/lit/ - Literature

I agree, OP. An unsettling amount of psychology is based entirely on assertations. It's irritating to see people screaming things like "HOMOSEZUALITY IS NOT IN UR DNA ITS PYCHOLOGY," for instance, despite the number of neurological studies related to the matter which provide evidence that it is genetic.

At one point I watched a presentation during a stress seminar, where some woman was claiming that the creative and analytical hemispheres stop communicating during times of stress and certain excercises are required to bridge them again.

>mfw

>mfw professor starts analyzing literature by Psychoanalytic means

Neurobiology and psychoanalysis are two different languages by which one can choose to understand the world. Neither is more true than the other one, and unless you're some kind of neuroscience fundamentalist extremist, I think it's understandable that some people choose to process the human mind in the terminology of psychoanalysis.

tl;dr they're not exclusive

Well, as far as literary theory goes, we don't really care who's right, we care who's interesting.

Psychoanalysis is only really relevant in literary theory for some bizarre reason. No psychology course of study will seriously consider psychoanalysis in anything other than a historical context.

Inductive and deductive reasoning both have their merits. We can choose to study what makes our brain work or we can study how it works and try to figure out what makes it behave like it does.

Like it or not, people do project, and the idea that a field of study isn't necessary because another field of study that emerged around half a century later would make its discoveries anyway is just downright dumb.

look when you go to analyze a given text you have a toolbox of different critical theories to choose from -- some are useful for some stuff and others are useful for others, and there's no law about which you have to pick, so getting angry about one of them when you can just use another you find more suitable/incisive is really really silly

>>2678555
>neither is more true than the other
Psychoanalysis is literally based on a few people's ideas and zero evidence.

>>2678571
>Like it or not, people do project

There is absolutely no reason to believe that people project.

>nd the idea that a field of study isn't necessary because another field of study that emerged around half a century later would make its discoveries anyway is just downright dumb.

Which is why we still practice phrenology, right? I understand that Freud should be respected for some of the ideas he had for his time, but that's no reason to continue using psychoanalysis.

>>2678555
Are you thinking talk therapy = psychoanalysis?
Because psychoanalysis is definitely bullshit. You argument works fine for defending soft science but not disproved science and you whole "alternative naratives" argument is pants-on-head retarded considering how right psychoanalysts thought they were. Do you pomo faggots use your rhetoric to defend anything that isn't hopelessly outdated and modernists or are y'all feeling secure about being blatant reactionaries these days?

>>2678561
>literary theory

I know. It's the fuckin' go-to of a ton of literary critics/students. Interesting? At first, perhaps. But wouldn't it be more interesting to not resort to using cliche terms like the id or the "real", when writing a paper about a book? It seems to me that it just gives a lot of people an excuse not to think hard.

ITT: Psychologists who know what they're talking about

OP you're claiming that there is a truth. This is incorrect. Psychology has moved on from Freud, just as Neuroscience has moved on from its roots. If you reject what you view to be psychology's narrative, so be it. The irritating separation between the fields lies in the attitudes. Many fundamentalist scientists (often young ones) claim a totalizing narrative. Any psychology student worth his salt will do no such thing.

>>2678658
>2012
>conflating psychology and psychoanalysis
>"totallizing narratives"
>making me respond
2/10, may actually be a lit major

>>2678627

How are those terms at all cliche?

Also it's not really a go-to theory for students. Psychoanalysis is much more complicated that just doing a simple reader response paper.

>>2678658
Christ, you po-mo faggots are even worse than fundamentalist Christians. At least Christians have the excuse of having been indoctrinated from birth to believe their stupid anti-science horseshit, you're such a fucking moron that you decided to believe this shit when you were an adult.

>>2678733
what's your excuse?

that's interesting what you say about projection

>>2678551
wow shit sucks

>>2678606
This guy.
>>2678555
Yes, psychoanalysis is based on ideas. This is because psychology will never be 100% empirical. The mind is subjective, and thought process can't be determined through examining of mechanical actions or physical changes. Consciousness isn't physical, it's metaphysical.

To use an analogy: You can't determine what a computer is doing by looking at electrical activity in it's circuitry. Sure, you can have a rough idea as to what it might be doing based on what parts are being used, but you can never know for certain what the software is doing through examination of the hardware.
Thought process = software.
Brain activity = hardware.

Possibly the worst thread on /lit/. Including the guy /r/ing animu light novels.

Prepare for trouble!

Make it double!

To protect the world from devastation!

To unite all peoples within our nation!

