/lit/ - Literature

>>11598056
the thing with girard is that he's a staunch catholic doing a literary analysis and applying it to culture: anthropologically, philosophically, politically. he works this theme in all of his books: in a literary sense in DDN, anthropologically in Things Hidden, the Scapegoat, and V&S, historically in BttE. it's a single, elegant thesis with depth and breadth.

if there's one book to read Things Hidden is it. for me what's valuable about him is that he is both a point of departure and of return. human desire is, like capital, a phenomenon you can analyze in a million ways, and all of the major french post-structuralists do this in one form or another. they are the princes and demigods of socialization and intersubjectivity: that is, of *memetics.* like all totalizing theses it has its advantages and its drawbacks, and you'll discover all this for yourself when you read him. but basically what makes girard different, i would say, is the underlying notion of *semblance* as opposed to *difference.* deleuze would say, forget about semblance. that's not there. but, of course, we are talking about land now also, and the effect that cybernetic capitalism is having on culture in terms of acceleration, standardization, and optimization. even if we *aren't* the same, we are finding out that the self-assembling technological singularity-train that is departing may seem to require that we *act as if we are.* and this, i think, is what is driving people crazy.

>>11598292
that's the one, thank you anon.

>>11598311
the more that progressivism degenerates into authoritarianism the more land's earlier adventure makes sense. when you remove marx from marxism and replace economic structural analysis and replace it with a pure theory of culture, the more things shift towards political mythology. there's tremendous *anxiety* but activism isn't the cure for it. reactive politics is a symptom of a deeper existential problem, not the solution. capitalism can fuck you up, but so can taking the wrong path in trying to free yourself from being fucked up by it.

but in the end, philosophy isn't for giving advice. and the post-structural kind that i've spent the most time with isn't even for the good life, as it used to be understood. and that makes sense. philosophy of that kind really can't tell you what the right thing to do is. that it should be liberating, and liberate others, yes. but there's an interesting space in there that everyone has to navigate on their own between *the world you want to live in* and *the kind of person you want to be.* i think it's very tempting to say, i can't have either until i have both, *and i must have both.* but that not-having is everything. and maybe the not-being too. things that maybe humanities departments talked about once upon a time.

ITT we greentext our novel ideas