/lit/ - Literature

>>22521053
She’s a classics professor at an Ivy League college
She wants to dumb down the classics and soften them so that women and other retards can read them
Academia and publishing and media are firmly behind her

>>22487210
are you actually saying it is impossible for it to be the case that their is a societal bias currently against white men? would you say the same thing about other minorities and their perceived plights, historically?

>>22487212
top authors can afford to live off their writing and still people want to be able to give their message to audiences free of bias against them, atleast assumedly generally. Maybe to focus on lucrativeness is not really as helpful for the argument but it really wasn't the point of OP in the first place either.

Again, none of you have actually shown me that its not true that there is a bias against white men in publishing. Statistics about this phenomenon as well as countless examples on anti white hatred published in academia and legacy media/leftist independent media all the time so i assume you guys have seen them, but i can post these examples if it really is necessary

>>21556171
I read this yesterday, and it really nailed for me why I dislike academia so much. I had a professor in undergrad who tried to encourage me to go into academia, and while it might have been pleasant enough to work at a small liberal arts college like the one I attended, with no publishing pressures, the state of the field just seemed so oppressively boring. The journal mill and the endless granularity and utter irrelevance of theses would drive me bonkers. I see friends who are getting their PhDs, and when I see the conferences they attend and papers they publish, I'm so glad I'm not there.

I think a big problem has been the attempt to bring humanities in line with science departments: the publish or die mindset combined with the insistence on critical apparati as if they were scientific frameworks. It's all just so far away from why anyone does or should write or read that of course there's a constant crisis of self-justification.

But at the same time, it's all so very frustrating because there has never been more of a need. It seems as if the whole world has lost the ability to parse information critically. Popular discourse is looney. And the discussion around ChatGPT is maddening, what with seeing people (even from respectable publications) talk as if it's putting out brilliant student-quality essays.

More than ever we need to teach people how to read, speak, and write, how to be articulate, thoughtful, and discerning. And literature is the best way to do that. No, teaching students to write 3.5 essays or draft emails or social media posts (or whatever the hell new media and communications studies is) isn't teaching communication skills; it's teaching them to be monotonous and intellectually barren. Honestly, we shouldn't be surprised that after teaching a generation of people that thinking robotically is smart writing, we've now mistaken literal robotic prose as somehow intelligent.

>>21211437
Delusional. These people are idiots and make unprofessional statements all the time and in publishing, media, academia, etc. people do in fact put their pronouns in their email.

>>20366677
>>20366678
I was 1 and a half years into a genetics PhD at a 'prestigious' British university.
The hard sciences are the same. Academia is a joke.
My supervisor was a le epic girl boss woman who only cared about publishing papers, whether they were good or not, it didn't matter. She just wanted to get the numbers up because as she always used to say "they are your currency!".
When I brought up the replication crisis and how we should make the effort to write good papers rather than churning out shit she responded with "That's just how things are."

Your fellows are literally pic related. They are are obsessed with twitter. Several times a month I would be chastised for not having any social media - "anon you NEED to be on twitter for le science!!".

Science is fucking dead. Christ knows how bad the arts are these days.

I quit last year and now work remotely as a data scientist. Fuck academia, that was such a waste of time I'll never get back.

>>19961150
Yeah weird how the people massively overrepresented in media ownership and top management (especially movies, news, and porn), in political representation, in the top levels of the military, in academia, in publishing, in campaign donations, and in finance may actually be responsible for literally anything

Why is reading literature shoved down my throat by lit and the media and "educated society" as something I have to do or else I'm a stupid and bad person? It seems like a marketing gimmick to me. If I sat and read all day then I'd have no money. But society wants me to use my limited free time to read while telling me that it makes me a more valuable person.

As if "muh human condition" has to be learnt from books written by the same sections of society (the ones with access to the media-publishing-academia industrial complex. (inb4 /lit/ moves the goalposts about why they read books)

It seems like a big scam to me. lit is a bunch of delusional people who want to venerate literature and publishing companies either to gain pseudo intellectual cred or in the vain hope that they'll be published one day.

Also many novels are exercises in narcissism or self indulgence by the author. But because it's packaged and distributed by a publisher then I am supposed to care or else I'm dumb. What if I don't give a shit about Dostoevsky's spiritual or moral views? Hume already showed that none of it is based on logic (see the Münchhausen trilemma). Anyone can choose the axioms they want.

CREATOR/DESTROYER: One who actively seeks to destroy. One who deliberately creates situations where they can feed off the misery and exploitation of others, or themselves. These people often enjoy being in positions of authority. They are quite insidious. They love passing laws, making rules, restrictions, limitations and definitions. Creator/destroyers are often found in high positions in universities, publishing, main stream science, and academia. They are the worst kind of people because they acknowledge their status as creator beings to impose limitations on others. They often think of themselves as ‘leaders’.