To denounce the evils of truth and love!

To extend our reach to the stars above!

>>2678831
Delueze!

>>2678836
Guattari!

Been waiting for an excuse to post this

>>2678820
So the answer is to rely on studies of neurotic rich white people from a hundred years ago?

Again, why are you pomo fuckers so virulently reactionary? You aren't arguing in favor of opening the conversation up so subjectivity, you arguing in favor of limiting it to ideas that came out of the extremely narrow portion of the population that have been forcing their totalizing narratives on people for centuries. You're so confused you don't even know what side you're on.

>>2678837
Anti-Oedipus blast off at the speed of light!

Surrender now or prepare to fight!

>>2678820
>Consciousness isn't physical, it's metaphysical.

There is little to no consensus of what consciousness is or isn't.

>>2678823
Dude, if you have a fucking argument, then make it. You're no better than a /b/tard when you post shit like this.

>>2678724
>How are those terms at all cliche?
>Also it's not really a go-to theory for students.

I'm guessing you don't read a lot of academic papers or, worse, academic blogs..

>>2678845
Never mind man, I've realised that you're either a troll or just fucking retarded. So there's no point in humouring you.

>>2678874
No one is trolling you dude. No one here has made a single argument against psychology. You're sitting high and mighty over a pile of dead strawmen.

Just humor me and tell me straight up how defending old debunked science that claimed to be The Truth and was embedded in the imperialist, class-elitist power dynamics of the time isn't reactionary.

>>2678887
I don't think this is a good argument against science. I'm personally opposed to any and all narrative claiming to be The Truth. Even psychology itself is a reaction. Derrida makes the great comment on Freud that if Freud had understood his own reactions better, he might realize that a lot of his writings were influenced by his daughter dying. Psychology is just as embedded in class elitism and colonial imperialism, just in a different form

>>2678887
You say that you won't believe anything unless there's scientific (read: empirical) evidence to back it up. However, for much of psychology, empirical evidence has proven, and may continue to prove, impossible to find.

I'm not saying that Freud and Jung and the rest were correct, but I think they were on the right track in that some psychology can be based on assertion. Some of their theories were wrong, some were right, some aren't provable either way.

However, I think empirical science has it's place in psychology just as much as the theoretical. Saying that Freud is 100% wrong is retarded.

Basically what I'm saying is that being absolutist either way is stupid.

>>2678894
I think the term "psychology" includes a lot of different approaches that are flawed to varying degrees and have had the chance to incorporate criticisms but psychoanalysis is far more specific and far more outdated and far more problematic.

I think everything is necessarily embedded in the power dynamics of the day which I why I hate it so much when postmodernists ride by on their high horses, straining to pull a wagon full of cultural capital, and sneer at the peasants "totalizing narratives" and primitive desire to explain things. All while acting like some kind of fucking heroes of the oppressed.

>>2678894
>I'm personally opposed to any and all narrative claiming to be The Truth.
Maybe that's because you've invested all your intellectual energy into psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, and literary theory, and you're convinced every other discipline must be similarly vacuous?

Your dopiness is yours to live with. As much as you might want everyone else to share it, not all of them do.

I get where you're coming from, OP, but I disagree. To weigh in on the science vs. Lacanian postmodernists debate, it bothers me for a lot of reasons. One it seems to perpetuate a top down view of academia where the sciences are always king. They count because they make real things and contribute to the world. This is what I think Dawkins would have you believe, and is borne out in the Fish essay with the discussion about a cure for AIDS. Yes, as an art historian I won't do anything to cure AIDS, but it doesn't mean that I don't read and say something about cultural representations of AIDS that can be useful in other ways. The second consequence of this is it keeps interdisciplinary work between the humanities and sciences down. I can think of a lot of places where they have overlapped in interesting ways. I have been speaking with a medical doctor about the relationship of Roland Barthes' readings of photographs and X-rays, CAT scans, etc. Again this doesn't seem probable in the Dawkins/Skoal worldview.

Psychoanalysis: laudable goals. Shame they couldn't deliver.

>>2678913
>You say that you won't believe anything unless there's scientific (read: empirical) evidence to back it up

No I didn't and I don't believe anything of the sort. Even science has empirically demonstrated the limits of empirical demonstration. Get with the fucking times please.

>they were on the right track in that some psychology can be based on assertion

No shit, show me where someone disagreed with that.


