/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10692208]

>read ts eliot poem
>a lot going on
>search for analysis online
>every result is about antisemitism implications
>can't find one fucking article or piece about the poem itself

[Anonymous No.10692273]

h-hi guise

[Anonymous No.10692327]

>>10692208
I feel you. I bought Heart of darkness norton critical edition and all of the esseys are about race...

[Anonymous No.10692677]

>>10692208
Stop reading problematic alt right idiots

[Anonymous No.10692720]

whispers of the yew

[Anonymous No.10693270]

>>10692273
what are you trying to say friend ?

[Anonymous No.10693364]

>>10692208
serves you right. read H.D. instead.

[Anonymous No.10693375]

>>10692208
its because its antisemetic

[Anonymous No.10693695]

>>10692208
>>10692327
That's literature boyos. It's not the bloody neo-marxists have infiltrated the humanities. What did you think it was? Pretty words and storytelling for their own sake? You can be a formalist if you want but it will be pretty dull, and don't get upset when others don't want to reduce their interpretation to pointing out literary devices and plot points.

[Anonymous No.10693713]

>>10692327
>people that don't understand that race has very little to do with HoD and that it is actually a story about the darkness at the heart of all of humanity
Sets me off every fucking time

[Anonymous No.10693719]

>>10693713
the blacks in the book are described as brutal uncivilized savages, which is objectively true

[Anonymous No.10693749]

>>10692208
>ts eliot
didn't that guy shoot up a sorority?

[Anonymous No.10693823]

>>10693695
>yelling “dass rayciss/sexiss” is intellectually stimulating.
Right.

[Anonymous No.10693853]

>>10693270
*whispers in your ear*

im larping as agatha

[Anonymous No.10693886]

>>10693719
hey you can't say that

[Anonymous No.10694129]

>>10693719
I feel like Conrad felt some sort of odd kinship with the natives as a Pole growing up in the Russian empire, but yeah he definitely seems to think of them as fairly backwards, though not deserving of their mistreatment at the hands of Kurtz. Conrad hints at not really condoning colonialism throughout the novel but I think his main point is that there is darkness at the hearts of all men and he just used the Congo as a setting because it was unexplored (dark) and at the center of the world according to the continent

[Anonymous No.10694276]

you fucking dickbats, it's 2018 and you can't even work a search engine like a well-conditioned mut
pathetic

[Anonymous No.10694608]

>>10692208

Literary Theory became a haven for pseuds because it lacks philosophical rigor, but passed as philosophy to the post-war generation of normies and dull trust fund kids who felt entitled to a university education and a publishing infrastructure through which to broadcast their nonsense. Unsurprisingly, rewarding people for merely valid (but unsound/unfalsifiable) arguments leads to a giant pissing contest in which influence and acclaim is won through petty wordplay and identity politics rather than merit, and it eventually leaks into other disciplines.

Actual sentence from a paper about Medieval "Sexualities" (the thesis being that everybody is secretly gay but doesn't act on it because of Power) I had to read several years ago: "Because people of the Middle Ages had children, we might assume that they engaged in heterosexual acts."

[Anonymous No.10694616]

>>10694608
>lacks rigor
Care to demystify this meme, because I just read, "I can't make myself do inefficient or redundant things god I hate myself but I can still warn the rest" every time I see this. I don't know that it's true or not people are gay. I don't exclude it. What the hell is your case?

[Anonymous No.10694631]

>>10693713
>>10694129
HoD is very obviously critical of colonialism and of slavery
But it's also racist
It can be both at the same time - the racism comes out in the subtext, the pretextual biases, the way conrad uses native savagery to highlight the innate savagery of ~all men~ without asking where exactly his idea of 'native savagery' comes from, which is from the racist perspective the british empire took on africa and other parts of the world.
Conrad's intentions are nice, i suppose, but yeah, it's a racist novel through and through
Doesnt mean its not great

[Anonymous No.10694662]

>>10694631
>without asking where exactly his idea of 'native savagery' comes from, which is from the racist perspective the british empire took on africa and other parts of the world.
>Conrad's intentions are nice, i suppose, but yeah, it's a racist novel through and through
Ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.10694667]

Got yourself a job then, empty market.

