/lit/ - Literature

>>20131676
>Blocks your path

>>20131676
this chubby asshole

>>20131676
any work in particular that really grinds your gears?

>>20131709
The 1990 preface for Gender Trouble. I simply refused to read anything by her after that, I tried giving her a chance to understand this modern gender stuff but she has the worst prose I've ever read. Nothing worthwhile could possibly come from this hack.

Susan Sontag comes close.
Chesterton is a great writer but he's equally stupid

>>20131769
>Chesterton is as stupid as Butler and Sontag
Anon, I…

>>20131676
Here’s a worthy match for your feminist hack.

>>20131789
obsessed-with-feces bros...

Remember when DH Lawrence BTFO him?

>>20131676
Gender trouble is not the worst one. Read "bodies that matter". Lacan and Hegel would feel like Hume if you read that one. I promise.

I can. Me. OP is a faggot.

>>20131676
>You can't name a writer worse than Judith Butler.
Bakker

>>20131696
Adorno wrote dialectically which is why his sentences read as serpentine and maddeningly obscure - he's trying to demonstrate in language the processes of dialectical thought.

Judith Butler writes atrociously because she's a cunt.

>>20131809
No I don’t actually. Can you explain what Lawrence did?

>>20131764
>she has the worst prose I've ever read
Too complicated for you? It's not fiction, not poetry.

>>20132396
He said *tips fedora* and showed him a photograph of a fat necbeard in a hat, which immediately proved the existence of God and put an end to Bertrand Russell's philosophy career. He killed himself shortly afterwards.

>>20131676
Judith Butler is a bad writer because she’s a deconstructionist and in order to avoid falling into the traps they perceive everywhere in language they end up using the most ridiculous and excessive rhetorical distancing just to dance around a single point that no one can pin them down on.

>if we may be permitted to assume as such, not withstanding all pre-exemplary standards of discusirve practise and representational thought, might it be reasonable to suggest (though not in any overbearing sense) the matter-at-hand, consequentially but not conservatively leading to a cardinal error of which our avoidience may inadvertently, though through no fault of our own, bring about the realisation of which non-disclosure could exacerbate etc etc etc

Don’t get me wrong, I think books like Gender Trouble actually have some great ideas. But fuck me if she doesn’t get bogged down in the most bullshit linguistic games just to avoid making a coherent and well-defined claim
about anything.

what happened to the translation into plain english?

>>20133009
>I think books like Gender Trouble actually have some great ideas.
Explain

>>20133282
Gender performativity makes a lot of sense and (despite popular belief) runs counter to the assumptions that drive ideas like transmedicalism, which I would argue is what the majority of people take issue with rather than transgenderism more broadly.

>>20131809
You can dislike him all you want, but he was still a better writer than most philosophers could ever hope to be.

>>20133411
>which I would argue is what the majority of people take issue with rather than transgenderism more broadly.
For most people who take issue with transgenderism, the transgender transmedical distinction is either meaningless or completely foreign to them.

>>20133534
Yes but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an important distinction that requires more attention. Im saying the part that they’re more likely to be offended by is the pressure for unnecessary surgery than what gender someone chooses to identify as.

Think of it this way- would you prefer your son to use they/them pronouns or cut his own dick off?

>>20132941
Fucking awesome. Ordering full DH Laurence bibliography ASAP

>>20133009
Is that an excerpt from one of her books? What a performative, retarded cunt

>>20133554
>Im saying the part that they’re more likely to be offended by is the pressure for unnecessary surgery than what gender someone chooses to identify as.
This is what I'm disputing. Most opponents of transgenderism by and large are concerned about the gender identity people want to assume, and the critics of transmedicalism come from either within pro-trans spaces or are extremely niche.
>Think of it this way- would you prefer your son to use they/them pronouns or cut his own dick off?
At the end of the day, the vast majority of transgenderism's opponents would reject this as a false dichotomy and see both possibilities as part of the same thing they are against.

>>20133613
>Most opponents of transgenderism by and large are concerned about the gender identity people want to assume
Identifying as a gender isn’t an irreversible procedure. I guarantee you people are less concerned with their children simply changing their name and wearing a dress than the thought of them mutilating themselves. Anyone who thinks otherwise has seriously warped priorities.

>see both possibilities as part of the same thing they are against
Which is exactly why I think Butler’s book is valuable because it clarifies this distinction instead of merely accepting these retarded broad-brush generalisations. I don’t even know why you replied to my post only to address the most inessential part of it desu, my entire point was that we need more pro-trans writers who are skeptical of transmedicalism for this exact reason

>>20131809
The fact that this peabrain achieved so much is proof of the unreasonable effectiveness of the Anglo work ethic.

