Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

2202594 Independent Study IV

Discussion

Draft 2

• p. 1  Haraway quote: "Communications sciences and biology are constructions...never seemed more feeble"
• Comments: It's fine to use a quote to begin a paper but whether you use it as background information or as an epigraph to establish mood, set off an idea, or give tribute to someone or some work, you must make more substantive use of it. The fact that you need to quote the particular words means that they are significant to your paper and that you have something to say about them. The fact that it opens your paper means that its relevance should be exploited right away. Make clear why you find this quote provocative. Are you interested in its categories of boundary-blurring, the construction or constructedness of such knowledge, or the surprise paradox that biology is not only descriptive but also creative? If you are not going draw upon its relevance within the first page or two, you might consider cutting it here and bringing it up later when you will discuss it.
• p. 1  Paragraph 1: "The future cannot be determined...have a robot that has every quality which resemble human."
• Cut
• Comments: Paragraph 1 should make better use of Haraway quote. Tease out points from Haraway that you will elaborate on in the paper and connect it more integrally to Atwood's The Year of the Flood. "The future cannot be determined" is too truistic to be a compelling beginning to your paper. There might be advantages to stating something cliche or obvious if you turn it creatively or use it to make a point of your own, such as "The future cannot be determined, but Atwood, in The Year of the Flood, has determined one." Currently your one-sentence review of century technology imagination is not providing enough original content, connection to Atwood, and connection between Haraway and Atwood. You don't need this entire paragraph to say that it is not difficult nowadays to imagine scientific breakthrough--though even this observation, contextually speaking in terms of recent centuries, is debatable. Think of the steam engine, the electric motor, or Darwin's theory of evolution, this latter cataclysmic in terms of shaking scientific, religious, social and cultural understanding and imagination regarding, among other things, human-animal relation.
• truism: an undoubted or self-evident truth; especially: one too obvious for mention; ex. <ended his letter with the overused truism, “You can't win them all!”> (Merriam-Webster)
• Example sentences (Collins Dictionary)
• It is a truism today that technology is enabling product development to take giant leaps.
• It is also a truism that wherever I am, I am seen as an ethnic Chinese.
• The truism has long held that women want Mr Big: a high-earning, high-status male, however personally challenging his qualities.
• The truism that people vote for politicians who look after their constituencies has been well aired.
• Examples of truism
• All cats are mammals.
• Seeing is believing
• p. 2  "where all the things we may imagine happening in our future are presented"
• Comments: "All the things.." is an absolute statement that might not be true for this novel. You would show yourself to be a more careful and thoughtful reader if you qualified what Atwood presents more reservedly.
• p. 2 "...which cut open the line of familiar distinction between humanity and animality"
• Comments: Aside from some awkwardness in the phrasing, this beginning sentence of your third paragraph would be more resonant and effective if you had established what the "familiar" distinction is between the human and the animal. Your convention, norm or familiar may not hold true for all your audience so it is a good idea to define this and have everyone on the same page.
• p. 2  "...believes that he can establish a perfect world with perfect lives by wiping out all existing imperfect ones. Although Crake manages to accomplish what he plans to do, his 'perfect human' does not seem so perfect as he might wish them to be."
• Comments: A brief summary of what Glenn thinks of as perfect would be useful here. Also, support your assessment of Crake's disappointment. How dissatisfied is he with his experiment results? How does he react to the imperfect perfect humans and animals he has created? To what extent does he comprehend what he has done?
• p. 3  "'a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction'...the bioengineered human and animal both possess life, but they are built according to order like a machine. Therefore, they are not different from a cyborg"
• Comments: The analogy here seems a bit forced. It's not convincing yet that genetically modified humans and animals (organisms) are analogous to hybrids of machine and organism. Perhaps a better comparison point would be how they are both creatures of blended social reality/lived experience and fiction/dream/fantasy (as is key in Haraway's article and you in fact include in your quote of her definition)--a utopian idea made real, if you will, and in the process, turned dystopian.
• p. 3  "Their significance to Pilar and Toby provokes the idea that human beings and animals are friends."
• Comments: Rewrite to fix grammar and WW. The friend argument implies equal relationship but your paragraph focuses mainly on what bees are to humans (functioning as clairvoyants, healers, confidants, etc.) and provides very little on what humans are to bees. You can fix this imbalance and substantiate your relationship claim if you provided reciprocating examples of what humans do for bees.
• p. 4  "Berger states, that animals are born as 'sentimental' and 'mortal' as man but are different from man in anatomy, habits, time and physical capacities. Therefore animals and human beings share both similarities and differences and are connected to one another."
• Comments: Using Berger's "mortal" description seems to contradict your earlier discussion of bees' "food of immortality" (p. 3). Your benefits of bees passage also provides inadequate evidence for the similarities between bees-animals and humans in your summary statement here. We see how bees are useful to humans but not quite enough of how they are like humans, especially in terms of "sentimental" and "mortal" qualities quoted on as encapsulating their shared characteristics.
• p. 9  "the boundary between the identities of human beings and animals is blurred"
• Comments: Again, you haven't quite established what separated or distinguished humans from animals. It's also important to make clear which are whose distinctions: yours, Berger's, Atwood's, Adam One's, etc.
• p. 11  "a big mess"
• Comments: Elaborate. What is the mess? Why is it big? What impact does it have?
• p. 12  "because human beings in her blueprint are obsessed with bioengineering"
• Comments: All human beings? This absolute statement feels inaccurate considering Atwood's range of human individuals and their roles and beliefs.
• Overall writing comments
• Literary present tense: Proofread for appropriate use of present tense when discussing plot and describing writers' actions.
• Verbs: Past Tense? Present?
• Present Tense Verbs
• How (and Why) Do I Write in Literary Present Tense? (pdf)
• Much improved clarity, focus and coherence: You've put a lot of work into integrating your various sources, tying together the different secondary works into your reading of and argument about Atwood's The Year of the Flood, and explaining your stance, ideas, and organization. Excellent! To keep in mind for future revisions: revising can entail not only adding, cutting, rewriting, or proofreading, but may also involve reorganizing the structure of your paper and even reconceptualizing ideas or reframing your argument.
• Mechanics
• Spelling: ex. Glen (p. 2) should be Glenn, "we evolve from out primates" (p. 5), "whatever small amount of humanity you may still restrain" (p. 12)
• Agreement: ex. "there must be a minimum of two live" (p. 5)
• Wrong word
• Logic
• Tense: ex. "human beings has create a big mess" (p. 11)
• Minor problems in MLA Style formatting of paper (ex. no page number) and citation in Works Cited
• 
  

