecidable"? On the other hand, I also wonder whether Wampole refers to the essay as general or just a subgenre of a personal essay, which is the "meditative essay."
What surprised me was when the text described essay with its attempt to jump from one objective to another, then further mentioning its similarity to having A.D.H.D. From what I knew, essays are supposed to be systematically arranged. I remember being taught about the structure of a “good” essay--introduction, body, and conclusion--but the text suggested essay as a form of essayism, which is more of trying out and discovering things than claiming something.
I am intrigued with Adorno’s “essay’s groping intention,” its tendency to switch from a point to the next in a short time. I think it suggests that essay/essayism is very similar to a person’s mind that is easily distracted. Yet the distraction that we have will soon have its own distraction too, until it becomes a series of distractions, until it “puts endless questions to it” (p.7). I am intrigued with this because it makes me think that an essay is a play of words, an opportunity to unleash our curiosity and inquiries.
What disturbed me in a I-have-a-lot-of-questions type of way was when the text claimed that the traditional essay with grounded objectives was seen as stubbornness. I’ve always deemed essays as opinionated and persistent, and thought that that is the normal and the expected. Hence, when the text suggested that this type of essay was merely “obstinacies”, I questioned what was really the correct way of writing an essay. I also thought weren't essays are written pieces that highly focus on a certain subject? Weren't essays supposed to have an unwavering idea? Or do we have to consider the difference between an academic essay and a personal essay? Or do we have to distinguish essays and essayification?
Nonetheless, I think (me) having questions from the text is a proof that essays will really put you in a situation full of questions!
I was most surprised by the meaning of the Essay, which is said to be derived from the word "Essais" meaning "Attempts" according to the text. It was quite a shock to realize that I never really learned what the term meant, even though I lived with what I know as 'essays' my whole academic life. Knowing it now makes me appreciate and recognize its beauty and importance more.
I was intrigued by the whole ambivalent and non-committal concept of the Essay, for I never really looked at it that way. We were taught to look at essays as simply just a form or a genre, which is not wrong, but it is so much more than that. We were taught how to write an essay, its components, and the likes in school. However, we never really learned much of its nature, its spirit, and what makes it timeless.
I was disturbed by what the text said about most pieces that are considered "essay" or "essay-like" are not really essays because of the points stated by the author Christy Wampole. All these points, like hiding the subjectivity or the "I", are some of the things that I learned from school. It's an eye-opener that I have much to learn, unlearn, and re-evaluate about the Essay.
I was surprised to read that the essay is "noncommittal." Strangely, the word, "noncommittal," makes me feel like the essay is an approachable genre. I forgot how it was like before studying creative writing, but the essays I have read in this program (like Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak? and others) made me feel like the essay is the hardest of them all (since the only essays I was introduced to were academic essays). Wampole's statement says otherwise.
I was intrigued by the idea of the essay's obstinacy. Prior to reading the material, I haven't thought about how the essay, most of the time, trusts only its ideas and arguments. Obstinacy in the essay treats its readers as a spectator, rather than someone they communicate with. And I agree with Wampole that the readers must not be mere spectators only. At least for me, writers don’t write as if they were talking to a blank wall.
I was disturbed by the realization that the essays I used to read (before creative writing) were essays that appear to be more "scientific" or "academic" because of how detached the author is from the text. That essays that are "personal" are not really essays, they're diaries; they're JUST stories—which also influenced me and how I perceive these genres.
These realizations continue to tell me that my life before creative writing was a whole different lifetime ago, one that I don't want to live in again... sometimes.
I only knew that today, in this class, after reading "The Essayification of Everything" that the essay taught to us during elementary and high school is different from what is supposed to be essay. Essay was introduced to me as something formal and systematic that you argue to prove a point, to defend, and was never experimental.
For me it was "essay's groping attention" of Theodor Adorno. It made me think (based on the examples given) of self-reflection or how the mind speaks but written on paper.
I'm bothered by the fact that the essay we learn before was not actually what essay should be because I don't know what they were anymore if not essay. There's only questions in my head after I read Wampole's text like: Does essay only talks about meaning of life or life itself? Or the little things about life? One's big or small question about life? Experiences? Could it also be other things?
I was surprised when the text stated that the "essays" that I was taught to do in school at a very young age did not really count as essays. The text even made fun of the "essays" that I used to like writing when I was younger.
