/lit/ - Literature

>>3102493
You could start with a citation to "the whole theory bashing thing," because in my discipline theory seems to be fairly healthy. Maybe your discipline caught the mental AIDS off Foucault?

>>3102524
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Theory-Literary-Pragmatism-Critical/dp/0226532275

or

http://nplusonemag.com/the-theory-generation

>If so, you belong to what might be called the Theory Generation; and it has recently become evident that some of its members have been thinking back on their training. They are doing so, moreover, in a form older than Theory, a form that Theory has done much to denaturalize and demystify (OK, “deconstruct”): the more or less realist novel, which describes individual lives in a fairly linear manner in conventional, if elegant or well-crafted, prose.

>http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/tallis.html

>>3102524
what's your discipline?

>>3102545
Oh, you mean "cunts" when you say "theory." Over here, in history, we have historiography, we have the analysis of social process after we finally defeated the structuralists on our own.

What's that? An independent relationship to Marx without requiring Foucault. It is more likely than you think. Shit bitches, its been "diachronic" and "discursive" since 1850. The plurality of texts forming a hypertext of seamless social presentation is what is known as "the archival documents."

Because >>3102538 seems to indicate that once again the attempted subsumption of HASS work under lit crit's failures is being deployed.

I'm seriously sick of this Americlap shit.

>>3102566
But the only reason why people had to use foucault to approach marx is because they had to get read of the hegelian element in marx.

So how do you get read of Hegel without foucault?

>>3102566

You have said very little. Is this like a copy pasta or something?

>>3102538

The nplusone article isn't theory bashing. It's actually a fairly interesting article.

Against Theory is seriously a joke of an essay. I assume the work that contains it is equally so. They just try to put forward a theory of "it means what the author intended because the author intended it".

Sokal has no business talking about theory. That shit he pulled was blown way out of proportion (and if you look back, it was at least obvious to Derrida what he was doing immediately).

>>3102573
How do you read Hegel without Foucault? With a party education.

>>3102575
Perhaps you're unaware of the following contexts in relation to the discussion of "French cunts"
Analysis of social process
* Structuralism, Althusser
* The use of Marx in the academic, in particular the particularly retarded "French theory" use of Marx; the availability of British Marxism
* diachronic analysis

Textual analysis since 1950, including textual analysis outside of lit clap.
* discursivity
* hypertextuality
* "sources" and texts in context
* non-fictive texts such as the archive

Subsumption
*as demonstrated by the sub-sumption of scholarly experience by Americanness
*Or Humanities and Social Science between what one bourgeois woman masturbated to in a lit clap class in college.

>>3102588

Yeah, I'm just gonna ignore you now.

>>3102588
I'm sorry. I have a terrible headache.

I meant get rid of. The problem is that marx works on assuming the logic of Hegel's dialectic.
The French went over to foucault because they wanted a way to analyze history without having to use the Hegelian logic.

So you want to go back to Marx without foucault, so how do you avoid getting back into Hegel?

Because unless you develop a sort of structuralist or post-structuralist reading of history all you are left with is naive liberal readings of it.

>>3102598

Good one, why don't you rub one off to the post-structuralist of your choice to celebrate the fact that you have no capacity to defend a dead research programme.

>>3102538

>Against Theory

Man, what an awful collection.

Here's a much better attempt at trying to talk against theory:

http://www.amazon.com/Theorys-Empire-An-Anthology-Dissent/dp/0231134177

>>3102600
No worries regarding the headache.

Using Marx without a historical dialectic appears to be specious—it deliberately strips Marx of the capacity for a critique that even within the contingency of society promises the aufheben of capitalist social relations. Using Foucault turns Marx into an instrumentalist of the worst kind.

>unless you develop a sort of structuralist or post-structuralist reading of history all you are left with is naive liberal readings of it.

Oh for fucks sake. Seriously. This is lit clappia. Read Thompson's anti-Althusserian invective. Historiography defeated and drove off the structuralists with dual weapons of contingency in immediate praxical analysis and complex determinancy.

Althusser was never relevant to Marxism, either academically or in praxis. Althusser is defending the needs of the Soviet Nomenklatura; and we can see this in the difference between Lukacs (a traitor to the nomenklatura) and Althusser's analyses of history.

The final instance for Lukacs, the final instance for Thompson, the final instance for the proletariat in praxis is class struggle.

