/lit/ - Literature

Didn't Lacan use the term "joissance" to refer to pleasure from inherently un-pleasurable things?

>>6979148
Beats me. Also, a question: I'm a quarter-way's through Notes From Underground and I've only been able to understand very little of it. Am I just retarded or am I not ready yet?

>>6979178
you're probably just retarded

What can't you understand about it?

>>6979178
Nothing should seem that complicated. Underground Man likes to rant and contradict himself but he doesn't try to riddle or ruse you.

>>6979215
I understand it, sure, but it's the language that fucks me up. I'm used to simple language: the beatniks and the modernists (do the beatniks count as modern?)

I've read Victorian stuff, sure, but it was still a struggle.

>>6979121
Stop smoking weed and you'll regain your mental faculties within a few weeks.

>>6979121
Everything can be enjoyed partially so yes.

>>6979254
I don't smoke anymore and I barely did anyway. Money issues.

Should I just keep reading? Maybe I'll get used to the phrasing.

>>6979284
Yes. Are you a regular reader or just starting out (again)? It can take a bit of time to get into things if all you're used to is contemporary low attention span entertainment media.

>>6979316
Starting out again. At one point I breezed through Inferno. I don't know how I lost it.

>>6979335
You'll get it back again, don't worry. All you need to do is read.

>>6979121
It's cogent with my personal experience at least. Each pain has its own shape, color and texture (I mean no pain is simply pure pain, there's always the way the pain affect you, a slap doesn't hurt the same vain a cut does, even intensities of pain aside). And this means pain can be interesting and even enjoyable as an experience of its own.

There's also the whole game of expectation, of pain rising and falling until it disappears. Headache for instance is one of the pains I dislike most, but headache right before the moment it's about to slowly but steadily fall down and vanish ? I mean, perhaps a couple hours before it ends ? That's sweet. There's a feeling of having beaten the pain even before it's starting to recede which is very satisfying beyond the relief itself.

For me that applies mostly to non-intense pains though.

>>6979341
Thank you.

>>6979248
You do sound a bit unprepared for Dostoyevsky.
Then again, it is really difficult to actually be unprepared for Dostoyevsky. Maybe try Crime and Punishment instead.

i have never been depressed: the quote and the thread

That sounds Hegelian in a way. Finding the positive in the absolute worst. I think it's true in a lot of ways.

>>6979121
>he uses ie in place of eg

>>6979121
>>6979178

You're retarded.

Dosto isn't saying pleasure can be found in anything, he is saying suffering can be recreational. The two are not the same.

>>6981364
>using ie in place of firefox

>>6981364
>using anything instead of "v.g."

You've fled from the proletariat, but the prole is still in you.

>>6979494
Seconding crime and punishment OP. First Dostoevsky i read, it's still difficult to get through because he's a detail oriented rabbit trail author, but it's now one of my favorite books.

>>6980263
depression is for fucking plebs tho, my boy dostoevsky ain't no sad shit, he just crazy

>>6979121
no, not really the point in NFU. It's more a critique of utilitarianism--which contains the assumption that we can make clear distinctions between pleasure and pain.

Utilitarianism judges the goodness of an action/thing by the net amount of pain or pleasure it causes. Pleasure=good. Pain=bad.

>>6981487
That does make a lot more sense. Thanks.

I've dropped NFU temporarily and am instead finishing up Jane Eyre, which I've found to be a more enjoyable read.

I just need to get back into the flow of things.

>>6979121

The underground man is meant as the highest example of degeneracy. He denies everything that is told to him by experience. No there is no pleasure in a toothache. To think otherwise is to indulge in a fiction.

What I got from it was that most ideologies rely on a concrete, definite definition of rational human nature to succeed, while the only thing constant in human nature is its irrationality and unpredictability.

>>6982562

The underground man is of a deffecient nature. He is a disgusting and inferior example of a human being. This is the point.

We are social and political and religious by nature. The underground man is asocial and even antisocial at times. He learns by way of books instead of life and as a consequence he can justify anything by means of logic, but always arrives at absurdity.

So Crime and Punishment is the best place to start with Dostoyevsky?

>>6982651
Notes from the Underground is short as fuck, start with that first.

>>6982661
Thanks pal

>>6982670

Just don't read it wrongly.

>>6982675
And by that you mean?
Also is there a specific translation to go with?

>>6982686
he's probably trying to indoctrinate you into his bullshit interpretation of it.

>>6982651
The idiot is a more solid choice. Length really doesn't matter.

If we're talking about books ;^)