>>20133594
No lol it’s satire. She does unironically write like that tho

>>20133009
>>if we may be permitted to assume as such, not withstanding all pre-exemplary standards of discusirve practise and representational thought, might it be reasonable to suggest (though not in any overbearing sense) the matter-at-hand, consequentially but not conservatively leading to a cardinal error of which our avoidience may inadvertently, though through no fault of our own, bring about the realisation of which non-disclosure could exacerbate etc etc etc
The embodiement of pic related

eve sedgwick is up there

>>20133772
Her essay on paranoid and reparative reading is based though

>>20133534
The whole fucking thing is a freakshow, and thinking otherwise is nothing but detachment from reality. Keep your made up bullshit to yourself, bucko.

>>20133823
Meant for >>20133411 >>20133554

>>20133411
Transgenderism without transmedicalism is just cis women larping as non binary on twitter

>>20132941
Yeah, I'm thinking BASED!

>>20133823
>YOU’RE WRONG REEEE
Solid argument

>>20133848
What you’re saying is literally the transmedicalist position and plays right into the hands of the tranny industrial complex, who are making huge profits by convincing sad, delusional people to cut their dick off

>>20133872
>Solid argument
>we’re going to force feed you a bunch of buzzwords and you’re going to like it
not going to happen, you clinically insane cocksucker

If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.

If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.

As my story is an august tale of fathers and sons, real and imagined, the biography here will fitfully attend to the putative traces in Manet’s work of “les noms du père,” a Lacanian romance of the errant paternal phallus (”Les Non-dupes errent”), a revised Freudian novella of the inferential dynamic of paternity which annihilates (and hence enculturates) through the deferred introduction of the third term of insemination the phenomenologically irreducible dyad of the mother and child.

If such a sublime cyborg would insinuate the future as post-Fordist subject, his palpably masochistic locations as ecstatic agent of the sublime superstate need to be decoded as the “now-all-but-unreadable DNA” of a fast deindustrializing Detroit, just as his Robocop-like strategy of carceral negotiation and street control remains the tirelessly American one of inflicting regeneration through violence upon the racially heteroglossic wilds and others of the inner city.

>>20131676
80s-90s queer theory is to present day america what marxism leninism was to the denizens of the soviet union in its waning years. a totalitarian ideology that is so pervasive as to be invisible

think about it, the military talking about bodies and spaces and queer drones, judith butler endorsing california state prosecutor kamala harris, buckbreaking for everyone, even the ''far right'' being basically a front peter thiel's log cabin republican mafia, schoolchildren being indoctrinated about gender pronouns, letting women who couldnt get into lockheed biotech do gender studies was like sending freed slaves to liberia to be slavedrivers,

>>20133883
Still waiting for you to post an argument instead of just shitflinging like a baboon lmao. There’s literally no way to engage the subject matter without being aware of these definitions, even if you disagree with them. Screeching “MENTAL ILLNESS REEEE” just makes it obvious you’re not smart enough to articulate yourself.

>>20133848
this. the lgbt(tm) identity is based on science, not even heterosexuality is backed by as much Hard data. so instead of relying on sexual repression and christian religious superstition you should catch up to the 21st century and embrace a new identity based off objective scientific and psychiatric criteria

>>20131676
Somehow she still has influence in this fucked up world

>>20134013
The truth is even our faggot kike communists are a disapointment, in the 50s you had bisexual post-trotskyite intellectuals who knew their cybernetics from their orgonomy and their general semantics, could appreciate beat poetry free jazz experimental theater, and abstract expresionism, and at least justified their noxious communist ideas with reference to WASP authors like emerson and withman, yes of course they were sodomites and bloodsucking jews hellbent on the destruction of white european culture, but at the very least they could be arsed to put out decent paedo art every once in a while. Western civilization is so far off the deep spenglerian end not even our rootless semitic parasites arent even trying anymore, they too have grown stupid and complacent.

I understand the transgender/transmedical distinction and have started to see it as significant. I assume leftists and TERFs are afraid of transmedicalism because it reifies sex as a biologically determined concept. The true reason we oppose transgenderism is because it threatens the coherence of Male and Female. If a man can be a woman there is no such thing as a man. From this perspective the transmedicalists are grossly (that is, disgustingly) “correct” in their understanding of the situation insofar as they’re less threatening to my side. The performativity ideas are a subtler and more deadly attack on essence

>>20134115
You say you want to preserve the distinction between male and female, but at the same time, you collapse the distinction between the map and the territory in the same breath. Sex isn’t the same thing as gender, one is biologically determined while the other is socially constructed and culturally mediated (ie, pertaining to roles and gendered gestures rather than anything “essential”). If you insist the transmedicalists are right, then you should also have no issue with trans women competing against cis women in sports, nor should you have issue with them sharing bathrooms.