Once again we have a postmodernist shitting up a conversation to belabor some trivial point that's not even controversial. Give yourself a gold star for being all intellectual and shit and get some sleep. You've got a big day of interjecting when you have nothing to contribute just to stroke your ego and you must be tuckered out since you've deigned to address someone with a direct and comprehensible response.

Psychoanalysis: The self is an illusion.

Science: The self is in illusion.

What's the problem here, folks?

>>2678919
">I'm personally opposed to any and all narrative claiming to be The Truth.
Maybe that's because you've invested all your intellectual energy into psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, and literary theory, and you're convinced every other discipline must be similarly vacuous?"

Hey now, I'm the anti-pomo troll here and even I have to disagree. Science deals in predictive models, not "Truth" and when people forget that we get a bunch of obnoxious pseudo-scientific magazine articles that make science look bad. "Predictive Models" write it on your arm and remember it. This shit is at least as old as Poper.

>>2678379
I'm surprised you take issue with Id, ego, and superego OP. Humans pretty much have these conflicting urges from society and nature and they try to sort them out. I always thought that was one of the more "correct" ideas of Freud.

It's the Oedipal stuff and his stages of development that is the most obvious bunk. And the reducing complex stuff to sex all the time. And the unfalsifiable dream interpretation method.

>>2678983
The nomenclature of id, ego and super-ego can be handy, but it's like talking about cold seeping in "electricity in the air". It's just not how things work and unfortunately a lot of people don't know that.

>>2679003
>old seeping in OR "electricity in the air"

>>2678941
What's with your obsessive hate of post-modernists dude? It seems like you're projecting.

>>2678956
>Science deals in predictive models, not "Truth" and when people forget that we get a bunch of obnoxious pseudo-scientific magazine articles that make science look bad.
I don't disagree with this, and in fact the value of science for me is it's falsifiability and how responsive it is to data. The point is not that science is infallible or divine, simply that models about the world, or consciousness, or society, or whatever, works that originated in some asshole's head with no relationship to data whatsoever aren't worth five seconds of my time. Psychoanalysis is just such bunk.

>>2678956
>Science deals in predictive models, not "Truth" and when people forget that we get a bunch of obnoxious pseudo-scientific magazine articles that make science look bad.
I don't disagree with this, and in fact the value of science for me is it's falsifiability and how responsive it is to data. The point is not that science is infallible or divine, simply that models about how the world, or consciousness, or society, or whatever, works that originated in some asshole's head with no relationship to data whatsoever aren't worth five seconds of my time. Psychoanalysis is just such bunk.

>>2678532

What's up with people with children and heterosexual romances turning out to be gay, though? What's that about?


Is there like a biological clock for these sorts of things?

>>2679003
Not sure what you mean. It's a model of conflicts that are actually there. We could just as much call them "Social Norms", "Natural urges", and "Rational thought", but those things exist and we deal with them all the time.

And, because they are models of internal conflict, they might be useful for the analysis of literature.

I could say more about it's limits are, but I'd rather you call me out on what I've said here.

>>2679012
9/10, I chuckled.

If you're seriously asking it's the unspoken reactionary nature of the trend and it's popularity as a means of accumulating cultural capitol. A lot of stupid people with money use it to sound smart and historically it was a means of shutting out new voices, taking credit for new insights and re-professionalizing disciplines that came under attack in the era of post-left communism, women's rights, and decolonization. All it's insights are burried in a ton of verbiage and available in far more accessible forms outside of the rich-white-dude cannon it claims to criticize.

Imagine if Russel and Whitehead wrote Goedels theorem in set notation, pretended it was their idea, and continued writing everything in set notation from there on. That's what pomo is.

OP here. Just wanted to point out that I haven't responded since >>2678627

So spare us the "lel sounds like you're projecting" jokes, yes?

>>2679033
It's a developmental model now better explained by the growth of certain brain regions. Using it to explain adult behavior is an oversimplification like the right and left brain thing. People are more complicated than that.

>>2678956

>Science deals in predictive models, not "Truth"

very true but try to bear in mind that the same applies to the crit theories you're slagging

they're a set of tools for trying to understand a given piece of literature, adn if you don't think psychoanalytic criticism is going to enrich your understanding, you can pick another, or even mix and match

>>2679053
People perhaps, but I wonder about books. I don't think we'd say a character's behavior is explained by growth in certain brain areas. But then I probably wouldn't interpret a work from a Freudian angle unless Freudian concepts were clearly involved in the work itself so I suppose I'm not the best person to argue for Freud in the humanities.

