/lit/ - Literature

You shouldnt even read non-fiction in the first place

>>11305031
why?

>>11305027
Good notes, but the text's a let down. On the other hand it's tiny, so why not? Can be through it notes and all in less than 2 hrs.

>>11305047
Do you have any better proposition?

>>11305042
Thought for its own sake is delusional. Reason is a survival tool, not some kind of path towards a valuable end.
The only non-fiction worth a shit is the highly aesthetic one, and the best language stylists are usually found in fiction or poetry.

>>11305027
Fuck no man

Don't touch anything that says post-modern philosophy is about "metanarratives". Also, there isn't really such a thing as postmodern philosophy. There's structuralism which is based off of Ferdinand de Saussure's work, incl. people like Levi-Strauss, Jakobson, early Lacan. Then there was a pivotal talk by Derrida at a 1966 conference on structuralism at Johns Hopkins University. The talk was called "Structure, Sign and Play in the discourse of the human sciences" and it basically (some would say) bodied all the structuralist thinkers of the day. Structuralism was basically buried in intellectual circles and replaced with post-structuralism, which incl. thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, later Lacan etc.
Heres a good article about that conference if you're interested:
>http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-french-invasion

If you want a quick route into post-structuralism (which is universally seen as more interesting than structuralism), what you really need is a good knowledge of Nietzsche, Freud, and to a lesser degree Marx. It's alright to read secondary materials on these thinkers like stanford, except for Nietzsche, whose Geneology of Morals you should *definitely* read before approaching any post-structuralist thought. Also you have to read Sausseure's Course in General Linguistics (I think that's the name it's been a while since i looked at this stuff).

After you've done that, you should have enough of a foothold to start reading Foucault, who is the best inroad to primary materials on post-structuralism. His essay "What is an Author?" and his book "Discipline and Punish" (which is a good complement to Nietzsche's Geneology of morals because of the topical overlap), were my starting points with him.

If you want a more detailed guide on how to get into "postmodern" philosophy, I can recommend this blogpost, even though it is really extensive and requires a lot of reading:
>http://fuckyeahlogical.tumblr.com/post/170680617708/an-abbreviated-guide-to-the-study-of-continental
It should be kind of obvious which sections of this you can safely ignore if you just want to focus on structural and post-structural (and adjacent movements like post-marxist) thought.

Basically it depends what level of understanding of this stuff you want to have. I personally took the first route because I'm not especially interested in 20th century philosophy, but I don't understand these thinkers nearly as well as someone who has any dedication to finding out what they thought.

Also a token rec of Rene Girard, who is kind of part of this intellectual circle but also reacting against it. He also has the advantage of requiring absolutely zero background reading except a passing knowledge of freud's main concepts, like oedipus complex, ambivalence, and super-ego. Violence and the Sacred is his most famous book.
Paul Fry's Yale Lectures on lit theory are also a good survey of this thought

>>11305139
Thank you very much.

>>11305177
youre very welcome king

>>11305139
Good Post

>>11305054
If (you) want to be entertained Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry is both enlightening and hilarious. If (you) want to be fascinated and drawn in by an argument that will ultimately exasperate (you) then Blanchot's The Space of Literature's what's wanted. If the perusal of genius essays (on literature, mostly) that /lit/ positively loathes sounds good then begin with De Man's Blindness and Insight. Also Rousseau was De Man's hero so there's a piece on him in there as well.
Sorry this post's more literary than philosophical in orientation, but the influence of especially Blanchot was enormous on both Derrida and D & G.

Baudrillard is how I started. Only because he's fairly easy to read compared to others would I recommend him. Start with his later works if you want, as he is less egotisical in old age.

>>11305374
Problem is you have to start with Marx to understand Baudrillard.

Contract AIDS

"post-modernism" was a term made up by american academics to appropriate several, different and sometimes contradicting currents, movements and schools into a single "field", which is in good part why people who use the term, whether in a positive or negative way, find it so difficult to define what actually is "post-modernism" supposed to be referring to.