[Anonymous No.10694668]

>>10694631
Was the Greek word barbarian a racist construct as well? Does it seem kind of fucking stupid to emhpasize that when discussing the Odyssey?

[Anonymous No.10694774]

>>10694631
Does anybody care about racism unironically? Like you don't have to hate niggers to think they are savages, because they are savages, let's not forget the cannibalism and that tribe that makes 12 year-olds suck elder dick.

[Anonymous No.10694795]

>>10694662
It's not ridiculous - the whole premise of his critique of the belgian congo is a spurious myth of 'savage man.' The question to ask is where does this myth come from?
>>10694774
This doesn't merit a response

[Anonymous No.10694797]

>>10693719
>which is objectively true
false

[Anonymous No.10694800]

>>10694631
>>10694631
>the way conrad uses native savagery to highlight the innate savagery of ~all men~ without asking where exactly his idea of 'native savagery' comes from
>suggests Conrad's and all understandings of savagery are subjective and not true
>does so in comparison to some innate savagery
Can you imagine how fucking stupid you have to be to play T this kind of mental gymnastics and actually believe it?

[Anonymous No.10694801]

>>10694668
Who cares about the Greeks?

[Anonymous No.10694814]

>>10694795
>the whole premise of his critique of the belgian congo is a spurious myth of 'savage man.'
The book was nothing near a critique of the Congo
>The question to ask is where does this myth come from?
A tribal civilization living in the jungle. Think outside of ideology for a second would you, the word savage has become racialized after the fact by fucking morons; did you expect Conrad to call the tribesmen 'gentleman'?

[Anonymous No.10694901]

>>10694814
It's very obviously in part a critique of colonial mismanagement, i dunno what to say if you missed that except direct you to specific sections. Read some of his other work, like an Outpost of Progress for a more distilled and explicitly satirical treatment of the same themes.
>think outside of ideology for a second
Don't be a fool
The point is not that there's no difference between London society and a tribe in the jungle, the point is that Conrad uses the 'typical' congolese tribe as a blank vessel for his myth of savagery, and then uses this myth to criticise Brussels/London. This is why its good to also read achebe alongside conrad - achebe doesnt lionise ebo society, he doesn't try to portray the tribes as 'civilised' in the way London was 'civilised' at the time. He demonstrates how reductive and ideologically laden terms like 'civilised' and 'savage' are. Honestly you read HoD and you wouldn't believe the non-white characters are even people.

[Anonymous No.10694911]

>>10694814
And also when you say: what do you expect him to call them? you sort of miss the point. I wouldn't claim that Conrad could have used any other word and written the same novel - the point is the meaning of the word in contemporary discourse generally, not his particular intentions

[Anonymous No.10694919]

>>10694795
Racism/race is the only thing any "academic" cares about nowadays, no one cares about "human experience"

[Anonymous No.10694923]

>>10694800
I think you've misunderstood - it's conrad who believes in universal innate savagery, not me.
Nor would i argue that all ideas of savagery are 'subjective' or whatever, i dunno why folk always throw that word around as soon as they get the opportunity.
The idea of savagery was very real, out there in the world in th structures of language and thought, and grounded in peoples actual experiences of how other cultures lived. Doesn't mean its not ideological top to bottom, doesnt mean its not problematic etc etc

[Anonymous No.10694924]

>>10694795
They are savages though, they wear dead baby skulls, the point is that the other guys were just as much savages.

[Anonymous No.10694928]

>>10694919
Jesus fuck, racism IS 'human experience' for most people
We don't neglect to investiage 'human experience', we just dont think about it in the naive childish way people like you do

[Anonymous No.10694936]

>>10694924
>reasserts uncritically the same meaning of the word he's being asked to interrogate

[Anonymous No.10694949]

>>10694928
not really, sorry that you have mistakenly been lead to believe race is the single most important issue in society. But there's a reason that it didn't dominate all social discussion until 80 years ago. Because rather than give a fuck about what other people were thinking about them and their race, they took endeavors to better the quality of their persons. Any fighting of "racism" at least in the free world is a moot and dried up cause, there's nothing left to be gained because wtf else do they want, minorities have every right a white citizen does, the whole academic narrative comes from bitter resentment for stuff that happened in the past century of which 99.99999% of society is not responsible for in any way. (and the holocaust)

[Anonymous No.10694959]

>>10694936
>savage - a member of a people regarded as primitive and uncivilized
>Middle English: from Old French sauvage ‘wild,’ from Latin silvaticus ‘of the woods,’ from silva ‘a wood.’

