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Mel Mudkiper posted:I must once again state that best book on beginner critical theory is Mythologies by Barthes Wow dude, you managed to recommend the book that everyone else recommends, bravo. We got a real critical-theory-knower here.
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Jun 4, 2020 03:59
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cda posted:Wow dude, you managed to recommend the book that everyone else recommends, bravo. We got a real critical-theory-knower here. It must be very frustrating to want to craft a meaningful response but know you lack the ability to do so. I forgive you for these outbursts of frustration as you grapple with your own limitations
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Jun 4, 2020 04:06
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I'm glad that I missed all of this, like a six-hour probation at 2 a.m. Please
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Jun 4, 2020 04:06
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Mel Mudkiper posted:It must be very frustrating to want to craft a meaningful response but know you lack the ability to do so. I forgive you for these outbursts of frustration as you grapple with your own limitations Devastating putdown from a guy who has been persistently confusing the terms "signifier" and "sign" for like two pages.
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Jun 4, 2020 04:32
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By all means keep dropping insults to make it look like you arent reading wikipedia (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 4, 2020 04:43
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Stop the slapfight, please.
I'm the Book Barn IK. Feel free to PM me or email bookbarnsecretsanta@gmail.com if I can help you with anything.
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Jun 4, 2020 05:11
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Mel Mudkiper posted:*kramers into thread* I would have tagged you in my above post it we could do that with this dumb dead comedy forums software held together by paperclips and spit, thanks for the effortpost
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Jun 4, 2020 05:34
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nut posted:But isn’t there social consensus in the meaning of signifiers or else languages would be useless? I think of it more like a fuzzy probability distribution of meaning. And social change works by slowly dragging the centrepoint of the distribution in one way or another Mel Mudkiper posted:There is no consensus, instead there is only the assumption of consensus and language exists only as long as there is no dissonance in this assumptions An interesting punt on Plato's typology, I like it
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Jun 4, 2020 06:10
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I must once again state that best book on beginner critical theory is Mythologies by Barthes Challenge accepted. Once I can return to the office, the library is open, etc.
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Jun 4, 2020 06:14
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Mrenda posted:I know you chose not to deal with this(not in detail, anyway,) but I'll bite on it and run. That something is subjective is its state, and not a choice someone makes for it, but the appraisal of it can have conscious control. Maybe the unintentional posterchild of post-modernism (at least on the internet) is, "Haha, that's awful. It's great!" The idea that something can be both bad and good at the same time (without getting into the idea that extremes of anything can be considered exemplary and thus have a "Greatness.") But it gets at the contemporary. And this is why scientists have such a difficult time with this stance, since we are so concerned with observable, repeatable, objective truth. Yet Popper kind of hosed me up because one must always allow for the black swan to exist, so even in science, to me, there is a contingency to "truth" that renders the ground always potentially unstable. Its pretty great actually but it drives folks that just want "The Answer" mad and makes it easy to undermine science like you see in the current discourse
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Jun 4, 2020 06:19
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Bilirubin posted:I think of it more like a fuzzy probability distribution of meaning. if ur gonna start talking to me about bayesian language im dying
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Jun 4, 2020 11:28
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gently caress, by total happenstance i started reading mr palomar just because its been kicking around on my shelf and I was looking for something short and I just read the first chapter and gently caress.
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Jun 4, 2020 18:31
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Would it be possible to build a robot powerful enough to observe reality and describe it in purely objective terms, or does any transmission of information between two parties fall victim to semiotics?
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Jun 4, 2020 19:14
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Something Else posted:Would it be possible to build a robot powerful enough to observe reality and describe it in purely objective terms, or does any transmission of information between two parties fall victim to semiotics? How would it describe it without language?
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Jun 4, 2020 19:30
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Mel Mudkiper posted:How would it describe it without language? Architectural dance?
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Jun 4, 2020 19:55
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It's like an acid that can dissolve anything. Even if you could invent it, what would you keep it in?
