Quote Yourself

 

            I’ll admit that I had an exceptionally difficult time deciding what to write about for this week’s blogpost. After mulling it over for a night, I’ve decided to blog about the first thing that came to mind. Last week, Amelia wrote about being the main source of manipulation in her life. It was extremely refreshing to read because when I personally hear the term manipulation, I don’t like to picture myself as the manipulator. It’s always some outside force cloaked in darkness (a dementor maybe?), hovering over me, telling me to eat more chocolate or buy the bungee chair. Of course, when I take a step back I realize that manipulation isn’t always a bad thing, and that it can even be a good thing. But if we’re going off gut reactions, yes, I do associate manipulation with a negative connotation. But anyways, that’s all beside the point.

            My point is, that in writing my defensive paper for my chapter addition, I realize just how capable I am as a manipulator. In a typical English paper, we draw quotes from other literary texts to bolster our thesis. We choose our quotes carefully, insert them strategically, and expand on them in a way that best supports our argument. In using our chapter additions to support our papers, we are manipulating ourselves. We use what we have already written to create our point. Even when I was writing my chapter addition, I already had certain quotes that I knew would add to my paper. Or even when I didn’t have specific sentences in mind, I at least had an idea of where my essay would eventually go. In this sense, I held all the power to manipulate my self-written text—more so than if I were to draw evidence from Fuentes or Montgomery.

            Acknowledging this power is both liberating and terrifying. I don’t like to believe that I am a manipulator, let alone my own manipulator. On the other hand, it’s nice to know that I have this control. After all, I know myself as a writer and as a person better than anyone else. So, as awkward as it might be to quote myself, I definitely appreciate this assignment because I’ve never been able to quote, draw from, and manipulate my own writing in such a formal way.