>>2679053
They're models of conflict but they're pretty kludgy. I've described people as "all id" before but they weren't stuck at some developmental phase, they were alcoholics and their selfish and shortsighted behavior was a standard reaction to long-term excessive consumption.

That may be a bit of a simple example but that's sort of the point. You shouldn't have to shoe-horn information into a model with a buch of ifs and wells to make it fit. Without the option to verify things empirically it becomes even more important that a theory be elegant and simple and when incorporating behavior from outside of Freud's tiny sample his theories just aren't either of those things.

>>2679074

>You shouldn't have to shoe-horn information into a model with a buch of ifs and wells to make it fit.

you don't, dude! you're completely free to pick a critical framework that you think works better, or even come up with your own

what you're doing here is basically like standing in front of the counter at dunkin donuts with all these delicious crullers and bear claws and headlights and strawberry frosted with sprinkles lined up and kicking and screaming because you don't want an apple fritter

>>2679055
>they're a set of tools for trying to understand a given piece of literature, adn if you don't think psychoanalytic criticism is going to enrich your understanding, you can pick another, or even mix and match

Except they're also used for obfuscating concepts and justifying the position of a long rotten intellectual "elite". I haven't complained about their use as tools for literary analysis. I was slagging on this;
>when postmodernists ride by on their high horses, straining to pull a wagon full of cultural capital, and sneer at the peasants "totalizing narratives" and primitive desire to explain things. All while acting like some kind of fucking heroes of the oppressed.

>>2679099

that i guess has some validity, and i do think clarity could stand to be prioritized a bit more, but jeez, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here

>>2678532

The studies involve brain chemical activity: changes in behavior can actually cause brain chemical activity. If it's "genetic" then how is it being passed down? Magic?

>>2678820
>>2678820

> The mind is subjective, and thought process can't be determined through examining of mechanical actions or physical changes.

Yet.

>>2679078
Sure is projection in here.

You know I'm not OP right? I didn't jump in until mr. pomo started pontificating about how psychoanalysis is as valid as any science, defending reactionary bullshit that's been criticized up down and sideways for doing all the things postmodernists claim to oppose. These pricks don't oppose totalizing narratives, they oppose counter-naratives and they get away with labeling each other as progressive leftists when they're staunch reactionaries.

El Mich;
>>2678626I
>>2678702
>>2678845
>>2678887
>>2678915
>>2678941
>>2678956
>>2679003
>>2679007
>>2679034
>>2679053
>>2679074
>>2679099

>>2679105
Fair enough, but I get the impression that schools of literary analysis are considered to have a basis in some kind of external validity, like we don't have much biblical analysis of non-biblical texts or Marxist Cannibalist, Pastafarian, Aether theory; Phenological, etc analysis do we? Are you allowed to see how a book meshes with any old random bullshit theory, because that's what I feel like you're doing unless the book was written by a Freudian in which case I feel like some kind of historical meta-analysis would be more appropriate. If you're letting people use whatever theories they want just for kicks then yeah, use whatever but if those people are paid academics we'd goddamn well better have free college for every one in whatever country they work in.

>mfw idiots don't realize critical lenses are merely lenses and not assertions about the validity of sience

>>2679126

if the "random bullshit theory" in question can help you glean insight into the text, and you support it with evidence from the text, then sure, by all means

psychoanalytic crit probably hangs on in part because of how much it deals with families and sex and taboos and stuff, which are all things it's useful to have a lens for interpreting in books

please do write some phrenological criticism, though, i'd really like to see that

>>2679126
>If you're letting people use whatever theories they want just for kicks then yeah, use whatever but if those people are paid academics we'd goddamn well better have free college for every one in whatever country they work in.

What are you talking about? That's precisely how academia works. Professors study works with particular lenses--often of their choosing, but equally often influenced by the trends of the field.

>>2679138
Assertions about the validity of Psychoanalysis as science was made in this thread.

>>2679145
And unless you're some kind of biological essentialist who believes the upper classes are inherently smarter and more worthy of resources that's an enormous problem with academia, and great many of those academic profess belief in Marxism or some kind of progressive ideology while sucking at the state's tit and producing allegedly important output that only their fellow academics can read while all manner of shit happens to sucker that have to work for a living.

It's a decadent system that pays hypocrites to make progressivism and Marxism look retarded.

>>2679174
Calm down buddy, you know they go to conferences sponsored by the Slought Foundation and promise to speak on behalf of the proletariat when the chance comes up.

>>2679138
>idiots don't realize critical lenses are merely lenses and not assertions about the validity of sience

Uh, no. We get that. We're just saying that it's fucking stupid.