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Jun 4, 2020 20:11
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Something Else posted:Would it be possible to build a robot powerful enough to observe reality and describe it in purely objective terms, or does any transmission of information between two parties fall victim to semiotics? I mean, even if you're intercepting the raw data from some set of mechanical eyes and having that data piped directly into your brain, your consciousness is still what makes that sense data comprehensible to you. There's not a world that exists apart from perception because the "mediation" of the senses that bothers naive empiricists is what makes access to reality possible at all. There's this thing psychologists used to do with deaf people who hadn't learned to sign or like with Helen Keller where they asked what it was like for her before she learned to communicate, and her answer was that the question was impossible because she can only use the concepts that came to her through communicating with others in order to understand that experience--it was like describing it as an outside observer might. Without a way to communicate it, it also can't be understood even when it's your own memory, because how else would you make sense of it even to yourself?
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Jun 4, 2020 23:11
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Mel Mudkiper posted:How would it describe it without language? Numbers, or vectors perhaps
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Jun 5, 2020 01:03
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Robot sounds like it’d be fun at parties
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Jun 5, 2020 01:10
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Two things come to mind, firstly the idea of what a book actually is, secondly what books (or communication) can't be. There's plenty of thoughts throughout history about books as a recounting of reality, moving towards books as a telling of the mind, books addressing the nature of books, etc. If a book is written from the perspective of one person, then its their telling. But the book is the thing itself (before the reader comes into it to make it whole,) not the situation they, the protagonist (theoretically) has been through. If there was a magical book that somehow let the reader experience what the protagonist had been through it would still be limited by what the protagonist can make/relay of their perspective (sort of.) I've also seen people complain that books make them or expect them to do "too much" work. Where something isn't written-enough to fully create a "world" (although view-of-environment/situation might be better, experience-of better again.) This is certainly a potential flaw, but there's also the failing of the reader in bridging the "imaginative" gap between them and the book. If a book is to be experienced then what you could say is that the reader simulates the language of the book into a certain reality for the reader. It's not simply words communicating from the page a specific communication (that the author put down (as communication involves two parties)) but the affective/thoughtful creation the reader makes of it. If a book causes, i.e. the book brings the reader to make something from it, then you can say its been effective. One idea of this is the reader "engaging" with the book. That they're allowed, firstly, to perceive the words written, but secondly, allowed to perceive as someone not wholly dictated—i.e. without humanity/individuality—to by the book. Something so precise to relay exact information would be a flaw. Part of the nature of the books—even of reality—is that the experiencer becomes involved to make something of it. If everything was accounted for in the book the reader would become a golem. Secondly, and running from how pre-sign language deaf people "thought" there's more about putting individual experiences into relatable communications for third parties. Transgender people are running into this problem now. Their experience is pathologised and so forced to fit into perspectives, not of their own, but of medicine. The same can be said of people who are autistic or schizophrenic, a neurodivergent mindspace being shaped into the contains of a non-neurodivergent mind. With all these things you have existences that are at odds with the predominant view of existence, trying to form their existence into an acceptable shape for people who have never and may well not be able to understand it. Is it enough for a trans person to relay their experience of their body as "It feels" rather than "It feels like" when they, equally, have no understanding of the "like" from a non-trans perspective. Is it enough for a neurodivergent person to point out, "You make no sense," when their only idea of "your sense" is through mass-media they've been forced to become familiar with. Books are the "It feels like" not the "It feels."
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Jun 5, 2020 01:23
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Mrenda posted:Secondly, and running from how pre-sign language deaf people "thought" there's more about putting individual experiences into relatable communications for third parties. Transgender people are running into this problem now. Their experience is pathologised and so forced to fit into perspectives, not of their own, but of medicine. The same can be said of people who are autistic or schizophrenic, a neurodivergent mindspace being shaped into the contains of a non-neurodivergent mind. With all these things you have existences that are at odds with the predominant view of existence, trying to form their existence into an acceptable shape for people who have never and may well not be able to understand it. Is it enough for a trans person to relay their experience of their body as "It feels" rather than "It feels like" when they, equally, have no understanding of the "like" from a non-trans perspective. Is it enough for a neurodivergent person to point out, "You make no sense," when their only idea of "your sense" is through mass-media they've been forced to become familiar with. Andrea Dworkin wrote about this pretty convincingly in the 70s, wondering how or to what degree the rigidity of gender roles in the era determined self-conception and expression of identity by the self—for everyone, but especially people who were marginalized or brutalized for nonconformity, like trans or gay people. Her speculation that people might find a wider range of self-understanding if the vocabulary of thinkable identities were expanded has to some degree come true with the range of nonbinary modes of expression that have emerged since then. I guess Judith Butler is the standard text for a more nuanced take, but I’ve never had the patience for her prose. Maybe one day. If you’re trying to understand yourself, you’re limited by experience and vocabulary—I almost certainly had friends as a kid who would have identified as trans if the idea had been available for them to assimilate, but it wasn’t there so they understood themselves by different terms and had a different kind of life as a result. Does the concept also limit the possible range of experience by proscribing a specific mode of existence? In some abstract sense yes, but it’s better having more rather than fewer.
