/lit/ - Literature

>brushed off with Frankfurt sophistry
>Also how do I argue such a subjective position?
>It's self evident to me

>hanging posters with Poe and Nabokov quotes around campus to fight your little battle in the culture war
To borrow your words: save yourself the embarrassment

>>19756060
I agree with you but why are you still at university? Get out before they turn you into a tranny.

>>19756249
>Frankfurt sophistry
What I'm saying is subjectivity is a poweful excuse here that I can't do much against. I can only present my own subjective view, and this has worked to some extent on shifting the view of my friends.
>>19756267
>around campus
Only one, in the hall
>fight your little battle
Its a thing to do
>culture war
I dont necessarily disagree with their politics, just how much it dominates discussion.
>>19756268
Its free, cute grills, and its not as bad as it is in the US so there is hope. I'll clarify again that I'm eastern european.

>>19756268
>Get out before they turn you into a tranny.
Bitch, what the fuck are you talking about?

Interacting with trannies won't turn you into a tranny unless you were already going to become a tranny anyways, if anything interacting with them IRL makes them even more repulsive and reprehensible to you. So even if OP is in a hyper-leftist shithole like the USA he can still benefit from Uni

>>19756060
You are dumb.

>>19756380
what I am saying is that perhaps you were brushed off because your idea was poorly formed, you relied to heavily on the subjective, hence the other two quotes. Fiction is the tool most effective at exploring the subjective and presenting it as anything resembling the objective since it gives it a tangible vehicle, the character. Same reason you have some effect on the view of your friends, there is something more than just a subjective idea.

>>19756399
>the US is hyper-leftist cuz of uh the fags or something
Just stop

>>19756380
>Only one, in the hall
It will immediately get vandalized or removed
>Its a thing to do
It's a waste of time. Read something, write something. If you want to make this case, write an essay and publish it online or as a pamphlet if you must. A poster with quotes isn't going to change any minds and if your peers find out you're the one who hung it, best case scenario they will think of you as an annoying twit.

>>19756434
a society that hanged fags wouldn't be the one we live in now, that is a fact.

Can someone convince me that the Western Canon is not just codeword for, "Shit white people have written"?

Seriously, what's the justification in grouping all of these disparate cultures and ethnicities together and treating them like they're some sort of homogeneous bloc? Italy shares more history with North Africa than it does with Norway (Rome even had an African emperor), yet Africa isn't included in the West even though Norway is.

I've heard it said that because in the modern day the West has a set of shared values the Western Canon is justified. But the values we share today are the product of liberal humanist philosophy and the French Revolution, so what's the justification for grouping us with the Vikings and the Tsarists and the 1600s British when those people had radically different values to us? And furthermore why does Bloom include Russia and others in the Western Canon when they have different values to us even to this day?

I can't get my mind around this. We don't share a language, we don't share a culture, we don't share history-- the only thing binding us together is race.

>>19756448
I fail to see what that has to do with "leftism"

>>19756450
You answered you own question.

>>19756462
Bloom includes Viking literature and Medieval literature even though the Vikings and Medievals are nowhere near to modern westerns culturally. The Western Canon is literally just "White literature".

>>19756462
The Chinese don't include Japanese or Korean works in a grand Eastern Canon, for instance

>>19756489
This shit is gay as hell

>>19756450
The book is no canonical, it is just one guys favorite list and he wrote it and made the list just to get people into reading and the list is skewed towards what he thought would work to those ends. While he was an arrogant man he was not arrogant enough to think he actually defined the western cannon with his list. There is no defined western cannon, the topic is just too vague and nebulous and the list would be absolutely massive.

>>19756494
Yeah I know, I figured its the closest I have to what hes asking for. Its pol tier bullshit.

>>19756494
I think it's beautiful because underneath all the propaganda those types of images are really pessimisitc. The static digital overlay implies a sort of rupture between the viewer and the time being represented, so that one can only view it nostalgically but never actually enter into it. It's like surviving a nuclear war and viewing cassette tapes from the times before everything was destroyed, wishing you could go back but knowing you never will be able to.

