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9: The Antithesis Exercise

  • Page ID
    6523
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    If you are coming to this chapter after working through some of the earlier exercises in this part of the book, you might find yourself quite attached to your topic and your working thesis. Perhaps you are so attached and focused on your topic that you have a hard time imagining why anyone would disagree with you. This attachment is certainly understandable. After you have done so much hunting in the library and on the Internet and thinking about your working thesis, you might have a hard time imaging how anyone could possibly disagree with your position, or why they would want to. But it is important to remember that not all of your potential readers are going to automatically agree with you. If your topic or take on an issue is particularly controversial, you might have to work hard at convincing almost all of your readers about the validity of your argument.

    The process of considering opposing viewpoints is the goal of this exercise, the Antithesis essay. Think about this exercise as a way of exploring the variety of different and opposing views to the main argument you are trying to make with your research project.


    This page titled 9: The Antithesis Exercise is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Steven D. Krause.