>>2678379
1) You are confusing "Psychoanalysis" with "Freud".
2) Neurobiology has not provided a consistent representation of even the most basic social or abstract cognition, and replaces its own understanding of basic emotional reactions with such frequency that its conclusions are frankly laughable. Psychopharmacology has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of widely recognized psychological disorder, but not particularly to any greater degree than talk therapy, which also has the upshot of minimizing cost and dependency. Like it or not, for the time being, clinical psychology is more an exercise in philosophy than it is in biology.

More importantly, while psychoanalysis is in disgrace in the clinical community, the alternatives bear the distinctive marks of Freudean and more particularly Jungian thought, though the most popular also include elements of Behaviorism. The concept of mental complices, the notion that instinctive drives for survival procreation and violence have an unconscious effect on our decisionmaking and most importantly the belief that talk therapy works at all are fundamentally attributable to the Psychoanalysts, and form the core of newer modalities like CBT, social learning theory, narrative therapy and even to a lesser extent positivism and existential therapy.

3) Neurobiology quite distinctly rejects the idea of an unconscious, and explains the activities represented by freud as the product of a so-called unconscious mind through the processes of long-term memory retention and attentional bias. These conclusions hold quite a bit of water, but aren't actually functional or significant to the practice of psychotherapy at all because the concepts practiced by physiological psych's more abstract cousins are more available and effective when interacting with actual people and shaping their phenomenological experiences of the world.

>psychoanalysis is inconsistent and unscientific
>hurr durr psychology is bullshit
>can't into fuzzy logic
Why are some people so desperate to discredit psychoanalysts? Is it because they feel their mental privacy is being violated or it makes them feel insecure about themselves?

>he thinks psychoanalysis is invalidated cause it is not a "science"
>he thinks lacanians are relevant
>he thinks science is definitive

Freud was a man of his time, so he needed to claim the scientific character of his theories. However many people have done interpretations of freud out of this scientific need. Wittgenstein and Levi-Strauss for instance.

What is stupid is not still referencing psychoanalysis, but still doing it with a scientific need.

>>2679355
>he thinks science is definitive
It's certainly definitive next to the white upper class circlejerk that is literary theory and continental philosophy. Science is actually doing things that help the working class while these faggots are just verbosely telling each other how serious and progressive they all are.

This thread is stupid and you should all feel bad.

>>2679410
>Science is actually doing things that help the working class
>doing things
>working class

sure.

>>2679410
>white upper class circlejerk that is literary theory and continental philosophy
I'm so confused right now, white upper class circlejerk is something that someone who is into literary theory and continental philosophy would say. Give me a concrete example of science helping the working class, the medical revolution is not one because all it did was prolong worker life.

>provide evidence that it is genetic.

elaborate troll or idiot - no-one discovered any "gay-gene" yet and there might never be one.

>>2679434
>implying scientists have not created everything they have "found" and thus they will create the gay-gene soon.

>>2679431
>Give me a concrete example of science helping the working class,

Enjoy your perfect teeth and scurvy-free life you fucking idiot.

>>2679442
>>2679434
>>2679431
ITT: Americans

>>2679431
>I'm so confused right now, white upper class circlejerk is something that someone who is into literary theory and continental philosophy would say.
That's because literary theory and continental philosophy are made up almost entirely of privileged, upper class people (predominantly white males) whinging about upper class white male privilege while doing FUCKING NOTHING to help anyone else (but it's totally just as good as science and shit. The people in the field say so with ever so much verbiage, after all!). Hell, business majors are more tolerable than these cretins, at least they're perfectly happy with what they are and don't think that bitching about their privilege makes them morally superior.

>Give me a concrete example of science helping the working class, the medical revolution is not one because all it did was prolong worker life.
How about the invention of the printing press you dribbling idiot?

>>2679452
yeah, it's in our genes.

>>2679469
0/10

even at trolling you suck

Science has made it possible to pirate expensive formerly exclusive books and journals, making continental philosophers and literary theorists more obsolete and more obviously so every day.

Pic related, we're raiding it and tearing it down.

>>2679108
>If it's "genetic" then how is it being passed down? Magic?
If it's recessive, you can carry it without personally having the trait.

>>2679468

>(but it's totally just as good as science and shit. The people in the field say so with ever so much verbiage, after all!)

No one says that.

