For Journal #8:  To illustrate the three moves of countering, Harris analyzed three writers’ rhetorical moves: Berger on Arguing the other Side, Millar on Uncovering Values, and Nehemas on Dissenting. For Wednesday’s work, I’d like you to do two things: 1) Choose one of the sources you’re using for your revision project and isolate a passage in the way Harris does. This passage should be one in which your source is working with his/her/their own source(s) and creating that critical distance Harris talks about in Chapter 3. Quote that passage and follow it with your own paragraph of rhetorical analysis that describes and explains how your source is doing it. 2) Your second job is to think about how you’re positioning yourself in relation to your sources. We’ll use Harris’s “Skepticism and Civility” (72-73). No doubt you’re forwarding some ideas, but for this exercise, you want to record your thinking about the limits of the arguments or approaches you’re engaging with.

https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/challenges-of-conservation/#abstract

Looking at the journal article, “Challenges of conservation: working items”, the author Elizabeth Pye presents a discussion on the conservation of historical items and the complexity that comes with the task of restoring an item while maintaining its significance. One point raised is the idea of a “Biography” of each item. Pye explains that the significance of an item is coupled with both the makers intention but also the purpose it served the user, and its present condition as a result of these experiences. Pye writes, “This is compounded of factors such as the makers’ intention (what was it for, why was it made and why was it made in the way that it was); what has happened to it since it was made; its associations with people and/or events; what it means to people now (and what it may mean in the future). So an object’s significance can be seen as the accretion of everything that has happened to it physically (including repairs and conservation) and the accumulation of different values”. In this, she raises the question of deciding whether part of the item’s value is in its deterioration and if so, how do you find the balance between preserving evidence of its use while making it an effective resource.    

Now, in this article, Pye is not discussing scrapbooks but “working objects” which she defines as “containing moving parts where the motive power is provided by the human body (e.g. a treadle lathe, or manual sewing machine) or through descending weights or coiled springs (e.g. clocks) or by steam, electricity or other forms of separately generated power”. This definition is limiting, as almost every object is a working object since they serve a purpose to its user. In my opinion scrapbooks fall under this definition. Scrapbooks initially served the purpose of holding items and preserving them and are technically powered by human force when a page is turned.