Ellen Dissanayake, "The Core of Art," and:

• David Abram, "The Ecology of Magic"
• David Abram, "The Ecology of Magic," and Annie Dillard, "The Wreck of Time"
• Peter Drucker, "The Age of Social Transformation"
• Susan Faludi, "The Naked Citadel"
• Stephen Jay Gould, "The does the dreaded 'E' word mean, anyway?"
• Jan Willis, "Selections from Dreaming Me: An African American Woman's Journey"
  

For more assignment ideas involving this essay, please visit the Dissanayake link-o-mat.

Dissanayake: Practicing the Art of "Making Special" (Final Assignment)

Over the course of the semester, you have considered the changing nature of society, the role technology has come to play in our sense of community, the genetic engineering of food and, most recently, what it means to say that humankind has "evolved." Throughout these discussions, we've returned repeatedly to a number of themes and questions: What is community? What role should the government play in regulating human creativity? Is it possible or desirable to create a sense of social responsibility? What place should technology and technological innovation occupy in future societies? These are big questions, the kinds of questions that all liberally educated students should be prepared to address.

For your final assignment, I would like for you to read Ellen Dissanayake's "The Core of Art: Making Special," which concerns the evolutionary function of "the behavioral tendency" of humans to produce art. Dissanayake is most interested in the tendency of humans to "make special," the human tendency to create "extra-ordinary" experiences. This is a challenging and provocative idea, one that potentially opens out on to all the other readings we've considered this semester.

Now that we've reached the end of the semester, you should be in a position to generate a topic and an argument on your own. For your final assignment, I would like for you to construct an argument that places Dissanayake's theory of "making special" in conversation with at least two other readings assigned in this course. All the usual requirements pertain here: that is, you must cite from at least three of the essays; you must generate an argument with clear transitions between the paragraphs; you must demonstrate a command of the conventions governing citation, punctuation, grammatical correctness; your final draft must be at least five pages long. What has changed is that you now have as part of your writing task the responsibility for generating a question that opens up a fruitful discussion of a relevant topic of your own choosing.

Here are some possible directions you might pursue:

Are Monsanto's genetic engineers engaged in the work of "making special" as Dissanayake defines the term?

What would it mean for a writer to exhibit this tendency to "make special"? What would such writing look like? What features would it have? Do any of the writers we've read this semester exhibit this tendency?

Dissanayake describes our world as one typified by "unprecedented leisure, comfort, and plenty" (63). What dangers does this prosperity pose for humankind? Are the dangers that Dissanayake identifies the same as those discussed by Barber, Drucker, Heim, or Pollan? Does Dissanayake's view of the future complement or conflict with the views of these other authors?

These are just suggestions about the kinds of questions you might want to pursue.

Richard E. Miller, Spring 2000

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Dissanayake and Abram: "Making Special" and "Magic"

Ellen Dissanayke and David Abram both write about the ways that modern Western culture has separated human beings from ways of understanding or relating to their environment. Both offer suggestions for recovering that understanding. Dissanayke uses the term "making special" to describe what she calls a "core tendency" in human beings related to play and ritual. Abram offers "magic," which he first defines as "the ability or power to alter one's consciousness at will," but then complicates that definition by showing how magic functions in "tribal societies" to connect humans to "the multiple nonhuman sensibilities that animate the local landscape." In this assignment, I want you to write an essay in which you discuss how Dissanayke's idea of "making special" might contradict, complement, and complicate Abram's hopes for "magic." How does Dissanayke limit or expand Abram's critique of the "reduction of the animal (and the earth) to an object"? How do the authors incorporate ideas and examples from non-western cultures into their arguments?

As with your earlier assignment, you should quote and analyze specific passages (at least two from each text) from the assigned texts and you should make connections among those passages. To write a successful paper, the passages you choose to quote and the argument you make should develop as a dialectic. Strong papers should have sustained moments of close analysis (like the ones we have been producing in class) that pay particular attention to how language is used in a passage in ways that extend or complicate your argument.

Rob Nelson, Fall 2000

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The Place of Human Community in Dillard, Dissanayake, and Abram

On first reading David Abram's "The Ecology of Magic," one may be tempted to dismiss him as some "New Age" guru, hawking mysticism to the gullible masses. For his part, Abram distinguishes himself from those in the West who turn to shamanism in hopes of learning more about "personal insight and curing" (21). Abram goes on to write:

These are noble aims, to be sure, yet they are secondary to, and derivative from, the primary role of the indigenous shaman, a role that cannot be fulfilled without long and sustained exposure to wild nature, to its patterns and vicissitudes. Mimicking the indigenous shaman's curative methods without his intimate knowledge of the wider natural community cannot, if I am correct, do anything more than trade certain symptoms for others, or shift the locus of dis-ease from place to place within the human community. For the source of stress lies in the relation between the human community and the natural landscape (original emphasis, 21).

What does Abram mean when he alludes to "the relation between the human community and the natural landscape"? Where does the shaman fit into this relation? What is his "intimate knowledge of the wider natural community"? And, since Abram rules out "mimicking the indigenous shaman's curative methods," what would Abram have those who are interested in escaping the "stress" of modern life do?

After you've read Abram's essay and considered these questions, I would like you to write an essay that discusses how "the relation between the human community and the natural landscape" is understood in the writings we've read by Dillard, Dissanayake, and Abram. How do these authors characterize this relation? What forces are responsible for creating it? What forces cause this relation to be disrupted, distorted, destroyed? What relation do the authors feel is ideal? What, if any, purpose does this relation serve? And, of what use is it to write about such matters?

Richard E. Miller, Spring 1999

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Dissanayake and Drucker: The Future of Art in the Age of Social Transformation

In Drucker's "knowledge society" what might be the future of the arts as Dissanyake understands them? What might be the future of "art" in the more traditional sense, as marketable objects crafted by a few gifted specialists? Explicitly, Drucker's essay tells us nothing about the arts, either as an object or as a process like "making special." Does Drucker's silence suggest that the arts have no place in society now emerging? Or could it be that the relation between art and non-art--and in particular, the relation between art and work--is undergoing a transformation?

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Dissanayake and Faludi: "Making Special" at The Citadel

In her essay "The Core of Art: Making Special," Ellen Dissanayake examines the behavioral tendency of humans to produce art. She describes this tendency as a desire to "make special," the human tendency to create "extra-ordinary" experiences. For this essay, please consider Dissanayake's essay in relation to Susan Faludi's essay "The Naked Citadel."

Choose one of the following areas to examine: social stratification and exclusion, tradition (in terms of The Citadel), performance of gender roles, or bonding and friendship among cadets. How might Dissanayake's concept of "making special" help us to understand the cadets strong beliefs and attitudes toward your chosen topic? In other words, how do the cadets feel they are "making special" and why do they feel the need to create an "extra-ordinary" experience?

Sharon Matt, Fall 2000

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Dissanayake and Gould: Science and Human Values

Would Ellen Dissanayake agree with Gould's views on the proper relation between human values and scientific discoveries? If not, does her approach directly contradict Gould's position or does it seem to represent an alternative he failed to consider but might approve?

Dissanayake and Willis: Art, Meditation, and Everyday Experience

Meditative traditions have played no significant part in Western life since the late Middle Ages, whereas they have persisted in the Eastern world from the earliest recorded history. After re-reading Ellen Dissanayake's essay, "The Core of Art," consider whether there may be a link between the modern banishment of art as a mode of experience and the disappearance of activities like meditation. Why and how did art cease to be something that anybody could do? Who benefitted and who lost out in this change? By analogy, who stands to benefit if people never learn how to control their own minds?

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