/lit/ - Literature

Not sure why you deleted it the last time you made this thread, but I'm still wanting those pictures.

>>2752154

I'll post them soon, if you're willing to wait a few.

What was the last book you finished?

It's not untrue. I dislike the way you stage it and the way you present this thread. But I suppose that fundamentally don't matter.

>>2752183

Rules and Conventions: Literature, Philosophy, Social Theory. Ed. Mette Hjort.

>>2752196

what would you prefer?

>>2752154

>>2752210
less overly precious pictures of skinny culturally-elite girls reading in autumnal settings

that'st most of it. and "go forth love and conquer" and more broadly the way you frame your advice smacks a little of a kind of romanticism that i find pretty false and that i think has to be resisted because it's very attractive

>>2752183

>>2752219
>less overly precious pictures of skinny culturally-elite girls reading in autumnal settings

glad to hear I"m not the only one nauseous of /lit/'s own version of MPDG

enough with this shit

read books and bang some slut with big titties

>>2752219

why do you think it is merely specious?

>>2752225

type in "book" and "nature" to google and it's on the front page.

my god. try to start a thread about literature and someone comments on a picture. to answer >>2752154, this is why i deleted the thread last time.

>>2752219

>romanticism that i find pretty false and that i think has to be resisted because it's very attractive

I know that feel, man. Though I find resisting it far too challenging

>>2752230

you need to first convince me why it is false.

>>2752154

final for now

I wish I had the money for all these books.
How many hours reading per day?

>>2752241

it really just depends on the day and book, as you'd expect.

it wavers: i easily spent 8 hours reading at points while i will also have weeks to intermittent nothingness.

i usually cycle around 18-20 books at a time, so i cover 20 pages per book at a given time and then move on. it satisfies both my latent ADHD and my desire to forge relations among volumes when i'm going through them. makes it a lot easier to read for long periods of time, and i like the mental jarring effect of constantly shifting gears.

Did you read many of the Surrealists?

>>2752234
What did you think of those Vaclav Havel and Colette books?

>>2752250

unfortunately, no: Breton, Lautreamont and Gide (if your definition is wide enough), and a collection of surrelist love poems, but I thoroughly enjoyed what I read. what do you recommend?

>>2752207
If you've read Das Wesen des Christentums, have you also read Stirner's criticism?

>>2752255

vagabound was great, and i've also read a collection of her short stories.

Havel i could have left--for some reason i just wasn't compelled. seems like a fascinating man, though.

next post will be my favorite quote from the vagabound, which i think is worth sharing

>>2752260
>>2752255

"A vagabond, maybe, but one who is resigned to revolving on the same spot like my companions and brethren. it is true that departures sadden and exhilarate me, and whatever I pass through--new countries, skies pure or cloudy, seas under rain the colour of a grey pearl--something of myself catches on it and clings so passionately that i feel as though I were leaving behind me a thousand little phantoms in my image, rocked on the waves, cradled in the leaves, scattered among the clouds. But does not a last little phantom, more like me than any of the others, remain sitting in my chimney corner, lost in a dream and as good as gold as it bends over a book which it forgets to open?"
--The Vagabound, p. 74

>>2752268
and for whatever reason, this always reminds me of a beautiful part in one of Benjamin's essays:

"Things change, and trade places; nothing remains and nothing disappears. From all this activity, however, names suddenly emerge; wordlessly they enter the mind of the passer-by, and his lips shape them, he recognizes them. They come to the surface. And what further need has he of this landscape? They drift past him on the nameless distant horizon, without leaving a trace."
--Walter Benjamin, In the Sun

>>2752258

Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum only.

>>2752291

having said that, i really like stirner, and he moves for me within the same conceptual horizon as nietzsche, schopenhauer, berkeley--and pessoa and paz for a more poetical take.

do you like stirner and feuerbach?

>>2752298
I started working on my PhD on Stirner in april, officially, though I spent most of the winter semester reading secondary literature on him as well. I only read parts of Das Wesen des Christentums, and mostly to get an idea of what Stirner is arguing against. However, I felt validated when I found out that my intiutive criticism of 'secular humanism' (back when I was in highschool) was justifiable philosophically (and can be traced back to humanisms profoundly religious genealogy).

>>2752319
Also, that's a pretty impressive bunch of books you have there, I don't think I could ever force myself to read that much Derrida.

>>2752319
what's the basic line of criticism contra secular humanism? jw

Am I the only person who thought of the autodidact in Nausea when I read this? OP's little maxims and everything.

Not implying you're a pedo tho.

>>2752329
That's the first thing that came to my mind too.

>>2752326
Mine or Stirner's? Well, my initial irritation was in highschool was based on the fact that the basic law of my country (it's not even a real constitution...) starts with asserting human rights but the entire rest of the legal apparatus works to constrain them. What good is it to me that

'Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.'

if those in power decide what is arbitrary and what is not? Also, the assertion that these rights are universal always struck me as naive. My freedom is inviolable, what does that mean? That it cannot be violated? Of course it can. Saying that this catalogue of rights is universal to every human being is just pious idealism.

>1. Things fall apart.

Might as well just kill myself.

make an exact list (picture form or anything) of all the books you have
or at least all the subjects

>1. Things fall apart.
and what do you mean by this

>can afford 2.5k books
>cant afford a good camera

also pic related, you sure are an amazing painter

>>2752319
what uni?

OP, I am confused about what Laclau means by 'Structuralism'. His empty signifier seems to be one of many postmodern perversions of an already precarious linguistics. Can you give me five suggestions of what to read? On Populist Reason I will try to get, but what else?

>>2752337
oh look, looks like you didn't learn anything.
still a typical materialist atheist huh?

>>2752357
I'm not so sure I want to make myself google-able on 4chan, but it's a European university you probably don't know.