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Jun 5, 2020 02:17
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Andrea Dworkin wrote about this pretty convincingly in the 70s, wondering how or to what degree the rigidity of gender roles in the era determined self-conception and expression of identity by the self—for everyone, but especially people who were marginalized or brutalized for nonconformity, like trans or gay people. Her speculation that people might find a wider range of self-understanding if the vocabulary of thinkable identities were expanded has to some degree come true with the range of nonbinary modes of expression that have emerged since then. I guess Judith Butler is the standard text for a more nuanced take, but I’ve never had the patience for her prose. Maybe one day. Yeah, absolutely. There's also the idea that other people—and relating/interacting with them—will necessarily force boundaries. Boundaries which have to be adhered to or broken. Understanding yourself, maybe, can only be an action once your-self becomes something not understood. To me that's in seeing yourself through others eyes, i.e. via the boundaries of what is and isn't acceptable. Similarly it's through the creation of language as a way to conceive of subject/object (and to go Freudian subject/object/the law/etc.,) the self, thought-as-thought-on-thought, of the self and other things. Once elements become external to us (as thought/thought-as-exterior/language-exterior-as-thought-conceiving can be) and existence not be naturally "gripped" (an assumed understanding/integrated understanding without needing to recognise understanding) then it sets us up to be alienated from ourselves. There's elements of physicality to a lot of trans people, a desire for a different body, something achievable—to a degree—with modern medicine. But self-conception as trauma or pathology can only exist once that self exists as something in opposition. Dialects or contrast highlight where the self is wrong/flawed, and its that contrast, or the conception of the contrast, that begins the self. However, language/thought, through our evolution and our learning of it, naturally sets the self as a party removed for the self in the first place. Basically, thinking (and the ability to conceive of thinking in outside terms) has hosed us up. I'm sure this is all basic bitch stuff, but it's what I can manage from my limited reading/thinking.
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Jun 5, 2020 03:15
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Mrenda posted:Yeah, absolutely. There's also the idea that other people—and relating/interacting with them—will necessarily force boundaries. Boundaries which have to be adhered to or broken. Understanding yourself, maybe, can only be an action once your-self becomes something not understood. To me that's in seeing yourself through others eyes, i.e. via the boundaries of what is and isn't acceptable. Similarly it's through the creation of language as a way to conceive of subject/object (and to go Freudian subject/object/the law/etc.,) the self, thought-as-thought-on-thought, of the self and other things. Once elements become external to us (as thought/thought-as-exterior/language-exterior-as-thought-conceiving can be) and existence not be naturally "gripped" (an assumed understanding/integrated understanding without needing to recognise understanding) then it sets us up to be alienated from ourselves. I don't know if you've read Lacan or not but if you haven't I think you'd find a lot there that confirms what you're talking about, and if you have then your application of it to trans issues is real interesting.
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Jun 5, 2020 04:13
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cda posted:I don't know if you've read Lacan or not but if you haven't I think you'd find a lot there that confirms what you're talking about, and if you have then your application of it to trans issues is real interesting. The closest I've come to Lacan is reading Kristeva, and to a degree Anti-Oedipus(not directly on Lacan), which I've still not finished, and I suppose some of attachment theory would apply. I'm not sold on the Freudian oedipal triangle though, mainly in its construction as a "triangle" and being based on "family" (natural or not.) People in the past have told me the psychoanalysis is effective in countries where its still popular, but I'm not sure if it's because it's a pure/truthful/grounded understanding of where people are at, or if it's because anyone with a system to interpret the world through will necessarily fare better (system/faith/perspective/whatever.) And my application of it to trans issues was just an example, not an analysis of anything specifically trans. I was just trying to get across the idea of having to relate (communicate) a phenomenological perception of the self (the state of being transgender)(from a pre-conscious state) via self-understanding/thought as thought-as-language/thought as mediated conception, to the understanding of another/third party. Applying it to neurodivergence would provide the same material.