>Lacan
>Adaequatio rei et intellectus: the homonymic enigma that can be brought out in the genitive, rei - which without even changing accents can be the genitive of the word reus, meaning the party to the case in a lawsuit, specifically the accused, and metaphorically he who has incurred a debt-surprises us by providing, in the end, a formulation for this singular correspondence [adequation] that I raised as a question for our intellect and that finds its answer in the symbolic debt for which t subject is responsible as a subject of speech.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=874fNhM4QV4

He spends the entire first third of the lecture talking about absolutely nothing; and the rest of it for that matter.

I'm always surprised by how much /lit/ is self-hating. You'd think people seriously interested in literature wouldn't be so anti-intellectual.

>>2678379
A lot of the terms created by psychoanalysts are useful metaphors for describing and predicting behaviour that hasn't been fully explained yet, and they will still be useful metaphors once that behaviour has been explained because they will, even then, allow for simpler descriptions.

But only one in ten people understand this, so I'm with Bugs Bunny in his rage.

>>2679673
Define anti-intellectual.

It's a horribly vague accusation middlebrows throw out whenever someone criticizes something they like. Can't we be "faggots" or "petite-bourgeois" or something a little more substantive?

>>2679692
>scrolling through /lit/
>see this
>'Can't we be "faggots" or "petite-bourgeois" or something a little more substantive?'
>right after poster called someone 'middlebrow'

>>2679700
Would you prefer that I talk about accumulating and defending cultural capitol instead? I can be more explicit if necessary, just let me know which part you didn't understand.

>>2679692

By anti-intellectual I mean they are completely opposed to the academic study of literature as such. They would seem to prefer that people read, but not think about what they read.

>not being a monist
>2012
SHIG

What's funny is people only read and quote Freud, disregarding the years of development that has occurred in psychoanalysis since his death.

It simply highlights the oblivious pseudo-intellectual name dropping.

>>2679711
He is not referring to a lack of comprehension for your content so much as a lack of comprehension for why you choose to post in such an incredibly asinine manner.

>>2679719
Yeah, no. That's not really happening here. Academic study doesn't do much to promote thinking when it's deliberately made incomprehensible. Most disciplines produce a lot of intros and texts for the educated layperson. I have a number of books written in plain English by renowned and even Nobel Prize winning scientists that explain their discoveries so they can be shared with anyone interested.

This is not at all the case with literary theory and continental philosophy. They are welfare for the professors and commodified intellect for the students. Both of those would be undermined by making these subject intelligible to any pleb interested enough to read a book about them.

>>2679733
That only really applies to structuralism and psycholinguistics. All other facets of literary analysis are simply written and easy to understand. Of course, the reason that linguistics, in general, is so horrifically abstruse is because it is pseudo-intellectual. The only exception is de Saussure.

>>2679730
Too few words?

>>2679733
Why don't you read some canonical literary criticism? Eagleton, Greenblatt and the like are all good.

>>2679736
I've read several good intros to linguistics and heard a great series of lectures too. Structuralism has been defunct for a long time, and psycholinguistics sounds like something Derrida would make up with no real attachment to any legitimate science.

>>2679740
This is because they are rooted entirely in the text; they do not add an unnecessary periphery (such as pseudo-sciences involving psychology). LIterary criticism is often best when it is rooted entirely in the text; also, when it is mixed with socio-historical-cultural context. It can be very illuminating as to the contemporary mores of an author.

>>2679737
>Middlebrow

>>2679748
Psycholinguistics is mostly Kristeva and Lacan, both of whom have no clue. If by linguistics, you mean stylistics, I don't know if I would agree.

>>2679752
Irigaray once claimed that E=MC2 was an androcentric equation because 'it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us'. The irony, of course, is that she whines that fluid mechanics are neglected because they are gynocentric when fluid mechanics are infinitely more complex than rigid mechanics.

tl;dr, feminist linguists are fucking retarded.

>>2679733

I can tell already that you're going by the popular myth of literary study, and not literary study itself.

>Academic study doesn't do much to promote thinking when it's deliberately made incomprehensible.

This is only true for some thinkers. And believe it or not, they're openly criticized for it by other thinkers in the same field.

Now. Do not confuse obscurantism for an acceptable level of jargon that's necessary for the field.

>Most disciplines produce a lot of intros and texts for the educated layperson. I have a number of books written in plain English by renowned and even Nobel Prize winning scientists that explain their discoveries so they can be shared with anyone interested.

Is there really a demand for popularized literary theory? I mean it's typical for your average person to have a passing interest in science, because science if about the workings of the world and such and most people have a stake in that. If you read enough to really want to get into theory, you probably won't want a popularized account anyway.

