/lit/ - Literature

>Junior at NYU
No thanks

>>4752247

Prejudice won't help you in your path.
He raises valid points.

>>4752241
Damnit, OP, it reads exactly like the sort of writing Orwell attacked in his Politics and the English Language.

>>4752267

Maybe kids are getting smarter, and know that any side of the front is already some sort of loss...

>>4752278
Sartre would say that is bad faith. But heh, Fuck Sartre.

Here's the thing: you try and reinstate the old values, the canon, the high art, etc. and people will automatically go "wait, why is this better than the shit I genuinely like?"

It's too late. The flood gate has been opened. Idolatry was forbidden in the church because the church realized anything could be made into an idol.

>>4752291
>Idolatry was forbidden in the church because the church realized anything could be made into an idol.
More like it was forbidden because they didn't want competence.

>>4752267
I haven't read that essay in a long time, but this article wasn't particularly unclear. It suffers from generalizations, oversimplifications, platitudes ("we millenials", there is no "we"), and namedropping.

>>4752297
>competence.
I mean competition.

>>4752297
competition, perhaps? Either way, you should watch yourself on that edge.

>muh tradition
>Implying it was something good in the first place.

>>4752309
Your only possible argument is buzzword-dropping, perhaps?

>>4752291

I think the point he tries to make, is that one can find beauty, and aesthetic pleasure, in different pieces of art irregardless of time and culture.

That does not mean there is beauty, and not Beauty. It just means you can't pretend to dissect the notion, and establish it as a canon for everyone.

Since beauty has a relation with what we establish as desirable, and good, there must be also as much ethics as ways of seeing beauty.

The more world views you understand, the more Beauty - and horror - you will see, in all sorts of creations and things.

Basically, and since the beginning of it. There was an old Spanish saying mantra-ing in my head: "P'a gustos, los colores".

A good translation could be: There are as much tastes as colors.

>>4752304
Sure, that's also true but it kind of ties into the same point in that idolatry reveals the ability of man to create objects of worship, subverting the power of the church.

>>4752319
And there is one color, that participates of all of them. That is what happens in your mind, when it's set to be as it should... Then, you find Beauty.

ARP nails it in the comments:

"This article is a protracted hasty generalization. The author takes it as self-explanatory that millions of people born in an arbitrary time period are "indecisive" and chalks it up to an ethos of "pluralism." In doing so he makes a move that is not unfamiliar to mass media writing about generations in general: take a larger cultural anxiety and project it onto an imagined monolithic group. The "millennial" stereotype is often coded white, for instance. On the other hand, George Zimmermann is a millennial who doesn't seem tied up by "pluralism." This problem with the article comes back when Fine uncritically invokes the myth of political correctness, which is really just a moral panic propagated by people unhappy with the expansion of the curriculum.

Fine namechecks Adorno and Horkheimer, but obscures the argument. He and anyone else considering writing sweeping claims about "generations" might wish to revisit them. It is not that taste breaks down along class lines, but that the culture industry creates groups by reducing all humans to knowable categories. The reality of concepts like "Boomer" "Gen X," "millennial," etc. comes from somewhere. That reality is produced partly by mass media writers opining about "generations." But it also comes from marketers who create the "millennial" as a category some people can identify with, in order to produce value more effectively."

>>4752344

>objects of worship

Elaborate on this. Do you really think, that what people worships in objects, are the objects themselves?

>>4752344
I somehow agree with this, but there's a huge lap between realizing men can worship other deities and realizing men can fall into a relativism of values that can lead them to nihilism.

>>4752351

That is the marxist way of putting it. I can't see how it nails it better than anyone else.

>>4752353
I interpreted what he said in a wide sense, the objects of worship are often abstract.

Anyone worth reading or listening to exists intellectually outside their time period.

>>4752365

>Finds abstract objects
>Must think in objects of thought then
>Must think "reason" is an example of thought object
>Must think "good" is an example of thought object
>Must be materialist then

>>4752351
That is a lot of quotation marks

>>4752372
Could you articulate in a non-fucktarded way, please? Are those assumptions about me or assumptions about what i assume?

>>4752376

Experimental hypothesis.

>>4752363
There's nothing Marxist about it.

>>4752383

>That reality is produced partly by mass media writers opining about "generations." But it also comes from marketers who create the "millennial" as a category some people can identify with, in order to produce value more effectively.