I was intrigued about how the essays were said to be somewhat borderless. I've been required to do photo essays in high school before, but I never really though much of it. I never bothered to question why those were called 'essays' and to read the paragraph that talked about the leaking of the essay into different forms made me question what other forms were there.
I was disturbed by how the text celebrated the non-committal aspect of everything and everyone today. It didn't disturb me in a bad way, but it was sort of shocking to read something that, instead of shaming this aspect of fast changing ideas and non-commitment to it, it celebrated it. It was refreshing, to say the least, and I have yet to make up my mind whether or not I agree with it.
While reading the text, I was most surprised by how differently it treats essay not as a rigorous form of arguing but rather a more meditative and reflective writing that rests upon ambivalence and undecidability, which was quite the opposite of what I was taught before. It also posited that essays which were crafted otherwise were pretentious and obstinate. I found these things quite surprising because it goes to show how limited my knowledge was of the essay, and how wide it’s range actually was when it comes to the craft of writing about human experience.
I am quite intrigued by the statements in the text which said, “The essay, like many of us, is notoriously noncommittal,” and the “essay’s groping intentions.” According to the text, essayism is about approaching many things but with short attention, like nibbling and sampling many experiences together. So it is quite an intrigue how we should read and make meaning out of these essays. And given its noncommittal and ambivalent nature, wouldn't it be prone to convolution? Or is that actually the goal of an essay which is to mirror life itself—messy, complicated, and ambivalent?
Disturbed might be too strong of a word to describe what I felt when I read the text, but certainly I felt uneasy when the essay mentioned about “meditative deficiency” and how that leads to empty egoism. It felt like I was reading myself when I read this. It is because I believe I am not the most reflective and insightful person. I do not have the meticulous eyes for details, and I often forget things, traits which this essay sees as a weakness. I often hide my lack of meditative qualities in the guise of objectivity. This essay also made me think and question about my previous works: were they what this “The Essayification of Everything” referred to as “essay-like” and they were not really essays? And how do I write one? I think I somehow understand now what my previous professor had said during one of our classes, “the essay is the hardest to write.”
I was most surprised about how the essay as a genre is less than 500 years old. It occurred to me that I never learned the history of essay and I’ve always thought that it just came to existence when humans learned to read and write. I think that I came up with this conclusion because of how ambiguous the definition of what an essay is as pointed out by the article. Moreover, I am surprised by its etymology which challenged the structured notion that I picture in my head whenever I am tasked to write one.
For me, the article was quite contradictory at some point as it suggests returning to the original purpose of the essay which is to attempt and by harnessing the ambivalent nature of it through meditation. I was confused because the article seems to convince us to let go of our obsession with convictions (the article relates this to the American social and political discourse) and embrace ambivalence prevalent in today’s noncommittal culture and inattentiveness. Yet it also endorses meditation which somehow requires commitment and attention. In relation, I am also perplexed by how the article seemed to dismiss formal and technical types of essay. The article seemed to restrict the essay into a boundless form but discounting said types, in my opinion, makes the essay less boundless. For me, having such facets is what makes the genre more open to countless possibilities.
I was disturbed by the fact that I’ve never really thought about what makes an essay an essay. I have been churning out essays as an academic requirement for most of my life but I have never truly examined what it is. And that the closest thing we can define an essay is to leave it undefined. This thought makes me unsure of everything I have ever learned.
Though I am familiar with essays and why they are considered as such, Wampole's view on it surprises me as I have never looked at the non-committal aspect of it. In my previous classes that touches the subjects, I only learned in its aspect to "attempt" but never how willing an essay can abandon such an attempt.
For me, there seems to be paradox within Wampole's attempt to revisit the definition of essay, and the consistency of the description of essay form being arbitrary. It's because perhaps the essay, as a medium of expression, only attempts but never commits (Wampole asserts that text that is only "essay-like" commits), which suggests that Wampole may have arrived a unifying characteristic to essay, yet the characteristic itself is non-commital and is too malleable to allow an essay to take a standard form.
What disturbs me is that Wampole's idea of essays seems to go against my thoughts about how ideas shape literature as a whole. It's because the first writing process I do, whenever I write, is to commit to an idea and revolves around it and make it, more or less, the central subject of what I write - even essays. Wampole's idea of an essay, for me, seemed to lean more towards the arbitrariness of the human mind, and instead of refining it, it's more like expressing it in its raw, chaotic, and undiluted form.