>>19756517
Very poignant anon, fuck. I've spent so much time on pol, that the first 10min on lit and I'm already having a greater fucking time

>>19756427
>there is something more than just a subjective idea
Ok, where is that in my position? How do I present it more objectively? I can point out how repetitive the course is, which is more visibly true.
>inb4 you have to do it yourself
contribute or dont
>>19756434
>It will immediately get vandalized or removed
It wont. Not much traffic outside the lit students and lectureres. And I'm guessing they would still encourage it since its someone actually caring
>A poster with quotes isn't going to change any minds
A cool one might. Most people don't even have a position on this issue and they're not aware of alternatives.
>If you want to make this case, write an essay and publish it online or as a pamphlet if you must.
Too much work and less effective imo.
>they will think of you as an annoying twit.
I am one. They're less of a cynical killjoy than the average litizen and maybe I'll be lovably annoying. I don't care too much about what they think I guess
>>19756509
I dont get the jab. Mines not a culture war thing and these have nothing to do with this. Am I being autistic?

>>19756596
>o I've decided to fall back on the manifesto plan, although now I'm leaning towards simply designing a poster and hanging that up.
>This is where I'm asking for your help. I'm thinking of assembling a bunch of quotes from writers with aestheticist views, then maybe writing a very minimal preface to it, or maybe not to save myself the embarrassment. So far I want to include Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Bloom and Nabokov. Who else? Gimme quotes
Thats where I was leading off. Very tangential I know

>>19756596
Im the autist anon, when you wrote
>from writers with aestheticist views
I read that as from writers with an aesthetic view, as in, inspirational quotes with an aesthetic flair lmao
my bad

>>19756608
I've actually thought about parodying manifest destiny stuff for this, but even as a joke it would mean I'd lose them completely
>>19756612
Oh k lol

>>19756596
>How do I present it more objectively?
You don't, as I explained you just explore it and use something else like a character in fiction to give it resemblance to the objective, really you are just giving the subjective an objective meaning. The same reason you have effect on you friends, this idea has objective meaning for you despite being entirely subjective, they can see the tangible effect of it because they know you, you are more than a schizo manifesto or some posters full of quotes to them. This is what a huge amount of literature is.
>contribute or dont
I am not going to teach you to understand and write fiction through 4chan, sorry.

>>19756686
Wouldn't using fiction as a tool to communicate how treating fiction as a tool is bad, be wierd? I get that they are different contexts, and in this case I'd be writing propaganda that acknowledges it is propaganda, but idk. Still too much work and uneffective. Maybe a slogan like "Stories arent ideology in make up"

>>19756738
Why would that be weird? Nothing can show the flaws of a medium better than the medium itself, using a different medium just forces a needless layer of abstraction. Beyond that it forces you to deal directly with what you are critiquing, not just judge from afar. It is a fantastic topic for fiction to explore and the built in meta aspect almost exploits itself.
>Maybe a slogan like "Stories arent ideology in make up"
lol. Put in the time and effort or don't bother. Do you really want to be the real world equivalent of a low effort shit poster?

>>19756812
>the flaws of a medium
I dont have a problem with propaganda. My problem is lit being treated like propaganda
>and the built in meta aspect almost exploits itself.
This sort of self reflexive always comes off as cheap to me
>Do you really want to be the real world equivalent of a low effort shit poster?
You underestimate the power of shitposting. That's exactly the memetic power I want

>>19757013
>I dont have a problem with propaganda. My problem is lit being treated like propaganda
Yes, I get that, a flaw of the medium is that it leaves room for being exploited in those ways.
>This sort of self reflexive always comes off as cheap to me
This line is essentially a slogan at this point, it has been repeated so many times and almost exclusively by people who can not back it up. One of the problems with slogans, they are cheap.
>You underestimate the power of shitposting. That's exactly the memetic power I want
Nah, I am aware of the power, but it just results in people mememing, it does not change peoples minds or give new perspectives, just gives them another banner to wave over what they already believe. Essentially an "I voted" sticker.

