Aphorisms on Method

The below painting, Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, is what is called an anamorphic image.

As you look around the image, it seems pretty standard, until you get to the strange oval object at the bottom-center of the painting. What is this thing? It seems to make no sense at all. If, however, you place your eyes at the bottom of this oval, tilt the image away from you, and look diagonally across the oval – go ahead, give it a try – what happens is that the oval object starts to take the shape of something we recognize. The image is called anamorphic because it, or a certain element in it, undergoes a metamorphosis of sorts when you look at it from a different angle. Looking straight at the image, the oval disk seems to be an incoherent blob of nothingness; when you adjust your perspective, however, that blob of nothingness is rendered comprehensible as a skull.

The idea behind an anamorphic image is that the way in which you look at something changes the way that thing appears; the object is the same, but your perspective has changed, and so your understanding of the object is different. Sometimes, all you need in order to make sense of something that seems incoherent and meaningless is to look at it from the right perspective.

Anamorphic Texts: In academic writing, the texts you interpret can be anamorphic as well. That is, documents and information that at first seem incoherent and meaningless can be rendered comprehensible if looked at from the right perspective.

Method as Perspective: In academic writing, the way in which you look at the object of your interpretation – the perspective you take – is called your method.

Method as Path: From the Greek μετα, “after,” + ὁδός, “path, way,” your method is the path or way upon which you travelled (or plan to travel) in order to reach your destination, your destination being your argument.

Text, Method, Argument: As such, there is a close relationship between text, methodology, and argument. If your text is the thing you're interpreting, and your argument is your interpretation of that thing, then your method is the way in which you went about your interpretation of your text in order to arrive at your argument.

How You're Interpreting: That is, method is not a what but a how. What you want your reader to understand is your argument; how you have gone about your interpretation, or how you’re going to persuade your reader to accept your argument, is your method.

Method and the Fields of Evidence: Your method is about how you're relating the various fields of evidence involved in an essay. A non-exhaustive list of possiblemethods includes: 

Historicist Essay: A consideration of a text in light of historical circumstances relevant to the way it came into existence.

Comparative Essay: A consideration of similar texts, ideas, events that come from different contexts.

Lens Essay: The use of one text or idea (usually philosophical or theoretical in nature) to unpack and explain a particular example or set of data. 

Test-a-Theory Essay: The use of an example or data set to evaluate (and potentially improve or disprove) a general philosophical or theoretical idea. 

Presentist Essay: The use of a historical text or idea to unpack and discuss a recent text or idea. 

Meta-Analysis: A collection and synthesis of several studies on a related topic in an effort to draw some more stable or general conclusions. 

Acknowledge Your Theoretical Community: Your discussion of your method is, most importantly, the place to acknowledge your theoretical community, which consists of any philosophers or theorists who have influenced the way in which you’re interpreting your text(s). Sometimes you can interpret a text on your own, by looking at evidence, analyzing that evidence, making inferences, and drawing conclusions; but sometimes you have recourse – either during the act of interpretation (i.e., when reading a text), or in the course of articulating that interpretation (i.e., when writing a paper) – to abstract ideas, conceptual models that elucidate a certain kind of problem (an instance of which, you feel, is present in the text you’re currently interpreting). Let’s call these abstract ideas theory. A paper includes a significant theoretical component when it uses abstract ideas to make sense of particular facts.

Method as Lens: Your theoretical community provides you with the conceptual lens through which you have looked at or will be looking at a text, or, perhaps, a heuristic that enhances your ability to communicate your interpretation of the text you’re looking at. Method is about using abstract ideas to explain particular examples.

Justify Your Method: It is best to justify your method with reference to the text you’re interpreting. Why does the text you’re looking at call for the method in which you’re looking at it?

Argument by Analogy vs. by Influence: I have one final note for bringing in theory that is itself historical (as opposed to recent). Often your method will be to bring in roughly contemporaneous philosophical works in order to unpack a literary work. When you do so, be aware of two different ways in which you might justify doing so: the argument for analogy, and the arguments for influence. In an argument for analogy, the basic claim is that we can better understand the literary work we are dealing with by referring to the philosophical work you bring up, that the philosophical work is, in a sense, an explicit statement of the ideas implicated but not stated out right in the literary work. In the argument for influence, the claim is that the author of the literary work you’re considering new about and was influenced by the philosophical work you bring up, that the philosophy (at least in part) inspired the literature; or, alternately, that the author of the philosophical work new about and was influenced by the literary work, that the literature (at least in part) inspired the philosophy.

Theory for Argument and Analysis: Use your theoretical community to analyze both general themes and specific moments. That is, in a research paper, give a general overview of your theoretical perspective in your introduction (after you’ve identified your text, before you’ve given your argument), and keep returning to specific points in your theory to elucidate specific points in your evidence throughout the analyses you perform in your paper.

Method Statements: Just as a papers can have problem statements and thesis statements, they can have method statements

Structuring a Method Statement: In an essay, the best place to establish you method is in the introduction—after stepping up the question/problem, before delivering your thesis statement. That is, tell your reader what you’re going to interpret (text) and why it needs to be interpreted (question/problem), and then – before you say what your interpretation is (thesis) – tell your reader the way in which this thing that needs to be interpreted has been or should be interpreted (method).