>>2752359
I'm not an atheist, neither am I one of those people who call themselves materialists (I believe that e.g. Marxism is fundamentally not materialist). I am roman catholic, but that doesn't really describe my thoughts on the topic. I am mostly opposed to idealism as a mode of thinking that permeates much of structuralism, for example, elevating the abstraction against the particular (and claiming that the former is the one that is real, no less...).

>>2752363
>roman catholic

Do you believe in an afterlife and some sort of god?

OP. were they random books, or ws there a selection process?
what will you read next?

OP here.

>>2752363
have you read anything by hent de vries, or cioran?

i actually think christian mysticism begins to start a project close to--ironically--stiner is also going for. problems of the limits of language and the self-assertion of the subject are embedded in the mystic experience itself; apart from gibran, whom i really appreciate, i've liked pseudo-dionysius as well.

>>2752378
that's a really interesting question, because one of the fundamental things that i've learned--and it's obvious--is that the order in which you read your books greatly determines the way you tend to process them. my selection was vaguely random at the beginning: a leaning toward philosophy, politics, ethics, etc., and really just as my interests expanded i pursued different veins. apart from this, i've tried to cover basis canonical works, along with some lesser-known, though still great, works of literature.

think for a while on how different your intellectual growth would have been if you substituted X for Y at point 1, etc. it's like picturing a radically different frame of reference through which to apprehend any given work, but unfortunately falls into that "what if?" game.

>>2752347
>>2752343

This has actually got to be one of my favorite lines ever written. I drew it from Yeats's "The Second Coming":

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats here reminds me of Burns, whose famous comment in "To a mouse":

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

I'm reminded also of machiavelli's notion of fortuna in The Prince, and the fundamental changeability of nature that underlies Heraclitus' remark that "lightning steers the universe."

>>2752386

my point merely is this: that beneath all that i have read, contingency still matters, and it matters a great deal. that our "best laid schemes" go awry is nothing short of the rejection of utopia--not because we do not lack the capacity to dream it, but because it is not within our natural means to obtain as such.

To put it another way: things change. shit happens. romeo misses the letter; cordelia's pardon comes too soon; K. never had a chance. not only do i mean to invoke the quite literal meaning of the term--that yes, one day, all that we see and all that imagine will be dust--but also to mine some of its metaphorical resonances--mainly, that all things fade with time--and perhaps time itself in a certain modal world.

>>2752390

i choked @ reading this sentence tbh

sentimentality doesn't mix well with atrocious sentences, you literally gave me aids with this obfuscated bullshit

>>2752390

if all of this sounds obvious, then it is: i've found that the best literature always tells me something i already tend to know, though lacked a particular language-game to articulate. this journey through literature, one could argue, has been merely an excessive exercise in building a more densely-connected web of language-games. but what emerges from all this academic jargon is vaguely just what it always tries to describe: life itself.

i find articulating this point difficult, and i feel i've failed here. i want to say something like: wisdom is great because it clarifies the obvious. this is still ambiguous, but i'm at least beginning to get there.

>>2752392

your trip is "ice, nigga."

you cold as ice, son.

cold

as

ice.

>>2752392

also i really don't think you know what "obfuscate" means.

if anything this is my effort to be as clear as possible.

>>2752380
No, haven't heard of either of these. The only connection I know with mysticism would be Gustav Landauer, who was deeply influenced by both Stirner and Meister Eckhart. By Gibran you mean Khalil Gibran, right? Can you recommend any works in particular by Cioran or de Vries? I have access to "Theologie im Pianissimo & zwischen Rationalität und Dekonstruktion", "Philosophy and the turn to religion" and "Religion and media" by the latter, and a whole lot by the former.

>>2752392

to put it another way, and maybe in the kind-of clarity that you are used to, "haters are gonna hate"

you, for instance, stand as a perfect example. you contribute nothing to the thread, complain about obfuscation while yourself using the--not often used, and some would even argue obscure--term obfuscated, make a comment of the lack of aesthetics of my post and sign your name "ice, nigga"

it's like you are a walking example of my first point. i began a thread hoping for some nice conversation: but you, the shit, happened.

too easy, man. too fucking easy.

>>2752398

but you're not

it's aight doe, if you don't realize why you aren't clear it's just the fault of your learning, you can get over that with some self-evaluation

basically there are times to embellish and times not to and this is a time not to especially when what you're saying amounts to "the world ain't perfect, things don't go our way" dragged out in two paragraphs of four-five sentences with unneeded literary references that contribute jack shit

>>2752401
wtf when did obfuscate become an "obscure" word on a board dedicated to literature? brb bout to end my life over dumb ass yuropoors n amerifats not knowing terms third world kyke-driven gooksauces do

>>2752396
its in honor of the finest rapper and most original contributor to the spoken word tradition of the modern era - H.E.A.D. I.C.E.

pic related, da god himself

>>2752149

2500 books and you offer us...platitudes? Don't get me wrong as I respect your dedication and I believe you're sincere, but this makes me want to quit reading for philosophical purposes.

I think reading is just one of those things where the journey matters and the destination is irrelevant.

Still a good effort. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

>>2752412

That's sorta what i'm saying is my conclusion: the endgame of the reading is really the beginning of actual experience. what you take as "platitudes" are really the presencing of something like structures of repeated truth--the only remnants of what survives after you sift through a great deal just in order to find a nugget or two.

it's an odd, but beautiful circle: from life to literature and from literature to life. hence my comment here >>2752393.

only, one could, and often one does, skip literature to experience the latter and can still lead a perfectly meaningful, deep and insightful life.

>>2752363
>. I am roman catholic, but that doesn't really describe my thoughts on the topic

What are your thoughts on the topic?

And also what are your thoughts on men and women especially also gender roles and feminist and misogyny.