Someone who reads Stephen King doesn't really care what Derrida has to say. Someone who watches Star Trek will probably be interested in some popular science like Sagan. I think you're drawing the wrong conclusions.

>This is not at all the case with literary theory and continental philosophy.

I'm not sure why you're bringing in continental philosophy. That isn't my field at all, but I thought there were a number of plain language/popularized introductory texts and novels in that area. Can someone back me up on that? And isn't analytic philosophy much more obscured?

And you're right that it's not really there for literary theory. But I chalk that up to lack of demand.

>They are welfare for the professors and commodified intellect for the students. Both of those would be undermined by making these subject intelligible to any pleb interested enough to read a book about them.

You're just drawing conclusions based on some underlying bias, I think. Do you really think the average person gives two damns what Derrida had to say about anything?

>>2679756

>one feminist linguist says something dumb
>Hey guys all feminists are dumb

Do you understand why that isn't logical or fair?

>>2679740
Downloading Eagleton's introduction and a Greeblatt reader right now. I'll be a little better at drawing my lines in the future. It's really just pomo that sends me into fits of rage.

>>2679763

Greenblatt is post modern. He's the founder of New Historicism, which takes a lot from Foucault.

>>2679752
No sir, I mean the kind of linguistics that isn't necessarily apropos of literature. Stylistics is new to me but it sounds like it could be useful, at least in theory.

>>2679762
I said all feminist linguists are dumb, not feminists. I say this because it's true: Irigaray, Kristeva, Hiatt, Showalter, Ozick, Joanna Russ (ad inf.) all have nothing of merit to say.

I do actually believe that modern feminism is a massive hypocrisy as well.

>>2679766
Thanks for the heads-up.

>>2679355
>he thinks lacanians are relevant

Lacan radicalized Freud and is more relevant to the contemporary academic use of psychoanalysis than Freud. Though, Deleuze and Guattari eventually abolish the Oedipal model. Lacan even told Deleuze that he'd surpassed him.

>>2679770
Let's not, partner. Let's not.

>>2679770
"Feminism" is such a broad term it's almost meaningless.

>>2679770

You're a biased ideologue, from the looks of it.

I don't know anything about feminist linguistics, so I won't try to defend it, but I don't really trust you to give them a fair chance either.

>>2679776
I'll replace it with gynocentrism, because that's essentially what it is. When women got the vote, it ceased to be necessary. Now that women are legally equal, it's a bunch of White, Western women bitching when they should actually be focussing on the instances where androcentrism is still alive and well in the legal system. By that, I'm referring to the Middle East.

>>2679761
>You're just drawing conclusions based on some underlying bias, I think.

Says the guy who then goes on to write:

>Do you really think the average person gives two damns what Derrida had to say about anything?

>>2679780

Please explain how that demonstrates bias, or something. I'm not going to piece together your points for you.

>>>white upper class circlejerk

You obviously know little about class. They are middle class, as are neurobiologists, cognitive, and clinical psychologists.

Have you never heard of Franz Fanon?

Your whinging on about the power dynamics of the time is historically questionable. Has the situation really changed that much? An argument was made about technology enabling the spread of information. Then, what excuse does the "pleb" have to not have the tools to understand difficult theory? Time constraints, surely, and the simple grind of the workday. Most of them are not reading psychology books in their spare time, friend.

And since when is carving a bunch of wood or engraving metal in the shapes of letters and arranging them into movable typesets falsifiable science? And there were practical solutions to the scurvy problem that anteceded its scientific elucidation.

Also there are some interesting defenses of difficult theory.

I agree that the academy is plagued by a lot of hooey, but I don't think it's as discipline specific as you do. I can tell from your posts that you've not read recent lit crit because psychoanalysis has fallen out of favour. Even in film criticism it's not that popular anymore. You're beating a dead horse.

In the Lacan clip someone posted, which they described as him saying nothing, he talks about questions, and how people already have answers in mind when they ask them. This strikes me as very relevant to science itself, seeing as experiments are designed to answer questions. Many of the critiques of Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiments in fact derive from this very issue.

>>2679789
He spends like three minutes talking about his tie.

>>2679779
Tee hee. Step to you, etc. Are you through?

>>2679785
>clearly can't think
It's p-presumption based on bias. Most of your post is. "Star Wars fans only care about popular science" "Stephen King Fans don't like Derrida". Those kinds of baseless presumptions must spring out of some kind of bias. And, sure, you're going to reply "really bro? you really think stephen king fans care about x blah blah blah". Just don't. Learn how to make a proper argument.