>>3102631

It may be interesting but I can't stand this kind of nonsense:

>"Whether university literature departments can become sources for the inspiration and cultivation of the love of literature is of concern on more than narrow educational grounds. To be sure, most students will have at most only a few courses over four short college years to study the literary treasures of the West and beyond. Their literature professors should not be permitted to rob them of this golden opportunity to read and revel in novels, plays, and poetry by force-feeding them instead indigestible abstractions, formulaic denunciations, and pretentious proclamations. But also, paradoxical as it may sound, literature taught for its own sake serves a vital public interest in a liberal democracy. In our busy and distracted age, this may be even more true. Literature transports students to other times and places. It acquaints them with people and immerses them in circumstances remote from their own lives. It brings to life the variety of ways of being human. And it exhibits the common humanity in the glorious variety. In short, the study of literature for its own sake helps prepare citizens for the challenges of freedom."

Seriously what do this people want? Make college a several thousand dollars book club? Bring back character analysis? Doing plot summaries?

Theory is interesting because interrogates our act of reading and shows some problems that such interrogation poses.
And I understand that no one would not be interested, but all these people that criticize it seem to me not offering anything new. It seems to me that they just want to rehash very naive forms of literary criticism because they are the kind of people that read novel for the plot.

If there is more to it than this please let me know because I would be very interested to buy the book.

I don't know where "pleasing scientists" comes in at all. If I were to apply for research grants, fellowships, etc, I wouldn't be depending on the approval of anyone outside my discipline. Bet it English,sociology, etc.

>>3102662
Because universities are increasingly cutting the budget of the humanities under the pressure of the stem departments which from one side flaunt their results and on the other accuse the humanities of being irrationalists and obscurantists.

>>3102662
I've been involved in some of the sociology of science in a medium sized Anglophone nation of the First World. At the level of the chief funding agencies, yes you do need to please people other than your discipline.

For example, in the Australian Higher Education context all major research needs to meet and fit an SEO—a socio-economic objective. SEOs are established by the Federal Government and SEOs are highly instrumentalised and directly serve the bourgeois state-market apparatus.

enjoy—if you want funding.

>>3102655
Not the guy you're responding to, but I don't see what is gained from completely rejecting theory either. Surely one can be distracted by focusing too much on theory and not enough with the text, but the opposite case is just as faulty.

One always uses theory, one always reads with a "lens." What differs is one's awareness of this. When you bring out different ways of approaching a text and think them out, you get theory. And even if you wanted to do away with post-modern, post-structural theory, you'd just be fall back onto earlier theory, which doesn't appear to be theory only because its socially ambient.

Writing this stuff out, thinking about it, formalizing it, is far superior to "well I had this feeling about this part of the text and because I felt it I know its right."

>>3102682
Thank you for writing in such an eloquent way my thoughts.

Yours,

Op

>>3102682
The thing is, that a section of the American bourgeoisie is hankering for "New Criticism" and the simplicity of capitalism under Fordism, even as they feast on the spoils of Fordism without social democracy and rely on ever more labyrinthine systems of persecution and oppression.

And in relation to those labyrinths you've got two ways open to analysis—one through "French Theory" allows the instrumentalisation of oppression in late capitalism, the use of discursive strategies to break down the revolutionary potential of subjectivity, the mastering of the body and embodiment of subjectivitiy as opposed to viewing the liberal democratic citizen as cogito, AND SO ON AND SO ON {sniff}—or you have to join the Autonomists and reject instrumentalisation for praxical critique and the high likelihood of dying without a stable employment relationship.

Literary clappics split between hankering for "New Criticism" and serving their new masters—in doing so they produce a false dichotomy of text analysis in an attempt to conceal the real negation of the discourse of power in the academy.

> Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein.

>>3102697

I hope you die.

>>3102806
Guess what? All men are mortal.

>>3102697
>praxical critique

Elaborate. I suppose I could look this up on wiki though. Autonomists, you say?

I've seen your posts here and there on /lit/, you've obviously done you're homework. Would you consider today's student debtors bourgeoisie? Either in relation to the class structure of the US and/or in the global structure of class.

Also, your saying "late capitalism" seems to imply you take to heart the teleological view capitalism, that it will collapse under its own logic. I admit I have not read much of the theoretical debates w/in Marxism, but to me capitalism seems omnipotent. Just when things appear to be on the brink of total collapse, the market roars back to life. It seems omnipotent, in spite of dwindling natural resources. Do you think capitalism's end will be dramatic, if such a thing would cocur? Also, I'm curious as to your thoughts on the state. Is it primarily an instrument of the elite or is it contested?