Draft 1

Animals, Biotechnology, Bioethics

• p. 1  "What seems to be one of the remarkable focuses in the story is the creation of spliced animals and 'perfect human.'"
• Comments: Go beyond the merely descriptive. Instead of simply stating that Atwood gives much attention to bioengineering in her novel, investigate further. In contrast to hers, what is your "remarkable focus" on it in this paper motivated by? What are your concerns? What do you hope to achieve? Why are Atwood's "perfect" creations in The Year of the Flood worth investigating for you as a literary scholar? What is different or special about Atwood's presentation of the issue (including her approach to it, her treatment of it)? How does she portray the scientists, the products, the (public? scientific?) reception and consequence of the "perfected" products? You need to have a strong and substantial thesis.
• What aspects of animal and human engineering are you concentrating on in this paper? Are you interested in the morality or ethicality of biotechnology and Atwood's treatment of it? Or are you interested in stylistics or Atwood's methods and techniques of representation? Your first paragraph begins with "The future cannot be determined" and goes through the centuries of discovery to the present, ending (somewhat limply) with "Thus, things that happen in Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, are not hard to envision at all." Is this a genre study? Are you considering the topic within speculative fiction, the literary craft of envisioning a future reality? Or is this a historical study, investigating historical and cultural contexts and implications of the issue? The topic needs narrowing and refining. You can browse below for topical inspiration or invent your own.
• bioethics
• stylistics, linguistics
• representation
• genre ex. science fiction, speculative
• historical
• cultural studies
• gender
• Marxism
• psychoanalysis
• feminism
• environment, ecology, ecocriticism
• planetarism
• utopia, dystopia
• transhumanism
• 
  
• You said that you are doing a close reading and that is fine, but is there no overarching observation that emerges from that close reading? What do you see being done in this novel? How is it significant? Is Atwood being creative or challenging in terms of narrative, character, plot, language, ideas, structure, use of external texts and contexts, etc.?
• p. 2  "So far, there is a boundary which separates human from animals. This boundary derived from several believes which determine the relationship between these two groups and formulate the perspective on how we look at animals."
• Comments: What boundary is this? There is only one? "Several beliefs" is vague. What is your stance? Do you think there is or there should be a boundary between humans and animals? What is Atwood's stance? Does her writing suggest there is a distinction between humans and animals? If so, what are some distinctive human or animal qualities? Must there be a boundary? What are some problems posed in the novel regarding perspective toward animals? There might not be a "right" way to look at animals, but are there wrong ways? Whose beliefs? Are you engaging with individual beliefs or disciplinary, religious, gendered, class, or historical?
• p. 2  "This [Berger stating that animals "first entered the imagination as messengers and promises"] resembles the relationship between Pilar and the bees and later, Toby and the bees."
• Comments: Why is reference to Berger essential in pointing out the meaning of bees for Pilar and Toby? That is, is it possible to analyze bees and their role in the novel without bringing in Berger? Why are you pointing out this affinity between human-animal relationships in Berger's book and Atwood's? Why is Berger's historically "first entered" relevant to futuristic speculation?
• p. 4 

Culture

• p.

Gender

• p. 
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• p.

Research

Writing

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Last updated May 14, 2013