DESTROYER/SLAVE: This is the largest portion of humanity. They live only to satisfy their hunger and sexual appetites. They are consumers. Advertising and main stream media seeks to create as many destroyer/slaves as possible. Destroyer/slaves create absolutely nothing. They are often motivated by fear. They are hardly above animals of the primate sort. They walk the earth believing that they are human because they can speak and walk upright and regurgitate facts. (These facts are usually defined by Creator/Destroyers.) They tend to speak more than any other type of human.

CREATOR/SLAVE: These are perfectly well meaning people who genuinely love their families and one and other. They have no ambition to be like creator/destroyers, but they are usually exploited by creator/destroyers. Creator/slaves are often persecuted and made to be the scape goats to harvest destroyer/slave’s fear and mistrust. Left on their own, they would not conceive of doing wrong, but they are usually exploited by creator/destroyers and religious institutions. They cannot conceive of the evil that enslaves them. Many Creator/slaves are actually sleeping Creator/Creators.

>>19677000
>As for fighting the USSR, I mean... the USSR had literally just said that they were going to invade Germany, and then take over Europe.
It's also not a conspiracy theory or "alternative history" point at all that eastern European countries had large Jewish emigrant populations who had arrived within the last generation or so from Russia, almost all secular, almost all middle class, who then took over the local nascent bourgeoisie and became effectively THE bourgeoisie of their respective new countries, dominating urban life, trades, and especially the intelligentsia and academia (remember, in these countries the entire "academic world" and "intelligentsia" could be a few thousand people from old noble families trying to "modernise" themselves and their countries), and THEN, being foreign-identifying, internationalist-identifying Jews in a small "backward" country they had nothing in common with and where they never assimilated and often didn't even speak the local language, they began partaking in the "modern" trend of agitating for a revolution - while the brand new revolutionary USSR was still rampaging on the other side of a thin border, and loudly proclaiming itself to respect no borders, to be basically the end of the world, to have a right to massacre and steamroll any population that resists its crusade.

Imagine all that is going on, and you already have this unassimilated, recently arrived Jewish "minority" that statistically owns all the important newspapers/journals and is vastly overrepresented in the capital city and in what few universities your country has. All of this, and then the USSR kicks off what must have looked like the Apocalypse itself just across the border.

And then, while you're literally assembling with your local farmer friends to make plans for a guerrilla war if the apocalyptic horde crosses the river or tiny forest separating the two of you (like Codreanu did as a teenager), you notice that ALL the Jewish-owned media is publishing fluff pieces on the Communists and talking about "throwing open the gates," and the Jewish student associations begin seizing buildings in the small capital and hoisting the red flag over them.

Does that mean that all Jews are evil or should be killed, no. But it wasn't going to end well, no matter what.

>>19235592
The globohomo publishing industry no long publishes books written by straight white men, for white people, unless they are already an established big name that they know is a reliable cash cow. The Big 5 will reject them on the basis that they "center whiteness and white voices" and that's the end of it. I am not joking. This is a constant problem with no visible solution in the future.

The great works are out there, they are just not given space to thrive anymore. Go into most bookstores hawking new books instead of used - the same uninspired minimalist digital art cover designs, YA authors who are women, non-white, LGBT; all with embarrassingly subpar writing - they are only approved because it helps to cement the current narrative. Publishing was cucked long before the rest of the established authorities in politics, academia, and media were. There will not be another great novel published unless there is a mass unrest that slays the sacred cow of globohomo pseudovirtues for good.

>>18545013
There were some great posts and posters on here in the early days, with a genuine interest in literature and some semblance of a connection with the real world (academia, media, publishing, art scenes, etc), but somewhere along the line /lit/ turned into another Sheltered White Boys Arguing Over Nietzsche board.

>>18518362
Idk man there is still some market for it. Middle aged women still read, as do older millennial women. I can't say whether or not that's a big enough market to eke a living out of, I would say most professional authors have other jobs in academia or publishing that keep them steady. I would recommend going for a niche rather than mainstream success, because the sci fi and fantasy markets are well and truly saturated. I've always wondered how feasible it would be to break into the light novel market with your own native written material. Plenty of weebs still buy physical media but of course they're only buying translated Jap shit. I wonder if you made it look Japanese enough and got it in the right bookstore if people would buy it.

You will never do a PPE degree at Oxford.

You will never study with the world's future elite in small and lively tutorial sessions led by world renowned intellectuals.

