Question Description
INTERPRETIVE ESSAY EXERCISE
For this Interpretive essay exercise, I want you to select ONE of the texts we ve read in the pdfs and use it to construct a simple frame or lens through which you ll reflect for 3page (around 900 words) on some element of your – or our collective, public – experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can use any concept from any one text to relate to something you ve observed or experienced during this health crisis.
Consider how the following ideas and their respective texts may offer ways to think carefully about what s occurring in the world and our lives. Remember, too, that you re welcome to select a concept that s not on the list.
Franklin Foer might ask how the technocratic underpinnings of our society may affect our ability to manage this crisis. MARK ZUCKERBERG’S WAR ON FREE WILL from world without mind
Joseph Stiglitz might ask us to critique the government s response to this crisis, and how it may favor the will and interest of rent-seeking corporations. p389-412
Jonathan Lethem may ask us to reconsider the concept of individualism and individual property in the midst of a crisis in which we all depend on each other to be responsible for the health and well being of our most vulnerable friends and neighbors.
Lethem may also aid us to think about how the COVID-19 crisis encourages to abandon enframing and see the world in a new way. The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism
Make sure that you (1) identify the reading and concept you ll be working with for this assignment, offering a brief close reading of an idea-rich passage where you see this concept at play, and (2) outline one example of how you ve seen this concept enacted since the onset of the pandemic.
It should have an introductory paragraph that provides context for your ideas and an assertion of a thesis that connects your one textual idea to the COVID-Epidemic. Your writing should be a balance of your own original observations and analysis from your life, for which you should use the first-person, and quotation from the text. All work should be Times New Roman, size 12, double spaced.