>>2678379
>psycho-analysis is obsolete
Just look at how this thread has derailed and chrashed into
>*hurr stupid women and their feminist pseudo-science*
>*tell me straight up how defending old debunked science that claimed to be The Truth and was embedded in the imperialist, class-elitist power dynamics of the time isn't reactionary*

Sure is a lot of 'neural activity' op

>>2679761
>Do you really think the average person gives two damns what Derrida had to say about anything?

Onlyin that they would be pretty angry that the man ever had a job in academics, let alone being cited to this day like some groundbreaking hero because he noticed that differ and defer are pronounced the same in French. The man is the epitome of everything wrong with academia.

>>2679789
>Also there are some interesting defenses of difficult theory.

I'd like to hear them.

>>2679796
>Step to you

What does that mean?

>>2679794

Hey numbnuts, phatic communication is necessary to establish fidelity (that the message gets to its audience). He was making sure the people in the back heard him. Yes, he's slow to get going, but it was a different era.

>>2679806
>This is completely incorrect. The Middle East is my field of study; step to me

>>2679796
I don't think Derrida should ever be used as a stand in for intellectual pursuits. I think literary criticism catches some flack for being almost the only place anyone takes that guy seriously.

>>2679810
I didn't mean to imply that I was an expert, but I did live in Saudi Arabia for 10 years.

Welp, sorry to sound condescending.

>>2679809
>phatic expression

No. He has nothing to say, so he's killing time to hide his lack of substance, exactly as he does in the Ecrits.

>>2679815
Bruce Fink should be ashamed.

>>2679815
You're exaggerating. He doesn't have nothing to say, only little to say, which is arguably all that is necessary.

>>2679821
>only little to say

And yet he still has a 900 page volume dedicated to his ramblings.

>>2679825

He was a colossally bad writer. So what? As a speaker, he seems pretty good.

>>2678379
Because people are stupid and get most of their ideas about psychology from fiction, which just eats concepts like id, ego, superego, projection, catharsis, etc. up like hotcakes, instead of credible sources.

sure is trolly in here.

>>2679837
Katharsis is from the Poetics, you tool.

>>2679796

>It's p-presumption based on bias. Most of your post is. "Star Wars fans only care about popular science" "Stephen King Fans don't like Derrida". Those kinds of baseless presumptions must spring out of some kind of bias. And, sure, you're going to reply "really bro? you really think stephen king fans care about x blah blah blah". Just don't. Learn how to make a proper argument.

Learn how to make a proper argument? What is your argument again? That literary criticism is an obscurantist academic circlejerk because it is?

I provided an alternative explanation for why there are very few popularized literary theory books. Is it invalid, somehow?

>>2679811

Literary criticism catches a lot of flak for a lot of dumb reasons, That doesn't mean we should kowtow to bullies looking in from the outside and calling us dumb.

>>2679719

Scientific material is by NO means easily understandable unless you have some familiarity with the given subject matter and don't mind looking up every technical term that you come across, which can be very tedious. Certain research and discoveries can be related the layman, but their appreciation can never be equaled with those that comprehend the source subject matter. However, nor is it meant to. The language is designed to be read and digested by others in their field.

The same is true for the subjects you're slagging on.

It seems to me you're not terribly familiar with scientific dissertations if you claim that they can be easily understood by plebs and instead only ever stopped after the abstract.

Likewise, it seems that you've only ever experienced the opposite with regards to psychoanalysis, and at this point in the thread, possibly literature in general, while failing to realize that layman translation exist in those fields as well...

That said, why are you so rustled? The problems you speak of do not exist.>>2679733

>>2679842
It's still a psychological concept. Don't believe me, look in an AP Psych book

Yes, Freud was wrong to the point it's kind of funny, but most psychoanalysts aren't Freudian, and haven't been for some time, and AFAIK even the "modern Freudians" or "neo-Freudians" hold to somewhat different principles and theories.

>>2679658
See:
>>2678658
>Many fundamentalist scientists (often young ones) claim a totalizing narrative. Any psychology student worth his salt will do no such thing.
and
>>2678555
>Neurobiology and psychoanalysis are two different languages by which one can choose to understand the world. Neither is more true than the other one

People in this very fucking thread are defending the validity of unscientific bullshit made up by upper class white guys and saying it's as legitimate as science. Humanities students do this kind of retarded shit all the fucking time.

>>2678379
Its just a narrative, we subscribe to it when we have use of it.