Session Ten: Outcomes

It is customary to establish what has been learnt at the end of a course. In this case that is not so easy to pin down, since acquiring critical acumen is a long term process. However here is some kind of checklist:

1. You have been exposed to a variety of critical modes; journalistic (Meades, Self), satirical (Waugh), formal (Rowe), idiosyncratic (Rowe), poetic (Ginsberg), materialist/Marxist (Lefebvre, Eagleton, Davis), Neoliberal (Hickey), Libertarian (Rand), interpretive (Berman), which should have widened your perspective on how to think and write critically. All of these modes are potentially available at the same time, but we have picked exemplars of each type.

2. These examples are sourced both from so called 'high' and 'popular' culture, indicating that critical thinking does not presuppose a particular domain. We can be as critical of Gardeners World as we can the Villa Medici.

3. We have attempted, in sequentially going backwards chronologically, to retrace our critical steps, so providing a 'road map' or grand narrative (of sorts) as to where we have been and where we are now. Essentially we have learnt to use the past to help us with today.

4. Each week we have blogged our thoughts on each text, aware of what we have already done, and wary of what might be next. Hopefully some areas have become more fascinating than others, so preparing your for your Research Methods course next semester, and ultimately your dissertation.

5. By doing all of the above, we have hopefully become rather exhausted by our own opinion, and learnt to respect and enjoy the opinions of thinkers we hadn't encountered before, making us more open  to discerning argument.

FINAL BLOG: for your final and tenth blog, you are asked to sum up your critical thinking experience.

SUBMISSION: You are asked to print out and bind your ten blogs, sequentially 1 to 10 and not in reverse order, and submit them to the School Office on the third floor of the Tower Block on the first day you return from the Christmas holidays at the beginning of the Spring term.

Notes on Session Nine

Reviewing the world of Howard Roark is tricky. I certainly found it so when I wrote my Reputations piece on him for the AR (December 2013- just go to the AR website to download).
This film is undoubtedly melodramatic propaganda, but we also sense a few home truths. After all Goebbels understood that the best propaganda is that which you do not register as propaganda. Whilst the word 'integrity' is spat out at all too regular intervals throughout this film, integrity is still something we all respect and we feel guilty if we do not appreciate it.
It is certainly the case that Ayn Rand pushes herself to extremes; is it all hopelessly overblown? Most of us understand that co-operation and altruism are the route to an even partially successful private life, not obsessive selfhood. But of course I might be wrong; we should certainly not underestimate Rand and her importance in the mythology of the USA.
However the female lead, Domenique (modelled on Rand herself 'in a bad mood') behaves in most peculiar way and gives the most startling looks. Meanwhile her menage with Howard and Gail features one of the stranger 'bromances' (where only one of them can come out top dog and the other has to shoot himself- it's humanity like high stakes poker). Worst we get no clue as to why Roark's architecture is any good in the first place, other than for it's 'integrity' (based on Louis Sullivan aka Cameron). However this is not how it looks, it looks, instead, rather funky. But you can put that down to the rookie set designer.
As to blowing up such a servicable facility because it offends the so called author; that's a field day for all critics of 'the genius myth'.