[WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus

[WJhonson at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/17/2008 1:04:54 PM Pacific Standard Time,  
snowspinner at gmail.com writes:

In fact,  I would bet you that if I were to find the one of my  
colleagues with  whom I most disagree on every point of literary theory  
and  criticism, and pick at random a Derrida essay neither of us had   
read, we could hammer out a summary of it that we both agreed with.   
And I would further bet that this would not be possible if I were to   
pick two random people out of the aisles of my  supermarket.>>


----------------------------
 
As expert editors, we are allowed to summarize our sources.
A summary is a description of the source.
A summary *of the source* is not a criticism of the source, nor an  
interpretation of the source vis-a-vis some other source such as "Here he makes  an 
obvious allusion to the Iliad although in a post-modern Kakaesque  melange...."
 
Your opinion of what the source is saying is a summary, your opinion of  
*why* the source is saying what it's saying is not a summary of that  source.  
It's an evaluation of the source.
 
I can give a good summary of an episode of Bewitched.  If I then go on  to 
give detailed critiques and understanding, and interpretations, evaluations,  
additional references to other things, etc etc that is not a summary of the  
source.
 
If in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" D.H. Lawrence does not state that "this is  a 
send-up of middle class values" then we cannot, in a summary say "this is a  
send-up of middle class values".  We can summarize what the source is  saying. 
 Additional layers, must be left to existing reviewers, not us as  editors.  
*We* are not experts because we can add additional layers, *we*  are experts 
because we can find sources which (they) add those layers for  us.
 
Will Johnson
 
 
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