An essay’s original meaning is a journey, not a closed argument

Evidence

LIKE OLD SURVIVOR, you’ll find that this book is a bit oddly shaped. The arguments and observations I’ll make here are not neat, interlocking parts in a logical whole. Rather, I saw and experienced many things during the course of writing it—things that changed my mind and then changed it again, and which I folded in as I went. I came out of this book different than I went in. So, consider this not a closed transmission of information, but instead an open and extended essay, in the original sense of the word (a journey, an essaying forth). It’s less a lecture than an invitation to take a walk. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 34

Categorization

• DEFINE: Etymology of ‘essay’ as ‘a journey, an essaying forth’ directly supports the chapter’s method framing.
• XREF: connects to: The essay form demands resistance to monumental completion and enduring flux — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 111; Antisystematic essays resist summary because form is essential to their effect — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 541; The essay form suited Hall’s provisional, open-ended mode of analysis
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The essay form demands resistance to monumental completion and enduring flux — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 111; Antisystematic essays resist summary because form is essential to their effect — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 541; The essay form suited Hall’s provisional, open-ended mode of analysis