>>3102911
>>praxical critique
>Elaborate. I suppose I could look this up on wiki though. Autonomists, you say?

http://libcom.org/library/reading-capital-politically-cleaver

Lenin in England

Many of the texts here: http://operaismoinenglish.wordpress.com/

Dyer-Witherford's Cyber Marx etc.

The relationships between Operaismo and Italian praxis is really important, comes forward in Steve Wright.

>Would you consider today's student debtors bourgeoisie?
Do they subsist off profit from the ownership of capital? Fuck no. They're just proles. Usually pig ignorant because they've paid for indoctrination for jobs that don't exist.

>Either in relation to the class structure of the US and/or in the global structure of class.
Are Imperialist workers crypto bourgeois due to the structure of imperialism, the answer is a resounding No unless you're a Maoist Internationalists. (Amusingly I mistyped "Moist internationalist). You need to move beyond a "structure of class" and into a "relationship of class," see the Italians on class composition (in Steve Wright) and recomposition.

>Also, your saying "late capitalism" seems to imply you take to heart the teleological view capitalism,
Yes. This is my material self-interest as a worker.

>that it will collapse under its own logic
No, it will collapse under repeated shattering blows of workers' democracy—that's praxis. No matter how corrupt the union the state makes you join, this puts that little bit more pressure on the market while you figure out where real struggle is happening now and then take part.

> capitalism seems omnipotent. Just when things appear to be on the brink of total collapse, the market roars back to life. It seems omnipotent, in spite of dwindling natural resources. Do you think capitalism's end will be dramatic, if such a thing would [occur]

>>3102911
Feudalism repeatedly roared back into life in Europe.

In the last generalised crisis, 1968, there were actual revolutions occurring in 3 countries, and revolutionary situations in 4 more (off the top of my head—this is a strategic analysis not a "total history"). Of those nations, 5 were major imperialist powers, and one further state was an industrialised country. Revolutions in actuality occur in segmented forms. With the loss of _one_ state to Mainstream capitalism in 1917, the world system was so thrown out of whack, so oppressed by the mere possibility of socialism, that three Great powers implemented social democracy to appease workers.

>Also, I'm curious as to your thoughts on the state. Is it primarily an instrument of the elite or is it contested?
Yes. The bourgeois elite is internally divided. Secondly, workers movements which are right wing attempt to contest the state—social democracy, working class bolshevism—because they lack a fuller class consciousness of the corrupting role of the state.

Trotsky is actually good on this point with the Transitional programme—Trotsky is aware that you can't actually take the state (as such, in capitalism), but that workers clamour for action in this terrain. So you need to structure demands that appear fulfillable, but really aren't, such as the autonomist Mariarosa Dalla-Costa's demand for wages for housework.

>>3102961
>>3102963
ty for the thoughts

>>3102538
>Against Theory
isn't anti-theory just another theory?

>>3102961
>>3102963
I suppose I have an issue which I've been trying to see from a Marxist perspective maybe you can help me with. I'm one of these "pig ignorant" proles that have paid for indoctrination. As one of my professors said in reference to this pic (attached), "Remittances are now one of the most important flows of capital in the world, and we know virtually nothing about it. Western Union and Moneygram know something, and we're only beginning to learn about the nature of this development."

You're aware of remittances, migrant workers, etc. I'm guessing. How does this fit into the "class struggle" esp. vis a vis the state? I'm reminded of a sweeping law in Alabama that executed a popular wish for "illegal immigrants" to be deported. Not only did the businesses strongly oppose the law, but the job openings were never filled by the bristling white supremacists. Turns out they didn't want to gut fish and pick tomatoes.

Bloomberg Businessweek has kept tabs on this story.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-24/africans-relocate-to-alabama-to-fill-jobs-after-immigrat
ion-law

>>3103004
Central to this is the price of citizen labour in the first world. Workers are unwilling to work at rates that capitalists are willing to pay. The solution is mass unemployment and illegal migration.

The state has no deep interest in regulating the citizen but has a core interest in regulating the class

Many Marxists see precariousness as central but I think that's koolaid—being a prole has always been precarious.

You seem to be learning outside and inspite of tuition. Well done. I'm next available in eight hours.