First in a potential series of writings appropriating the Reading-Response Paper format as a literary form.

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I don’t have much faith in the “reading response paper” form as the worthwhile learning tool it is advertised to be. Certainly I recognize its intended value; the good sense of its hypothetical purpose. That is, it’s reasonable to expect students to demonstrate in writing what they gleaned from a reading assignment. Unfortunately this theory and the classroom/ homework dual-reality do not match. In practice the routine nature of syllabus-directed class readings, the predetermined trajectory through a schedule of ideas, affords the honest student too little self-determination to actualize meaningful scholarly exploration of the topics he or she signed-up for a given course of interest to penetrate in the first place. I speak only from personal experience. Genuine intellectual engagement with the subject at hand is, on some level, inevitably compromised. And without genuine intellectual engagement the response paper lapses from a viable learning device into a rote regurgitation of cheaply-earned facts. Little learning achieved.

Putting aside this skepticism, in a legitimate bid to work within the confines of the assignment form as I understand it, let me “respond” to one of the articles from Tuesday. I can summarize what Harris said, if need be; the first half of the article struck me as a very basic—though essential—introduction to the terminology and parameters of apocalyptic literature. Most of it was news to me. Happy to receive it. Eschatology, pseudonymity, those typical parameters observed in texts working within the apocalyptic tradition. Et al. These facts are helpful, interesting, useful. Harris then examines the Hebrew bible’s Book of Daniel, plugging in the model he described in the first section to exemplify the Book as a prototypical apocalyptic work.

How do I respond to these facts? I found them interesting. Harris’s choice of Daniel as a straightforward realization of stated apocalyptic tenets is apt, logical, correct. So: everything he said made sense to me. On a deeper level of personal reaction, the frank academic portrayal of the dubious circumstances under which much of Judaism and Christianity coagulated only reminded me of the vital ridiculousness of these religions as institutions. The academic characterization of how these religions portray their deities only reminded me of how asinine those portrayals are, to me.

This write-up, while half-joking in its opaque tenor, is not bullshit. Certainly less bullshit than many of the feigned-earnest response papers you will receive from my fellow students, many of which do not and cannot honor the theoretical earnestness of the response paper form. As discussed earlier, this will be because the legitimacy of the response paper form implodes when deployed in the field. But that ultimate failure presumes first the intellectual curiosity and second the intellectual honesty of a given student, a precondition about which I find myself feeling increasingly cynical (when it comes to many of my fellow students).

I’m afraid we have now reached exponentiating tangential intersections with the entire problematic higher education endeavor, American society in general, intrinsic conflicts of the human experience, and beyond. That is, an ever-widening black hole of problem. Do not despair; all any of us can do in a predicament such as this is rely on the good theoretical sense and sound intentions of the response paper form. How else to avoid all nihilistic oblivion?

Don’t mistake me for a Nietzsche sheep, or the bad kind of philosophy major, or anyone hyper-theoretically inclined as a means to an amoral end. I merely aspire to honesty for the sake of existential pragmatism.

You need not publically call me out on this paper in class tomorrow morning; I would be too tired to do anything but react with crippling anxiety. Certainly I don’t want my classmates to resent me so early in the semester, this to be only our third meeting.