You will never ever do a degree that gives such huge scope for the hardworking or lazy, intellectual or practical, idealist or realist.

You will never do a degree where the only exams that matter for your grade are 8 3 hour exams at the end of a three year degree. Pop quizzes are for proles. The elite are expected to synthesise information.

You will never do a degree that gives you so much free time, allowing you to choose between deep and intense study or taking part in student politics (in Oxford, all voters are part of the intellectual elite; it is like democracy in Athens when compared to grubby real world politics, which all Oxford graduates consider to be a joke) or the Oxford Union, the most famous debating society in the world.

You will always be considered an intellectual inferior, a bit of a joke.

You will never have the access to the highest echelons of publishing, academia, media, high finance, politics, and NGOs.

You will never see your past classmates on TV or on the covers of magazines.

You will never go to a formal dinner in a full suit and gown and walk back to your room after a raucous champagne drinking session with that qt Cheltenham Ladies College alumnus brown haired lacrosse playing English Literature studying girl, who was originally stuck up, and always is towards non-Oxbridgers and the poor, and most of all to try hard Oxbridge rejects, but who was taken in by your deep and witty knowledge of Keats and Yeats and Byron.

>>17830508
>But we don't really see overrepresentation, right?
Yes we do. If you can't acknowledge that, this dicussion is over because you're arguing in bad faith.
>Again I refer to the objective chess example.
You cannot equate chess to disproportionate power in media, banking, academia, medicine, law, publishing, etc. High IQ helps but it's not enough. Like I said, your IQ tunnel vision doesn't explain why high IQ non jews don't practice the same form of ethnic nepotism jews do.
>Keep in mind that they are the most nepotistic part of Jewry.
No that's not true at all, the majority of secular jews are just as nepotistic if not more so because they operate in the international community instead of their own community. MacDonald explains why. Just read the books.

I remember when I first started reading outside of formal education when I was 17, around 13 years ago. Books were a new world and I read so many of them. I read a mixture of classics and modern stuff, almost entirely novels.

Then as I got more and more redpilled, and more knowledgeable about academia, media, publishing, and as I became more cynical, I realised how worthless it all was. I tried more and more to read the latest, edgiest, post-modernist books but I could never meme myself in to enjoying them. DFW, Gaddis, Pynchon, etc., barely wrote anything worthwhile. After seeing the incentive structures within academia and the prior history of art in the past 100 years, the veneration of shit is no longer a mystery to me.

Getting in to non-fiction is another nail in the coffin. When educational books have better stories and writing than fiction, I could tell something very strange was going on. I remember one period of time specifically, during a Christmas break where I finished reading some turgid book by Dostoevsky and then started reading The Problems of Philosophy and it felt like breathing pure air and drinking clear water after chewing a mouthful of sand.

After going from fiction to non-fiction, thoughts about the usefulness and point of reading immediately followed. There's usually a topic on /lit/ every so often that asks about the usefulness of books. The main dishonest statement after this is when someone will write, "But how else can you learn maths / aeronautical engineering / cooking, except from a book"? This is dishonest because it tries to conflate reading prose for extended periods of time with reading short passages as a means to improving in the practise of something else. This practise can also include highly intellectual activities such as math, philosophising, essays, etc. And this is where the killer blow for reading's place on the pedestal appears.

>when I was younger
>"Lol the curtains were just red, who cares, why am I being told to find subjective conclusions and being judged as if they're objective?!"

>When I was older and smarter
>"The curtains were red for a very intelligent reason by the genius author, a reason which gives maximum insight in to human nature and the objectivity of aesthetics, not that I will dare ask why I should care about those or why everything is so obscurantist!"

>when I reached my final form

Literary Theory, as it is practised and as a whole is a set of intentionally vague, contradictory, and ever changing rules that create a logical system used by the academia-media-publishing industrial complex in order to monopolise the judgement of art, secure government funding, compete in the form of social posturing (by far the strongest reason), promote a large government, and guilt trip insecure members of the public in to paying for and proclaiming enjoyment of art.

>inb4 you say "I don't know art but I know what I like" in a non RP accent

I'm not even passing judgement on the "value" of this dominant version of "literary theory". I'm simply awaiting the butthurt that will inevitably commence just from pointing out that other forms can exist and not genuflecting towards the dominant form.

>>15001855
>Jordan was mean to a trans person

All he did was oppose some shitty piece of public legislation and the media equated it to him lynching a trans person or something.

You're right, tho. Zizek is a hack, publishing pamphlets with trendy topics and arriving at nothing, no conclusion, just vague intellectual masturbation and Lacanian psychobabble. Yeah, it's good enough for a laugh on a basket weaving forum but no one actually takes him seriously in academia or politics.