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Jun 5, 2020 04:36
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Something Else posted:Numbers, or vectors perhaps i have some bad news for your about numbers
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Jun 5, 2020 10:31
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Mrenda posted:The closest I've come to Lacan is reading Kristeva, and to a degree Anti-Oedipus(not directly on Lacan), which I've still not finished, and I suppose some of attachment theory would apply. I'm not sold on the Freudian oedipal triangle though, mainly in its construction as a "triangle" and being based on "family" (natural or not.) People in the past have told me the psychoanalysis is effective in countries where its still popular, but I'm not sure if it's because it's a pure/truthful/grounded understanding of where people are at, or if it's because anyone with a system to interpret the world through will necessarily fare better (system/faith/perspective/whatever.) there's an (admittedly controversial) take in psychotherapy called the dodo conjecture that essentially says this, that all forms of tested psychotherapy are equally good, because if you provide someone with a therapist who treats their problems seriously and gives them a framework to understand them then that person is going to feel better, no matter the 'actual' causes
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Jun 5, 2020 10:46
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Mel Mudkiper posted:There is no consensus, instead there is only the assumption of consensus and language exists only as long as there is no dissonance in this assumptions OK so would this be where the innate, instinctual grammatical structure of the mind theory of Chomsky would join the battlefield?
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Jun 11, 2020 01:14
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Bilirubin posted:OK so would this be where the innate, instinctual grammatical structure of the mind theory of Chomsky would join the battlefield? Well, Chomsky is quite explicitly a structuralist and the basic formulation of his theories of universal grammar etc. predate foundational poststructuralist texts by a little bit (7 years or so) so it's less that Chomsky was joining the battlefield than that Chomsky was already on the battlefield when dudes like Derrida showed up.
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Jun 11, 2020 03:10
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Cool thanks
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Jun 11, 2020 05:31
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chomskys wrong btw
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Jun 11, 2020 10:07
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please do not archive TIA
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Sep 20, 2020 05:25
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An article about how skills in literary analysis can be learned and are useful in life https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/10/20/meaning-college-literature-class-during-pandemic-always/?arc404=true
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Oct 25, 2020 16:19
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I enjoyed that, thanks!  Very little re: actual literary analysis, if I'm frank, but it put a smile on my face
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Oct 25, 2020 17:40
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Bilirubin posted:An article about how skills in literary analysis can be learned and are useful in life https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/10/20/meaning-college-literature-class-during-pandemic-always/?arc404=true Collections: The Practical Case on Why We Need the Humanities posted:[...]What is being taught here is thus a detached, careful form of analysis and decision-making and then a set of communication skills to present that information. Phrased another way: a student is being trained – whatever branch of specialist knowledge they may develop in the future – on how to serve as an advisor (who analyzes information and presents recommendations) or as a leader (who makes and then explains decisions to others).
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Oct 25, 2020 19:32
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Drakyn posted:Although not about literary analysis specifically, this sort of gives me vaguely similar vibes to something that the ACOUP guy did on his blog a while back, where he attempted to construct an entirely practical argument for funding and studying the humanities (he's quite clear in the lead-up to it that he has no problems with other arguments for them and agrees with them; he just thinks this particular argument is less frequently made and is also important). Some snippets: That's a real good argument and also a strong defense for the liberal arts tradition generally. Everyone needs a basic grounding in these subjects despite their specialization.
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Oct 25, 2020 19:48
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I must once again state that best book on beginner critical theory is Mythologies by Barthes Reminder, I still must do that. Hello any and all potential new readers due to the temporary book forum upstairs. You likely know more about literary criticism than I. Educate me!
