Contract

I'm trying to come up with a contract or a thesis question. I tend to focus panoramic in my research instead of portrait. So the large question I'm always interested in is: How do we reinforce discourse and buttress inquiry into the structure of our deliberative spaces?

And I'm not sure where to go from there.

My question assumes there is something less than perfect with the current system or at least something about the current system that is constantly susceptible to earthquakes of a kind, thus the need for buttressing. What kind of job am I talking about? If argument was a HGTV show, would this be an extreme makeover type show, or more of a Design on a Dime kind of thing? Or somewhere in between? Am I arguing for cosmetic changes? Organizational issues? Renovation? Demolition?

I think I need to spend some time engaging in agonism to answer this question. IS THERE ANYTHING VALUABLE IN AGONISM? Should it be demoed or just renoed? And I think I need to answer that before I can get too much farther. But I don't know if I need to know that to write a thesis question. I've always been an intuitive writer. As an undergrad, I pointedly (and successfully) wrote my final paper for my Teaching Writing class without a thesis stated anywhere in the paper. My gut has betrayed me.