MCAT Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills Question 41: Answer and Explanation

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Test Information

Question: 41

3. When the author quotes Henry Giroux's description of cultural studies practitioners as "resisting intellectuals" (paragraph 2), he most nearly means that:

  • A. professors approaching literature this way reject an overly academic approach.
  • B. the cultural studies movement began as an underground movement.
  • C. professors reveal their own opinions in class in order to provoke disagreement and discussion from students.
  • D. such academics take a multifarious approach to analyzing phenomena in a text.

Correct Answer: D

Explanation:

D This is an Inference question.

A: No. While these practitioners are resisting traditional divisions in academia between disciplines (e.g., between literary criticism and history), being "academic" is not identified in the passage with respecting these divisions. Therefore, there is no evidence to support the idea that what they are rejecting is an "overly academic" approach.

B: No. There is no evidence that cultural studies began as a secretive movement. This is taking the word "resisting" out of the context of the passage.

C: No. This choice is wrong first because there is no evidence that professors introduce their own viewpoints in order to provoke disagreement, only that introduction of the professor's own political views may be part of instruction. Second, introduction of the professor's own views is given as perhaps one aspect of the "emancipatory project," but not as part of a definition of what the term "resisting intellectuals" itself means.

D: Yes. The author states that these intellectuals "see what they do as 'an emancipatory project' because it erodes the traditional disciplinary divisions" by "scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of a text" (paragraph 2). This means that rather than studying only the text itself (or other aspects traditionally seen as "literary" issues related to it) cultural critics bring in other issues relating to the culture within which the text appears. This aligns with what the author said earlier in the paragraph, that "cultural studies transcends the confines of a particular discipline." Therefore, these academics take a multifarious or diverse approach to a text.

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