>>19756450
I wouldn't read bloom if my life depended on it, Jews gonna Jew. If you've read Spengler, Yockey, or Hegel then you'll know where I'm going when I say that contemporary times are stuck in the denial of the Western Imperium in favor of the 19th century. (Also, Rome isn't Western, by which I mean Faustian) We do share a history, only from the frog's perspective is it invisible. You've noted that "values" have changed through Time, while this is true, it isn't a basis for arguing a difference, the values were destined to change through Time, values are relative, Faust has through Time expressed his soul and thus at different times we see different values, consider the values of the young man to the old, his values may have changed but he is still the "same" person. We share a Culture, instantiated by a Race (note it remains differentiated by nation now, but in the future we will see a homogenous Faustian Imperial Race), and by way of Culture we do share History, language alone remains differentiated, but to integrate them would mean a loss. The West is a single unit, a Cultural Organism, the "Western Canon" is properly a review of major Faustian thinkers, "shit FAUSTIAN people have written", disregarded the deceivers, reach into the infinite and describe the limit therein.

>>19756450
The idea is that all of these writers read and therefore built on one another's writings, and so if you read all of these writers together as one big group you'll have a better chance of understanding what they were trying to do and what kinds of ideas they had in mind when they were writing. The reason the western canon is separate from things like the Chinese canon is mostly just that western writers didn't spend much time reading Chinese stuff until pretty recently (because of lack of translations, lack of general cultural exchange back when the world was less connected... etc), so those works aren't part of the group in the same way. (obviously there are exceptions to this). It isn't a perfect, airtight concept but it makes sense as a general area of study.

>>19756475
I've never heard of such a thing but the Chinese strike me as incredibly arrogant, a major nation in a spiritually dessicated culture, they think they are all that remains, for a moment, Japan should them otherwise, but the powers that be stepped in to save them, gave them the communist manifesto and said, "produce."

>>19756450
>Seriously, what's the justification in grouping all of these disparate cultures and ethnicities
They are not that different ethnically, because they're clustered geographically, which means that they share prehistoric ancestry from groups like the Yamnaya (aka Aryans, and yes this is 100% mainstream science) and also that they blended a lot due to war and natural movements of people. They are inseparable culturally BECAUSE of the idea of the "west". They were all influenced by Rome, which was influenced by the Greeks and the Bible. Russia is interesting because it had a choice in whether to be "western", and Catherine the Great basically decided for them.

It is not true that there's any distinct break between older western values and "liberal humanism", and even if there was, guess what? Liberal humanism spreading everywhere in the west before anywhere else is another thing that sets us apart. Look up a guy called "Napoleon", pretty successful at spreading humanism in the west.

>>19756596
>Too much work and less effective imo
Less effective than a poster which by your own admission basically no one will see? Think for a second, you dumb motherfucker

>>19757303
The powers that be are 100% backing Japan

>>19756450
What the fuck are you talking about? Race doesn't actually bind anyone or anything together. Class and status completely stratifies entire racial groups into utterly disparate sects. Any concept of racial solidarity is imaginary and unsubstantial. A hateful person will find a reason to hate a white person as easily as a nigger.

The only thing that can cross the barrier of status is shared values and philosophies. The way people think and live is what unites or divides them. The western Canon is an important and insightful scaffolding for distinguishing the development of these shared values and ways of living over time and allow us to understand how and why they endure. You don't need to be white to join in that shared pursuit.

And yet, despite differences in language and culture, the human experience of each person shares so much common that certain messages are universal.

>>19756450
Not sure where's your confusion. The works in the Western Canon heavily influenced each other and the Western nations have been in cultural dialogue with each other for millennia. You sound like an upset non-white.

>>19757882
>Race doesn't actually bind anyone or anything together. Class and status completely stratifies entire racial groups into utterly disparate sects. Any concept of racial solidarity is imaginary and unsubstantial.