>>20134037
You’re missing my point, anon. Arguing that kind of nonsense is the same as having a heated discussion over whether two plus two equals six or orange.
Alas, gender with no basis in biology is dumb. Then again, there’s no need for gender “studies” if you simply pay attention to the very real, not made up in sociology departments science of biology.
The proof is in the pudding: anyone who even remotely cares about that nonsense is a dysgenic looking often perverse person. Case in point everyone mentioned here: Beauvoir, Butler, and Sartre.
You can get upset over my refusal to engage in bullshit terminology completely detached from reality but that’s on you. I’m just telling you not to waste your time dealing with stupid, nonsensical, and, quite frankly, socially devastating ideas. Call a spade a spade and move on. There are more beautifully written books and interesting ideas to spend your time on.

>>20133411
Its the biopolitics psychiatry regime and the sex industry, 20th century gender norms die harder than those around social authority, if the loudest voices on the left are obsessed with intrusive psychopolitics and justifying totalitarian NATO technocracy through identity politics then that may lead to panic and scapegoating.

>>20134037
How about this: People should get help accepting the bodies that they have, and most current therapies for people who suffer from gender dysphoria are oriented in the wrong direction.

>>20134148
Erm, gender studies is a real and respected field, chuddy

>>20131676
Amanda McKittrick Ros is worse when it comes to fiction writing.

>>20133411
>Gender performativity makes a lot of sense
Not when you remember that cutting a dude's balls off causes reliable changes in temperament and behavior. Or all the sexual orientation experiments performed on lab rats.
Hard social construction theories are just taking advantage of the gaps in our understanding of human neurology due to moratoriums on human experimentation.

I remember choosing to do a presentation on her and her "Excitable speech" in my political science course on "Language and Politics". I had no idea who she was and in German that book was translated as "Hass sprich" (Hate talks) and I thought it was something rather based instead of a gender-biased view on how words can "hurt".
Still remember how much I hated doing that presentation after I found out what it actually is about...

>>20131676

HO
MO
LO
GOUS

>>20131764
>>20133009
>>20133767
>>20134477
>nooooooo you cant use dense prose!!!
and these are the same people who praise aristotle. reminder that good philosophy is hardly ever easy reading. maybe you should stick to harry potter, midwits.

>>20134498
Aristotle says women are retards

>>20134144
I don’t think transmedicalists are actually right, I think their doctrine is both less dangerous and more horrific which galvanizes people against them and you. And yeah, I know you people love to decouple sex and gender but that relies on the assumption that instinct, behavior, personality etc. are born ex nihilo by nebulous social processes. This most closely resembles a theological statement because it’s at root a cry for help for fettered souls that haven’t undergone Emancipation and Liberation. I’m not an an American, a man, a family member, I’m ME! All those things are social constructs! Freedom!

>>20131676
John Green.

>>20134282
>Hard social construction theories are just taking advantage of the gaps in our understanding of human neurology due to moratoriums on human experimentation.

You can say this about literally any theory. All philosophical inquiry is an attempt to fill out "the gaps in our understanding of human neurology".

>>20133739
>Identifying as a gender isn’t an irreversible procedure. I guarantee you people are less concerned with their children simply changing their name and wearing a dress than the thought of them mutilating themselves. Anyone who thinks otherwise has seriously warped priorities.
Again, just because people could would rightfully recognize that one option is more drastic than another does not mean that they would find either tolerable no see them as entirely separate phenomena.
>Which is exactly why I think Butler’s book is valuable because it clarifies this distinction instead of merely accepting these retarded broad-brush generalisations. I don’t even know why you replied to my post only to address the most inessential part of it desu, my entire point was that we need more pro-trans writers who are skeptical of transmedicalism for this exact reason
I commented on that part because I think you're so caught up in these esoteric discoursed that you don't actually understand what's ocurring in the broader one related to this issue.

>>20131809
>>20132396

>>20134713
>You can say this about literally any theory.
Except empirical biological theory, which is the prerequisite for neurology.
Multiple lines of evidence are pointing away from pure social construction and towards biological/epigenetic factors contributing to the behavioral differences between the sexes and between the orientations, it's only a matter of time before the neurologists settle the matter of human homosexuality and transexuality once and for all.
Tabula Rasa theory died decades ago, move on.

>>20133739
transmedicalism v performativity is just the new AGP v HSTS. transgenders discourse about its own condition amounts to what psychiatrists will recognize a sword salad, meaningless often repetitive terms compulsively spewed by the mentally ill.

>>20135088

>>20135139
Not here to argue in favor of Butler, just against you using the whole "gaps of understanding" to contradict theory in general. I don't really care about your spiel on behavioral science lol.

