The following is the introduction of Daisy Dixon's article

Dixon, D. (2022). Artistic (Counter) Speech. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 80(4), 409-419.

I think it has an excellent introduction. Here, I try to spell out why I think the introduction exemplifies good writing. Overall I think this intro effectively tells us a) what the paper is about; b) what the stakes are (i.e. why it's worth our time); and c) what it proposes to do (and why the proposal is cool).

Original text in blockquote. My own opinions in plain paragraphs.

In 1778, Spiridione Roma’s The East Offering its Riches to Britannia was installed in the East India Company’s London headquarters. The painting is an allegory for Britain’s commercial domination over Asia during the Company’s control. As well as reflecting the enshrined racism in the Company, the painting was propaganda used to express the false notion that extracted wealth was going to Britain as a whole, and that the Company’s relationship with India was “consensual and benevolent” without coercion or violence (Procter 2020, 56–8).

An example is good. It helps to tell us what the paper is roughly about. Here it suggests that this painting does something, namely, serves as propaganda that perpetuates problematic ideas. So the paper is probably about art that appears to be morally shady,

In 1970, Allen Jones exhibited Hatstand, Table, and Chair; sculptures of women wearing fetish clothing posed as furniture. The pieces were met with angry protests; viewers accused them of objectifying women. Regardless of the artist’s intentions, the installation became part of a familiar artistic narrative where women are historically reduced to passive, servile objects in painting and sculpture (Eaton 2012).

Another example is good. It suggests that the first one isn't an isolated incident. It also emphasises something interesting: the intention doesn't determine the message or content.

And in 2019, London National Gallery’s Paul Gauguin Portraits opened with a debate to address the ethical concerns about the artist and his work. When in the South Pacific—where he created some of his best-known paintings—Gauguin sexually abused girls as young as thirteen. Importantly, it is difficult not to see his sexualized attitude toward his child brides in his portraits of them, such as Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892).1 This work depicts one of his adolescent wives who, according to the artist, was lying in fear one night when he arrived home (Dorra 2007).

Three is probably the maximum number of examples (of this length) in introductions. (If examples are extremely short, probably one can invoke more. But one must make sure that short examples can get readers on board.) One may start wondering, of course, why don't the first two examples suffice. I think two examples already suffice, but this third one adds something more, so it deserves to be here. It is about something that happen really recently. And something famous. And something people may have conflicting intuitions about. Consider how this example may be received by the public. On one hand, people might think "can we leave art alone?" or "is cancel culture going wild?" or "can't we just focus on the art?" But on the other hand, the behaviour and the content are both pretty pretty bad. It sets up a tension, a problem that needs to be resolved. It helps us believe that this paper deserves to exist. If the paper were to only have one example, keep this one.

These cases, among many more, show that far from being innocuous objects in museums and white cubes, artworks do and say things. In particular, it has been argued that artworks—visual ones—can be speech acts.2 They can do things like assert, protest, and subordinate. These are things we normally do with words. If artworks can perform speech acts, then presumably they can do harmful acts, like those in hate speech; racist, misogynistic, or homophobic language, for example. Recognizing artistic speech reveals a distinctive potential harm toward marginalized groups.

An immediate explanation is necessary. Examples only go so far, and by themselves serve neither as explanations nor arguments. Spell things out. I also want to highlight that in this paragraph, the first terminology is introduced. "Speech acts." What are speech acts? It's probably impossible to explain this concept wholly in the introduction, but "...they can do things like..." gives us a good starting point to understand what speech acts are. The introduction of this concept helps us to understand that art can do (problematic) things.

Some have begun exploring how we can mitigate such harms in art through counterspeech. For example, spray painting “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) on Confederate monuments can “challenge derogatory messages of black inferiority … by making vivid the fact that the Confederacy was founded upon slavery” (Lai 2020, 608). Indeed, we may even have a duty to do this to such political symbols (ibid).

This paragraph goes a bit further. It tells us what people have actually been doing. Protests have done this and that. And theorists have talked about this very issue. I personally think it's nice to highlight previous literature, but it isn't always necessary. It really depends on how long the introduction should be (and this needs to be compared to how long the rest of the paper is), and how much relevant literature there is. One particular note. I've been told that sometimes journal (associate) editors look for literature review paragraphs for potential reviewers, but this doesn't always happen.

In this article, I broaden the notion of what I call ‘artistic counterspeech’ and identify aesthetic and curatorial strategies to disarm sexist and racist artworks. I propose that aesthetic spotlighting and aesthetic blocking can undo the work’s harmful content. I then show how these strategies can, under certain conditions, lead to what I call ‘metaphysical destruction’ of the artwork—destroying hateful art without physically destroying it. My account forms an important contribution to understanding the nature and mileage of counterspeech that utilizes aesthetic expression.

This is arguably the most important paragraph in the introduction. For very short essays, everything can be omitted but this paragraph. It tells us what this paper does. This gives us information particularly about why we may want to read this paper. It also tells us what contribution the article makes to the debate. It builds upon this notion called "counterspeech" introduced in the previous paragraph. It proposes this thing called "artistic counterspeech" that does pretty nice things: "disarm[ing] sexist and racist artwork." There are then a few terminologies. "aesthetic spotlighting" and "aesthetic blocking." These two are not explained, but I personally think they are clear-enough-ish. But remember there's always a risk that some readers won't get on board immediately. So one always has to weigh between clarity and length in an introduction (and everywhere else in any paper FWIW). Up to this point, I think the paper is fine and interesting, but then this concept appeared: "metaphysical destruction of [an] artwork" that "destroy[s] hateful art without physically destroying it." This sounds contradictory at first glance, but it also gives me the anticipation that if this concept can be spelled out coherently, it would be a good one and would make the paper really worth reading.

Section I argues that visual artworks can perform speech acts. Some might consider this controversial, and I do not exhaustively defend it here, but I do provide support for it. Section II extends this account to hate speech. After raising issues with censorship, Section III outlines artistic counterspeech, comprised of aesthetic spotlighting and blocking, and destruction.

This is the "road map" paragraph. I am a huge fan of signposting. But people love it or hate it.