That could be labeled as intellectual surplus value, applied to a "cultural object".

>>4752398
Or even "brand fetish".

+1

I'm an English major, and when I took critical theory we focused way to much on Feminism, Marxism and Post-Colonialism. I'm doing my BA in a year and I don't know shit about the history of classical English literature, apart from what I've read. In 40 years English majors will only learn about GOT and Twilight because it's "fun and different."

>>4752408

Hopefully our lack of classical (x) lecture, stimulates us to deepen our understanding of their knowledge. That compensatory pattern is normally present in curious students.

For instance: I know shit about math, and I discover myself reading about calculus, physics, computing, and spatial geometry.

What is wrong with me doctor?

>>4752398
>>4752403

His explanation for why marketers do what they do may be tied to Marxist ideas, but the ultimate criticism of marketers and mass media writers who create these phantom labels which don't properly represent human beings isn't Marxist. Kierkegaard was saying the same thing.

>>4752408
>critical theory
>focused way to much on Feminism, Marxism and Post-Colonialism.
lol what were you expecting?
>In 40 years English majors will only learn about GOT and Twilight because it's "fun and different."
Bullshit.

>>4752419
You aren't reading a maths book unless you have a pen and paper and you are working through proofs and results yourself as you read the book.

>>4752408
>when I took critical theory
>I don't know shit about the history of classical English literature

You should have looked into what "critical theory" usually designates before signing up for the class. It's an admittedly misleading term, but it essentially implies Frankfurt school onward.

>>4752426

Yet again, I think we are labeling things, I guess. Let's not let the "label" lead us astray from the core concepts.

>>4752419
>our lack of classical (x) lecture

Classes on classical lit, mythology, etc. haven't at all disappeared.

>>4752431

Mostly, what I did, was to use the axioms for other activities.

For instance:

- The calculus theory of sets for array programming.
- Projective symmetry in Geometry, to analogical reasoning, and extra temporal reasoning.
- Programming, to understand what DNA is.

And so on. It's like a big puzzle. :D

>>4752427
Yeah, but it's sad to see that the classics are dying out. I was in a Shakespeare class, we had about 10 people in it, whist I shit you not the "vampires in literature" had something like 60. I even know a girl whose BA was on vampires, my major is a fucking joke and I regret taking it.

>>4752459
But William was a vamp.

>>4752462
Ye, and Lincoln a vampire slayer.

>>4752462
So was Byron, he stayed indoors and drank from skulls.

>>4752467

Interesting. So that is how you poetically symbolize reading?

>>4752319
>irregardless

>>4752459
>I was in a Shakespeare class, we had about 10 people in it, whist I shit you not the "vampires in literature" had something like 60.

and you think the problem is critical theory and not commercialism?

>>4752459
>it's sad to see that the classics are dying out

No they're not. I'm no fan of cultural studies or pop-culture studies in the English department, but it has to do something to appeal to students. What classics do you mean? A study of the vampire in English lit means engaging the romantics and the victorians, even if you then read twilight at the end. Twilight, dumb as it is, carries a cultural and thematic inheritance that is worthy of investigation. It wouldn't be my cup of tea, but I don't think you should shit on it because someone likes something that you don't.

Well the article is basically saying that unlike previous generations, if you express an opinion today there's a lot of information out there that you could be confronted with, that would almost immediately challenge your opinion. So individuals have learned to adapt to this by being indecisive, and having a pluralistic attitude about the any objective statement of absolute knowledge, so that they can avoid embarrassment or scrutiny.

>>4752267
Orwell was just annoyed at people using dead metaphors, or words without understanding their meaning. Seems to me like he would be in agreement with this essay, aside from hating how it was written.

I cringe at what this guy is saying. typical new york pseudo-intellectual that woody allen made fun of in his films over 40 years ago

>>4752241
I like it. Not much rhetoric, quite some youngster sincerity.

In historiography I think that excessive pluralism has gone too far with all events being explained as "complicated sum of various factors". That's basicly as much insight as your had before you studied the event! That it's complex!

>>4752481
As if you couldn't slide Shakespeare themes, and deeper ones into any kind of class.

I once heard about a dude that taught multiculturalism through rugby. But I think it was all made up.

>>4752891

Nelson Mandela? No dude, he was real.