>>20134282
>>20135139

trannies are biohackers conducting human experiments on themselves, pharmakon of the pharmacopornographic regime, in that the bronze age pervert or porn addicts or cisgender women who are into plastic surgery are any less transgender than the trannies properly so called. subjective struggle to somehow integrate these libidinal and technological forces amidst a pervasive atmosphere of distrust and totalitarianppwer. both positivists and progressive academics hide respectively behind the pretense of objectivity, a supposedly universal human nature, universal human dignity in order to assign epistemic authority to themselves. how the meme antipostmodern realism of pinker and tooby and cosmides andoes not help one understanding how organisms function in their environments, it has nothing to do with the public use of reason as defined by kant, instead one is imposing a very particular and arbitrary view of human nature, derived from a sort of the cold war model of computational cognition conflated with darwinism and defined against a strawman of postmodern relativists who deny science. while the americanized progressive ideology can also be traced to the legacy of the cold war- the civil rights act and how it is essentially paternalist and psychiatric in structure, really scary stuff to be subjected to, if you talk about institutionalized prejudices and internalized oppression you can dismiss any concerns about the legitimacy of institutions and their interventions in the lives of individuals, criteria of equality are capitalist ones of financiarization, marxist foucaultian critique would actually make you suspicious of it. the point is the same as in traditionalist conservative discourses, to deny human autonomy in order to enforce a sort of coercitive social domination based on supposed primordial racial or gender qualities, bypassing the family and the church so as to place the same authority in the hands of the sex industry, psychiatrists, the mass media.

>>20135088
>>20135288
Incredible

>>20135442
You mean that they both got 88 dubs?

>>20135329
>against you using the whole "gaps of understanding" to contradict theory in general
Golly, I guess we better stop observing natural phenomena or we might accidentally fill in a gap that would be inconvenient for a dead philosopher!

>>20135658
how observation shapes observed objects and positivism is a political power claim that denies its status as such

>>20135671
>how observation shapes observed objects
UH OH BOYS WE GOT A REAL KANTIAN IN HERE
Good thing we invented instruments and analytical methods that bypass the flaws of bodily perception.

>positivism is a political power claim
Spoken like a true nihilist. In real life, people care about the truth for it's own sake, even if they have trouble consistently living up to it.

>>20135752
Many aspects of subatomic physics are shaped by observation. The apin of a quark in not set until it is measured. Electrons unobserved act as waves, when observed they act as particals.

If she ain't a TERF I literally wont read her.

>>20131676
gertrude stein

>>20135088
Russelbros…

>>20131676
tom robbins

>>20133009
Honest question, but I have been reading about Derrida and deconstructionism, and have found it very hard to find any critiques of it.
I suppose that this is part of the strategy - to obscure the meaning of what is being said so it cannot be efficiently refuted or criticized.
My main issue with it is that it seems to deny any and all absolute truths, and at the same time denies all accusations of relativism.

Derrida says that there is no metalanguage with which to evaluate a text/language, and thus the evaluation/interpretation must come from within the text. But the mere sentence "there is no metalanguage" is itself a metalanguage with regard to language, thus falling directly into the relativistic self refutation.

Anyway, if anyone had any reading regarding critiques of Derrida/Deconstruction/ Post- Structuralism, it would be greatly appreciated.

>>20133756
It wasn’t just his work ethic, he was mentored a lot during his upbringing and surrounded by a lot of intelligent people. You don’t just end up like him from reading/writing alone all day.

>>20131676
Butler's prose is tedious slop but at least it's not as actively awful as that Indian instagram heaux.

>>20131676
she's a very handsome woman

>>20131676
E.L. James.
NOBODY could be this bad besides her.

>>20136558
Fatherless behaviour

>>20136813
Fatherlandless behavior.

>>20135088
I mean I hate russell but how is this a BTFO
It's just full of seethe

>>20136913
because it was true:
>>20135288

>>20131676
Nice try anon, very nice try indeed, but check this out: Eliezer Yudkowsky

>>20136922
never read him

i know a worse author
JRR Tolkin is a fucking racist

>>20132389
>wrote dialectically
Which means what, exactly? Sounds like bullshit to justify obscurantism.

>>20134498
It's not dense prose, silly. It's drivel, designed for Mexican Megs and orientalists to i seminars mediocre minds. The average channer on /lit/ or /his/ could run circles around Butler in actual discourse.
>>20136487
Congrats, you've discovered the redundancy inherent to recursive evaluation.

>>20137165
based

>>20136922
The guy's clearly an egomaniac and caught up in some fringe ideas, but I always thought he was a fine writer. His nonfiction is better than his fiction, and in particular I found his essays on cognitive biases to be helpful in refining my own thinking when I was in college.