>>19757993
he's completely correct. somebody posted an article the other day about how rich college-educated blacks are milking events like george floyd dying by getting lucrative jobs in the entertainment industry where they tell "authentic" tales of black ghetto experience despite having grown up wealthy in the suburbs. scratch the surface of something like blm and you will find class-based exploitation underneath.

>>19758064
Ok retard

>>19756060
Lemme try to sketch out my thoughts on this, and maybe they'll help. It's stupidly formatted as bullet points because I thought it would be short but it's not.

-The aesthetics-only position you're taking from Bloom is good insofar as you can defend the individual books of the canon as superior, and yes they really are excellent. But which books are good is in fact ultimately subjective, and defending the great books can be difficult, because you need a strong theory of what determines quality and a deep understanding of the books themselves. Even Bloom didn't succeed in convincing his critics.

-I see Bloomism as analogous to "facts and logic" arguments against critical theory in other areas. The pomos point out that some category, like "great book", is subjective and influenced by power structures, and we say "no, reality exists, it really is this way". In their crudest form our arguments of this type are just naive realism, which insists that our perceptions and categories are just true and there's no point ever rethinking our ideas. And even when that position is correct on a given set of "facts" or aesthetic judgments, it is fundamentally wrong in a way that gives ammunition to the critical theorists. The critical theorists do in fact have a point.

-But the weakness of critical theory perspective is its dishonesty and hypocrisy. It basically says, "your idea of good literature is subjective and made up to serve your own interests, which means that *I* can make up my own theory to serve *my* interests, which are superior because I am on the side of the oppressed". But then the pomos tend to forget their own subjectivity, that they did the same thing as the dead white guys but infinitely more crudely, and they try to defend their new "diverse" canon as somehow correct. But no, it can be attacked on exactly the same critical-theory grounds. And when they are consistent, which they sometimes are, they end up forced to deny the concept of "good literature" entirely. These people literally have to say that any trashy romance writer is exactly as good as Homer and also *exactly as good as Toni Morrison*.

(continued due to character limit)

>>19758064
Doesn't that demonstrate that race is more readily apparent and is viewed as more important than class?

>>19758098
I didn't realize everyone remains as fucking babies. Good point, retard. What else do you still do now that you did as a baby? This point is so pointless it's mind boggling.

>>19758156
KEK you think the bias just vanishes when you grow up?

>>19756060
>>19758146
-So what I would do is start from the perspective that we have a few alternative frameworks for understanding good literature, and deny the basic distinction between them. You're not the unimaginative white guy claiming "objectivity" vs the smart pomo who knows it's subjective, you are weighing the relative merits of different subjective theories. And here you're on sturdy ground. Some points I would use.
1. Defend artistic "canon" in the abstract- people unavoidably distinguish good from bad, and it's good that we try to remember the good and study it to inspire more good things in the future. Longer-running canons reach back to times when people had different values and uncover what's universal in the human experience. A literary canon 3000 years old is an amazing thing.
2. Talk about the terminal decline of the humanities. The western canon maintained literary culture for centuries, now the pomos are in charge and it's dead. The new canon isn't doing it for people.
3. Compare specific "new canon" diverse books to specific "old canon" books that are better
4. Talk about how the association of the canon with "white people" is backwards- the books helped unite the different ethnicities in Europe and continue to unite people today. Maybe toss in that the Athenians (a unique ethnicity that was largely wiped out) were not really "white".
5. Based on (2), point out the new canon project as destructive. It dismantles something which had value doesn't credibly replace it. Literature as a field of study will not exist if it only values books for their effect on power structures.

And then also aesthetics, the books are in fact good, all the stuff you were going to say. That's basically it, hope this helps.

>>19758212
Bias isn't the same as solidarity. Many people will never lose their biases but still know how to use executive function of their brain. Still pointless.

>>19758212
>>19758228
>>19758246
>racism graphs without context
My favorite kind of schizoposting

>>19758258
>>19758146
Oh and finally: point out that literary culture is global now and books added to the canon from this point on purely for reason of quality will come from all races and genders. It can diversify naturally.

