Response to Davidson close readings

Thank you all for your insightful close readings of Davidson, both on the blog and in today’s discussion. I just wanted to write a brief point to re-emphasize some of the things we discussed in class. All of the posts, I believe, would benefit from more specific references to particular moments in the passage that illustrate their analyses. For instance, Max mentioned in class the way that the periodic structure (with lots of subordinate clauses) made Davidson sound defensive about her claims, as if she were delivering a persuasive speech. (And indeed, the essay’s main intent does seem to be persuasion). Alana insightfully notes that “attention” is a keyword running through the text, and suggests that there’s a juxtaposition between knowledge that’s predetermined and knowledge that’s crowdsourced. But as we discussed in class, that juxtaposition isn’t really apparent in the sentences on p. 51, which suggest a binary, but which don’t possess a parallel structure. Kansh and Matt both do a good job discussing the evident bias in Davidson’s essay, but as you begin composing your essays, I’d encourage you to take it a step further and think about what those biases occlude. Alvin takes a step in this direction in his focus on the anecdote about the exceptional teacher: does her (hierarchical, expert) guidance undermine Davidson’s point about crowdsourcing? Salman does a great job of reading against the grain, suggesting that the binary Davidson sets up between experts and crowdsourcing could actually be synthesized into a crowdsourced model that includes expert opinions.

Good work everyone. Keep these things in mind as you work on the Johnson reading and your first rough draft.