Is it Bullshit, or is it Not?

After reading both Gere’s and Eubanks’ and Schaeffer’s pieces, it has amazed me how alike both writers truly are. But what has amazed me the most, is seeing that they both think very similar to myself. As a second year college student, I have found that English is no longer “fun”. Each and every day I work with first year students, and at least once a day I hear about how they hate their English classes because of all the rules. I think Gere, Eubanks and Schaeffer hit this topic right now the head. All together Gere, Eubanks and Schaeffer agree that the writing process has become too rule oriented. Within Gere’s piece, she quotes from Multiple Functions, “you feel Brave here. You feel brave at the women writers group” (pg. 76). With this quotation, Gere shares about women who participate in the Women’s Writing Workshop. These women take time out of their family/working lives to write and enjoy writing. Within Gere’s piece, she writes how writing has no longer become relaxing, instead it has become too rule oriented. Children should be able to use their imagination, instead of worrying about rules. While Gere writes about the unimaginative writing, Eubanks and Schaeffer write about the fabrication of writing. Because so many writers fear breaking the so called rules, they add exaggeration into a lot of their work. This exaggeration is added to make the piece more interesting, because they cannot use imagination. Overall, all together Gere, Eubanks, and Schaeffer agree that without imagination, only bad consequences come.

Eubanks and Schaeffer have based their article on the topic of Bullshit! We all have heard the word, and might possibly misuse it each and every day. Eubanks and Schaeffer argue that all written pieces now include some sort of bullshit. Because people have so many boundaries to stay within, they are adding fabrication to all of their work. This fabrication is often used to make the piece more interesting for the reader. However, this is called bullshit, because in a research paper, there are fine lines between what actually happened, and what could have actually happened. For creative pieces fabrication or Bullshit is allowed, however in formal essays it is not. Eubanks and Schaeffer use many examples to portray this. For instance, an example within the essay is the salesman/client situation. The salesman truly fabricates the car by only showing it’s positive points, and by making the car’s bad aspects not seen. According to Eubanks and Schaeffer, “The sales situation exemplifies bullshitting to convince someone, but bullshit can also aim to create an ethos for its own sale, to misrepresent the speaker simply for the pleasure of doing so” (pg. 378). This means that the car salesman is not only affecting the sale of the car, but also the selling points of himself.

Overall, I found both pieces very interesting, and was very surprised with how much I agree. Usually when I read an academic piece it seems to be mumble jumble, however both Gere’s and Schaeffer and Eubank’s pieces were very agreeable for me. I found them very intriguing, and they grabbed my attention!