>>19758278
>>19758282
Keep coping. Races are real, in-group racial preference is one of the most consistently observed social phenomenon and biological impulse, and you will never be a woman.

>>19758313
Your facts are not wrong but you are shitting on good discussion, please delete and start a new thread

>>19758313
And you will never be a man because you tremble in fear whenever a black person is near you

>>19758324
I'm only responding to that tranny

>>19758313
No one said race isn't real. When you get to the point of inventing your own imaginary arguments, what are you even doing anymore?

I'm not saying racial bias doesn't exist and that it's not consistent, I'm saying it's not a stable foundation for lasting unity of purpose. Ideas unite people more enduringly race does. None of your facts have anything to do with that.

>>19758400
>I'm not saying racial bias doesn't exist and that it's not consistent,
Then why did you defend this statement: "Race doesn't actually bind anyone or anything together."
>it's not a stable foundation for lasting unity of purpose
Nothing is
> Ideas unite people more enduringly race does.
Yes, like national unity which has a strong ethnic component

Anyway you're low IQ so you should stop posting

>>19758324
You're also suggesting that racial bias somehow overcomes the other biases I which divide racial groups. One's own race still separates into groups within itself, whether because of wealth, or class, philosophy, or whatever, and they still fucking hate each other regardless. Race is not some beautiful thing that overcomes any challenges in society and unites people. It's just another obstacle.

>>19758468
Actually I am trying to talk to OP about books. Are you interested in replying to my long posts about books that I posted on the literature board?

>>19758423
Ah, the low IQ card, the last defense of a baseless argument. The desperation.

>>19758480
I replied to the wrong comment, sorry.

>>19758480
I meant to make an argument against the idea that the western cannon is only valuable to white people because the only thing that unites people is race. My point was that the value of that selection of literature crosses racial and cultural barriers, and that those very value are more effective in uniting people than race is. I didn't think that was off topic but then it kept veering further into racial stuff I didn't even bring up.

>>19758423
Their probably is some racial aspect to national unity for some people, but the ideas that the nation represents is a far stronger unifier.

>>19756060

>>19758246
>>19758228
>>19758212
Stupid MacBook user.

>>19757818
I said no one outside the department (students and teachers) would see it so it wont get vandalized.
>>19757184
>Yes, I get that, a flaw of the medium is that it leaves room for being exploited in those ways.
I don't want to blame the medium though but its treatment. It would be like blaming the victim here. But no I get what youre saying
>This line is essentially a slogan at this point
About metafiction? I dont know how I would back it up other than to say that making a story be about itself is the first thing that comes to mind and it fakes depth like a mirror looking at a mirror. Its okay for slogans to be cheap no? Because of the propaganda/art distinction. anyways I dont wanna get too off topic
>Essentially an "I voted" sticker.
That would still get a discussion started. It would represent that there IS another side. No one but me is complaining as it is, probably because most students are only studying lit because they couldnt get into translation.
>>19758146
Thanks for longposting.

Yeah that is my problem in general with pomos, but let's strictly stay in this context. They are being destructive by not replacing it with something better.
>>19758258
>1. Defend artistic "canon" in the abstract- people unavoidably distinguish good from bad, and it's good that we try to remember the good and study it to inspire more good things in the future.
Wouldnt this apply to the New Canon too? They think all those things they are adding is good afterall and representitive of new values. What can I do but say "no they arent" when it IS subjective?

Also isnt it hypocritical for me to defend a canon which is made up of texts largely selected beyond only their aesthetic merit, like their commentary on the human condition and what not?
>The new canon isn't doing it for people.
How do I defend it? Any source on this?
>3. Compare specific "new canon" diverse books to specific "old canon" books that are better
Will do
>5. Based on (2), point out the new canon project as destructive. It dismantles something which had value doesn't credibly replace it. Literature as a field of study will not exist if it only values books for their effect on power structures.
Yes, this is my main point and well phrased too.