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 Intimacy and Individuation

[version as of 7/29/01]

Reading:

From Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty (Beacon Press, 2001), pp. 6-7: [Note: The different size font for the selection below indicates a direct quotation.]

     Intimacy, says the phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, is the highest value.

     I resist this statement at first. What about artistic achievement or moral courage, or heroism, or altruistic acts, or work in the cause of social change? What about wealth or accomplishment? And yet something about it rings true, finally---that what we want is to be brought into relation, to be inside, within. Perhaps it’s true that nothing matters more to us than that.

     But then why resist intimacy, why seem to flee it? A powerful countercurrent pulls against our drive toward connection; we also desire individuation, separateness, freedom. On one side of the balance is the need for home, for the deep solid roots of place and belonging; on the other is desire for travel and motion, for the single separate spark of the self freely moving forward, out into time, into the great absorbing stream of the world.

     A fierce internal debate, between staying moored and drifting away, between holding on and letting go. Perhaps wisdom lies in our ability to negotiate between these two poles. Necessary to us, both of them---but how to live in connection without feeling suffocated, compromised, erased? We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear.

Journal Assignment:

    1. Define the unfamiliar words in this passage until you feel satisfied that you can define them for someone else in the class.
    2. Circle the nouns that function as subjects of sentences.
    3. Underline sentence fragments. What makes them fragments? Think about their stylistic effects.
    4. Put brackets around words or phrases in a series; notice use of commas.
    5. Notice other uses of commas in the passage. Can you explain their uses?
    6. Notice the two uses of dashes. Do the units set off by dashes function in the same or different ways in the sentences they’re in?
    7. What’s the effect of the rhetorical questions in this passage?
    8. Explain the uses of the semicolon in this passage.
    9. Is the choice of present tense a good one for this passage? Why?
    10. Notice the uses of the word perhaps. What does its use do for the tone of the piece?
    11. Bonus: Explain why its in the second sentence of question #10 is spelled its without an apostrophe.

Research Assignment:

Research individuation in the VCU Libraries.

[No more than four students per word: individuation, intimacy, separation in the psychological sense, freedom in the psychological sense that leads to the term autonomy. Students draw their words out of a hat in class. Below is the example of assignments for the students who draw individuation.]

    1. Search in INFOTRAC for individuation.

           a) Start searching the Expanded Academic ASAP by doing a Subject Guide Search (not a keyword search for this assignment) for the word individuation.

         b) Use the dictionary function in the left-hand column to find definitions of the word.

         c) View the Narrow Subdividisions of individuation and write down 5 or 6 that are most interesting to you.

         d) View 5 or 6 articles under some of those Subdivisions you listed in b), and write down the names of 5 journals in which those articles appear (not the titles of the articles themselves).

         e) Choose a full-text article that looks interesting to you; read the abstract; then read the article, looking for a short paragraph that catches your interest. Copy the paragraph into your journal exactly. Cite the article from which you have taken it. Be careful to write the citation form with correct order of units and correct punctuation.

    f) Bring the paragraph to class for discussion.

2. Search PyscInfo for individuation.

    1. From the VCU Libraries homepage, choose PsycInfo from the Quick Links box in the upper right hand corner of the page.
    2. Perform Search on the keyword individuation. (You don’t need to check any of the limiting boxes below.)
    3. Write the names of 5 or 6 subject headings you find. Click on one of them and note several subheadings. Click on a subheading and note the results.
    4. After you’ve examined the subheadings or categories, choose one that is interesting to you, and click on Focus to the right beside it, and click Continue at the top left of the page.
    5. Notice the titles of the first Journal Articles (not Dissertation Abstracts) that appear toward the bottom of the page. Write the names of 5 or 6 journals in which they appear. Underline or italicize titles of journals. Write a complete citation of one of the articles, exactly as it appears in the database on screen.
    6. Click on Abstract for that article, and write the first two sentences of the abstract verbatim in your journal. Bring it to class.

Writing Assignment:  Write a good solid paragraph about your experiences researching the concept individuation. Revise it and bring it to class.

OR

Writing Assignment:  Write a good strong paragraph about how something in the Doty passage speaks directly to an experience in your own life right now. Revise it and bring it to class.


Class Activities and Discussion for These Assignments:

Discussion of students’ experiences with researching. What surprised you as you were researching? What did you just happen across of personal interest?

Rereading of  Doty’s paragraph from previous class. Time for making sure everyone understands the Journal Assignment issues and gets questions answered.

Electronic projection of several paragraphs that students have brought in (or alternatively, several students write two of their favorite consecutive sentences from their paragraphs on the board), and talk about language differences in Doty’s artistic expression and the language of general and specialized academic discourses: vocabulary, phrasing, sentence structures, lengths and varietiesof sentences, punctuation, paragraph size and structure, the conventions and purposes of different discourses.

Brief quiz at the end of class in which the understanding of the same principles and constructions covered in the Journal Assignment of the day are assessed.

 

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