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Apr 3, 2023 19:59
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Bilirubin posted:Alright. Just finished the lengthy chapter on Structuralism and Semiotics. Frightfully little on what structuralism is and how it applies to literary criticism that I could tell. LOTS of criticism of it and structural linguistics (some explicitly Marxist criticism here, not just the usual obvious author perspective background commentary), which he blends with semiotics with a wave of a hand... It's been a hot minute since I read it, but Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature by John Culler was a very elucidating read for me if you want to get a good digestible course on structuralism and literary semiotics. I'll be honest, I don't really have a clear understanding of what a solely structuralist view of literature looks like. I think of it mostly in terms of binary oppositions, signs, and chains of signification. But it was always taught to me right alongside poststructuralist critiques of those sorts of chains of signification and whatever. Basically, there are assumed binary preferences in any system. This is represented as good/bad, which can be read as "good over bad." Male/Female Strong/Weak Rational/Irrational Active/Passive Life/Death Light/Dark Sun/Moon When you line many of these preferences up like this you start seeing a system of binary preferences, which is basically "male strong rational active life light sun" and "female weak irrational passive death dark moon." You'll notice that these track to a lot of archetypal cultural values just at a glance. These sorts of preferences aren't immutable truth but they are culturally-driven, and are basically an unacknowledged consensus. Derrida discusses at length how the ancient Greeks professed a love for Spoken over Written (Spoken/Written), viewing the former as living and truthful, while the written word was sort of dead and prone to misunderstanding by comparison. I think in Derrida's view, any argument ultimately deconstructs itself because attempts at imposing order upon reality are always based around artificially putting up walls around what you want to call true and excluding anything that threatens the reasoning behind your thinking. He says that basically, trying to define truth always means demarcating something as abject, a rejected exception that does not belong to the system. So for instance, the Medieval French Church says only ordained men can speak for God. Joan of Arc comes along and seems to point to the contrary. Well, we aren't going to change our established order of "Male/Female, Masculine/Feminine, Truth/Falsehood, Holy/Profane." We're going to say, Joan of Arc is a witch. She's abject. Get this strong, active, masculine, truth-seeking, """holy""" woman onto the pyre. We categorically exclude her from our system! Now there are no more holes in our system. Well, that might help the clergy scrape along, but to anyone analyzing their actions, we see the fast one they just pulled. They couldn't reconcile Joan being so disruptive to their established order, so they labeled her a witch, an outsider that must be excluded for threatening their system. When someone like Joan of Arc comes along, who seems to embody contradictory qualities that destabilize the established order, you can describe her as an "aporia," which means "impasse." All hierarchies are based on excluding things that threaten their legitimacy, so there will always be a point where, under analysis, an aporia rears its ugly head and brings things to an impasse.
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Apr 7, 2023 07:02
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Cephas posted:It's been a hot minute since I read it, but Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature by John Culler was a very elucidating read for me if you want to get a good digestible course on structuralism and literary semiotics. I'll be honest, I don't really have a clear understanding of what a solely structuralist view of literature looks like. I think of it mostly in terms of binary oppositions, signs, and chains of signification. But it was always taught to me right alongside poststructuralist critiques of those sorts of chains of signification and whatever.
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Apr 7, 2023 08:36
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edit: joan was tried by a french pro-english clergy. I believe she was considered disruptive of Church hierarchies because of various factors, such as wearing men's clothing and attributing it to assuming a role provided to her by God, as well as claiming to speak for God without needing a clerical intermediary, esp regarding things like who God wanted to be King of France. it's been a while since I read up on joan of arc so if this is an inaccurate description then my apologies. The point being that the clergy members wanted to discredit her because she had a rather protestant-like view of the role a lay person could take, going much against their system. Cephas fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 12:01
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Cephas posted:It's been a hot minute since I read it, but Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature by John Culler was a very elucidating read for me if you want to get a good digestible course on structuralism and literary semiotics. I'll be honest, I don't really have a clear understanding of what a solely structuralist view of literature looks like. I think of it mostly in terms of binary oppositions, signs, and chains of signification. But it was always taught to me right alongside poststructuralist critiques of those sorts of chains of signification and whatever. Has there been any attempt to apply this analysis to cultural contexts other than Europe -> America? I’m mostly familiar with China since this is where I lived for the past 20ish years, and it’s immediately apparent that the binary preferences here aren’t the same and in some cases aren’t binary. Male/female holds, but strong/weak doesn’t to the same degree, probably a consequence of day to day power being vested in a literati-bureaucracy instead of a warrior elite. If I was being cruel I would say it’s a culture of execs/senior managers for whom “can actually do real world poo poo” is evidence of low status right up until the 1949 revolution.
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Apr 20, 2023 09:26
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