>when I was younger
>"Lol the curtains were just red, who cares, why am I being told to find subjective conclusions and being judged as if they're objective?!"

>When I was older and smarter
>"The curtains were red for a very intelligent reason by the genius author, a reason which gives maximum insight in to human nature and the objectivity of aesthetics, not that I will dare ask why I should care about those or why everything is so obscurantist!"

>when I reached my final form

Literary Theory, as it is practised and as a whole is a set of intentionally vague, contradictory, and ever changing rules that create a logical system used by the academia-media-publishing industrial complex in order to monopolise the judgement of art, secure government funding, compete in the form of social posturing (by far the strongest reason), promote a large government, and guilt trip insecure members of the public in to paying for and proclaiming enjoyment of art.

>inb4 you say "I don't know art but I know what I like" in a non RP accent

I'm not even passing judgement on the "value" of this dominant version of "literary theory". I'm simply awaiting the butthurt that will inevitably commence just from pointing out that other forms can exist and not genuflecting towards the dominant form.

You will never do a PPE degree at Oxford.

You will never study with the world's future elite in small and lively tutorial sessions led by world renowned intellectuals.

You will never ever do a degree that gives such huge scope for the hardworking or lazy, intellectual or practical, idealist or realist.

You will never do a degree where the only exams that matter for your grade are 8 3 hour exams at the end of a three year degree. Pop quizzes are for proles. The elite are expected to synthesise information.

You will never do a degree that gives you so much free time, allowing you to choose between deep and intense study or taking part in student politics (in Oxford, all voters are part of the intellectual elite; it is like democracy in Athens when compared to grubby real world politics, which all Oxford graduates consider to be a joke) or the Oxford Union, the most famous debating society in the world.

You will always be considered an intellectual inferior, a bit of a joke.

You will never have the access to the highest echelons of publishing, academia, media, high finance, politics, and NGOs.

You will never see your past classmates on TV or on the covers of magazines.

You will never go to a formal dinner in a full suit and gown and walk back to your room after a raucous champagne drinking session with that qt Cheltenham Ladies College alumnus brown haired lacrosse playing English Literature studying girl, who was originally stuck up, and always is towards non-Oxbridgers and the poor, and most of all to try hard Oxbridge rejects, but who was taken in by your deep and witty knowledge of Keats and Yeats and Byron.

>>13638482
>inb4
>>how do I get status from reading BOOKS???
>>*looks to academia and otherwise publishing house controlled review media for a meme to insert*
>>"ITS GOOD"
>>"ITS BAD"

you are not human

No jewish shit catering to the demented emotions of dehumanized retards.
Post stuff that wasn't created for the sole purpose of manipulating cattle into believing lies.
We will always be surrounded by absolute dumbfucks, but at least we can have a decent moment here and there with threads like this.
Post art.

>something you were wondering about
>a work that explained aspects of this issue
>how it did this

inb4

>how do I get status from reading BOOKS???
>*looks to academia and otherwise publishing house controlled review media for a meme to insert*
>"ITS GOOD"

inb4 leftist retards (most of the posters on this board) doing this unironically after inb4ing it

>>13539576
>https://medium.com/the-establishment/the-man-who-wrote-the-mediocre-novel-aaab9ef2efc6
Fucking lmao, these "people" really are rats. They'd be hilarious if they didn't control essentially all of academia, media and the publishing industry.

anything that makes it even slightly more difficult for jews to be dominant in your country's academia, high finance, entertainment media, journalism industry, publishing industry, intelligentsia, politics, public policy, etc.

>when I was younger
>"Lol the curtains were just red, who cares, why am I being told to find subjective conclusions and being judged as if they're objective?!"

>When I was older and smarter
>"The curtains were red for a very intelligent reason by the genius author, a reason which gives maximum insight in to human nature and the objectivity of aesthetics, not that I will dare ask why I should care about those or why everything is so obscurantist!"

>when I reached my final form

Literary Theory, as it is practised and as a whole is a set of intentionally vague, contradictory, and ever changing rules that create a logical system used by the academia-media-publishing industrial complex in order to monopolise the judgement of art, secure government funding, compete in the form of social posturing (by far the strongest reason), promote a large government, and guilt trip insecure members of the public in to paying for and proclaiming enjoyment of art.

>inb4 you say "I don't know art but I know what I like" in a non RP accent

I'm not even passing judgement on the "value" of this dominant version of "literary theory". I'm simply awaiting the butthurt that will inevitably commence just from pointing out that other forms can exist and not genuflecting towards the dominant form.