History 2C · Recorded session · UCLA
From a first reaction to a real thesis, in three questions.
Professor Teo Ruiz asked his History 2C students to interpret a single line from Walter Benjamin. This student does not start with a draft. They start by admitting that the sentence is not yet clear to them.
“There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”
Walter BenjaminQuestion 1It starts where the student is.
StudentI want to understand the quote before I write anything.
Kai CoachGood place to start. Benjamin writes that there is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. Take the sentence a piece at a time. What do you think he means by a document of civilization?
The student wants to understand the quotation first, so the coach breaks the sentence into pieces and asks about one.
Question 2At the stall, a definition and nothing more.
StudentI don't know
Kai CoachNo problem. A document of civilization is anything a culture keeps and celebrates as proof of its own achievement: an archive, a cathedral, a university, a canon of great books. Pick one we have looked at in this course. Who had to do what, and to whom, for that thing to exist?
Supplied the termLeft the reasoning to the student
Question 3It names the gap and leaves the fix to the student.
Student · first draftBenjamin's statement shows that many of the achievements celebrated in history were built through inequality and suffering. Cities and cultural institutions represent civilization and progress, but they also show the labor and violence that made them possible. His idea forces us to look underneath the surface of historical events.
Kai CoachYou are doing strong application work, but the paragraph is still closer to a reaction than to the claim Benjamin is actually making. You treat a monument of civilization as an achievement or an institution without saying what makes his assertion stronger and more arguable than “sometimes progress involves harm.” What exactly is he claiming is always true, and what would a reasonable person say if they wanted to disagree with him?
The first draft is fluent and impossible to disagree with. The coach asks what Benjamin claims is always true, and what an opponent would say.
The resultThe student writes the thesis.
Student · revisedBenjamin argues that no document of civilization is not also a document of barbarism, which means that every achievement celebrated as progress rests on suffering or oppression usually hidden from view. Some would argue that civilization can exist without causing harm. Benjamin's claim is that the exploitation is always part of its history, even when only historical investigation reveals it.
“Shows” becomes “argues”“Always” makes the claim universalThe student answers an objection
The coach named none of these three changes. The student made all of them. We have anonymized the student and paraphrased the exchange.
What would students write if they had to think first?
Kai Coach is part of Kudu Humanities.
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