/lit/ - Literature

>>17326388
Yeah, multiculturalism has worked out great for the Native Americans.
This is actually my primary issue with critical theory and social justice. It's riddled with cognitive biases and inconsistencies. It's true that oppression is an issue. SJW and critical theorists do not apply their standards consistently. For example, they claim that mass immigration to Europe and America is good,and we hail the immigrants as heros that are "seeking a better life". We welcome the "diversity". But when white people immigrate to non-white countries, this is evil and we call it "colonialism". Similarly, it is considered racist to call for immigration restrictions in the west, although almost every non-western country in the world limits immigrants of foreign ethnic/racial backgrounds.
My issue isn't multiculturalism or anything like that. I am a biracial liberal and my parents were immigrants to the US. I think in many way multiculturalism has been great, and I actually study evolutionary anthropology and I have a deep interest in world cultures and religions.

My concern is the lack of logical consistency and the obvious cognitive biases. A lot of SJWs and critical theory types are not even willing to admit that they apply different standards to European and non-European cultures. Another example: there are well known academics like Paul Krugman and Noel Ignatiev who have literally claimed that European civilization is "too white" and we need more diversity amongst political and financial leaders. They say that Europe needs to be more diverse and "multicultural", and that white people need to loosen their grip White over-representation in Europe. Imagine if someone said that about Africa. That African countries are too black, and that blacks leaders have too much control of African politics and economics. What if they were saying that African countries need to become more multicultural and that we need to loosen the
grip of Black over-representation in Africa?

Now of course, you can point out that Africa and Europe have been treated very differently in the past, but that's actually not what SJWs and critical theory types do. Instead they just shut down the whole conversation and pretend like they treat Europeans and conservative exactly the same as they treat liberals and non-whites. I have no problem with multiculturalism, but I want to be able to openly discuss these issues in an honest manner, without pretending like leftist positions can never be logically inconsistent or fueled by emotions. Even leftists are not perfectly rational individuals who are incapable of being wrong. Everyone can and should be questioned, especially people who wish to say that an entire race (white people) are all inherently racist.

>>16872369
It's definitely a good book, but it doesn't flow very well, and I wouldn't recommend it for someone new to linguistics. It's kind of dry and you need to be very familiar with the terminology and notation of phonology, and it would help to have a rudimentary understanding of historical and anthropological linguistics the concept of language families. The phonology is probably going to be the biggest barrier for someone new to linguistics, but I imagine anyone could read the first few chapters (which are very short iIRC). It's definitely an important work, and every linguist should read it, but its not the best place to start.

If you are primarily interested in it from a linguistic perspective, then you'd probably be better off starting with more contemporary linguistics. The field has changed and developed quite a bit. Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics have underwent dramatic developments since the 1950s. Historical and anthropological linguistics has been slower to develop, but in the last 15 years, things have really picked up the pace and changed quite a lot. It's really moving towards being more of a STEM field that is closely tied to anthropology, and involves a lot of archaeological data and computational models (e.g. of migrations, of language change, etc).

On the other hand, if you are primarily interest in reading the Cours for philosophical purposes, then I honestly think you can just skip ahead a few decades to people like Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Claud Levi Strauss, etc. The reason I say that, is because if you are interested in learning more about structuralism and the philosophy of language, although Saussure was very influential on those fields, only about 20 pages or so of the Cours are actually devoted to laying out the ideas and methodology that would serve as the basis for the development of structuralism.

It's a great book and historically very important and influential, but I would mainly recommend reading it if you are interested in the history of linguistics or the history of structuralism. However, if you are mainly looking to develop a deep understanding linguistic theory or structuralism, then you should look to later sources.

>>16730296
(1) Something being legal does not entail that it is morally right. In Nazi Germany it was legal to discriminate against Jews, but that does not excuse the practice. This is a basic principle known as the is-ought distinction.

(2) If you support the right of Twitter to ban people, then how come you think that private universities should be required to accept students of all races and ethnicities? How come you think bakeries should be forced to make cakes for gay?

(3) Twitter actually does not have the right to engage in censorship, because they themselves have made the argument that they are a platform and not a publisher, which entails that they are not allowed to restrict viewpoint with which they disagree. If they do want to restrict viewpoints, then they are allowed to do that, but in that case they must be re-classified as a publisher (which incurs additional responsibilities and legal liabilities).

>>16730348
Refer to number. If I own a bakery am I allow to tell gay people to fuck off? If I own a private school can I say no blacks allowed?

>>14695192
A head pat is an integral part of the story Lean Times in Lankhmar.

i'm interested in the subject not sure where to start

54
USA
Culture of Critique

Magick in Theory and Practice aka Book 4 part 3, by Aleister Crowley, is very readable. Don't necessarily bother with the other parts of Book 4 until you digest this.