Interrogating Texts

What Should we Bring to the Table?

Whenever I approach texts I like to bring my mental baloney detection kit, especially if the text is making a truth claim about reality, but what you should try to bring to every is an open mind. To quote Michael Shermer "You want to have a mind open enough to accept radical new ideas but not so open that your brains fall out." 

While Sheremer was speaking about scientific claims this is a mentality that is useful when approaching any text. Whether you are encountering art, and op-ed, or a blog post you should be aware that everything can be critically analyzed but everything is not credible and you are not going to like everything.

Checking the Gut

There's nothing intrinsically wrong about having a gut reaction upon viewing a text, I believe it is natural response to information of any kind that we encounter, however, it is critical analysis that stops us from all being rudimentary film critics. Thumbs up or thumbs down can be useful to begin a discussion but it can't shouldn't be the full extent of a reaction. 

Even if after critical analysis your opinion of a work changes, say from "It sucked" to "Meh," there isn't a problem with having a initial emotional response to a text. A problem only arises when you can't critically analyze texts. With that in mind, we should approach texts with as much neutrality as possible while understanding some biases and gut reactions are to be expected.

Questions?

No matter how complex a text may be the Five W's (and one H) are usually the most effective way to analyze any text and it is these questions we should keep in mind when encountering a text. "Are there any question we shouldn't ask?" This is probably the only question we should rule completely out. 

With that said, there's a big difference between never ruling out something, and that thing being a good idea. For example: "Is this all a big conspiracy, is he the anti-Christ, what similarities does this have with Hitler, etc." Yeah you can ask these questions but the overwhelming majority of the time these questions aren't going to help anyone do anything.