I was surprised by the structure of the essay when in fact, the one I was reading was the essay itself. The way how the author delivered their argument about the essay made me think about my past readings of essays as it differs from what my instructors told us about how essays are defined.
I was deeply intrigued by how I am past told that essays should follow the standard introduction, body, and the ending conclusion when in this case, it was different. The author presents the etymological meaning of the essay from the French word “Essais” which is equivalent to the English word “attempt." This strikes me some questions from then on. Specifically, the author suggests that essays compel to accept the undecidability of an essay as same as becoming comfortable with ambivalence. Getting on with it, it tells us that the human experience has much more weight in an essay than in finding the truth.
Undeniably, Wampole’s essay is very interesting. Considering Wampole’s argument about modern-day America, they seem to propose some sort of polarization of our opinions - isolating our thoughts from other’s point of view since she also proposes that an essay is about human manifestations and experiences with full of subjectivity. I think that this essay is deconstructing itself since it contains a lot of contradicting concepts. What I intend is that how it argues cogently for allowing the essay today to open up rather than close down in the illusion of certainty, just like embracing the ambivalence and being comfortable with it, and keeping a distance between our own opinions and the others.
In Christy Wampole’s “The Essayification of Everything,” there were a lot of things about the essay that I didn’t know then, and most of them surprised me. However, what surprised me the most was when she wrote that the majority of the writings labeled as “essay” today were anything but. It surprised me because during my primary and secondary education, teachers taught us that scholarly texts and answers to “essay-type” questions were essays. We were taught to have premeditated contents for our “essays” and that we must stick to certain guidelines which often limited the things that we wanted to include in our writings. The way essay was taught to me back then actually made me dislike the whole process of writing, so the idea that the essay was meant to be an attempt and not some fixed writing was a huge surprise to me.
Everything in this essay intrigued me, especially the history of this genre because we were never taught about it. I also find the idea “it [the essay] asks you to get comfortable with ambivalence” intriguing because it is a 180 turn from what we knew about how an essay should be written. It made me wonder how we could get comfortable with writing in a tentative manner without having and how we could write for the sake of trying. I’m also intrigued about “essayism” and how the essay is capable of accommodating our being because I’ve always viewed the essay as 80% objective and 20%subjective.
The thing that disturbed me about what I read, in general, was the experimental nature of essayistic writing. The disturbing part is not the idea of the essay being experimental, but the realization that all this time, people who only had the foundations of a questionable education system thought that the essay tends to be fixed in a manner of speaking. The process of unlearning what we were taught about the essay was both a disturbing and a pleasurable experience. Another part of the text that disturbed me was how personal stability was one of the things that ground essayism. In the text, it was said that although we do not share the same privilege as Montaigne, one could not deny the fact that “we have relatively high literacy rate and unprecedented access to technologies of communication and reserves of knowledge” and how “there’s lots of evidence that we have plenty of idle time on our hands.” I found that disturbing because there would always be a difference in the circumstances of people from different countries. Although it is understood that this essay was written from the perspective of an American and how the essay thrives in an American setting, it is still consumed by writers outside the American continent. It failed to consider that not everyone who has the potential to be a possibilitarian, an essayist, have access to an education system that would actually give them the quality of education that could aid in personal stability. It failed to consider that there are writers, with so much potential in the essay, who have problems in accessing technologies of communication and reserves of knowledge. The idea that essayism is predicated by at least three things including personal stability might actually be an elitist notion and the factor on societal instability might actually cause a detachment between the writer and the what they are trying to write if we base it on this text wherein it was written “that throwing oneself wholeheartedly toward any particular idea or endeavor (on and about societal issues) seems a risky proposition.” It also defeats the purpose of essayism being a possibility for the essay to bleed out of the confines of its initial definitions and the idea that the essay is experimental in nature which involves the nuance of trying something out.
THE ESSAYIFICATION OF EVERYTHING
The students were asked to read the text written by Christy Wampole titled “the Essayfication of Everything”. Afterwhich, they were asked three guide questions to facilitate the discussion: (1) What surprised you? Why? (2) What intrigued you? Why? (3) What disturbed you? Why?
Christy Wampole was also interviewed by The Daily Beast and can be watched on YouTube through What's Your Big Idea - Christy Wampole on Irony and Hipsters.
Photo Reference by fit.princeton.edu