[Anonymous No.10694983]

>>10694959
Yes thank you i think we all know the etymology
That's a bit irrelevant though isnt it, since savage doesn't mean 'of the forest' or 'from the forest'
The point is that what it does mean is ideological. Or, you could say that it's necessarily value-laden

[Anonymous No.10695001]

>>10694983
ideological as in an archetype, but the fact that savages live in the jungle is objectively true, or to be more specific any uncivilized person who lives in the jungle is a savage (and we arent talking Rio de Janeiro uncivilized)

[Anonymous No.10695015]

>>10694923
>I think you've misunderstood - it's conrad who believes in universal innate savagery, not me.
>doesnt mean its not problematic etc etc
Either you're advocating for your own ideology or you're just a moron. Hence, subjectivity. So, which is it?

[Anonymous No.10695020]

>>10694668
>Was the Greek word barbarian a racist construct as well?
No, it's a matter of fact. Bar, bar. It's the sound the non-Greeks they knew made.

[Anonymous No.10695023]

>>10694631
It's not racist. You must realize that Conrad separated himself from his fiction by filtering everything through a blatantly unreliable narrator who wasn't even of the same country or native language as Conrad.

[Anonymous No.10695028]

>>10695020
Do niggers deserve to be called niggers because they say nigger a lot

[Anonymous No.10695029]

>>10695028
There's an argument to be made there I think.

[Anonymous No.10695032]

>>10695028
>niggers are a type of Pokemon

[Anonymous No.10695036]

>>10695032
kek

[Anonymous No.10695050]

>>10695023
>makes claim about text
>on basis of author's intentions

[Anonymous No.10695229]

THAT'S A CUTE HIRL YOU GOT THERE

[Anonymous No.10695361]

Nuthin personnel kid.

[Anonymous No.10695391]

>>10694631
>telling the truth instead of describing africans as noble savages is racist now

[Anonymous No.10695416]

>>10695391
But they are not savages. They were only described as such by colonialists to dehumanize them, but they had their own culture which was as valid as yours or mine. Not being a part of the western culture doesn't make you a savage.

[Anonymous No.10695419]

>>10694923
There's that "folk", again.

[Anonymous No.10695426]

>>10695416
HAHAHHAHAAHHAHAH

[Anonymous No.10695432]

>>10695426
>unironically believing that it's possible for a group of human beings to live in community without creating their own culture
>unironically believing that some cultures are more valid and objectively better than others

[Anonymous No.10695474]

>>10694608
> "Because people of the Middle Ages had children, we might assume that they engaged in heterosexual acts."
This looks like a try at irony. Not that it's appropriate for a serious paper, but it's not that bad.
Though you make the paper sound quite absurd.

[Anonymous No.10695480]

>>10692208

>start reading ulysses
>antisemitic jokes every few pages
>feelsgoodman.txt

[Anonymous No.10695490]

>>10695416
>they had their own culture which was as valid as yours or mine
You can't be serious. Are you 12? Or are you a middle school English teacher?

[Anonymous No.10695506]

>>10695490
Do you honestly believe that western culture is better than theirs after all the shit we've done?

[Anonymous No.10695541]

>>10695506
Yes. Morality has very little to do with Western superiority, simply because any culture is capable and responsible for extreme brutality.

[Anonymous No.10695566]

>>10694631
A book can’t be racist you fool. Even if HoD were capable of being racist it’s still more powerful and relevant 100 years after its creation than anything ideologically obsessed state school professors will ever come up with.

[Anonymous No.10695576]

>>10695506
>we've
Yes fellow Whites, we must apologise for stuff not unique to our culture/race. If only we accepted cannibalism and gold in bald-men's skulls would we be close to the superior Negroid race; their achievements speak volumes.
If the West was inferior would it make sense for the Rush-of-Africa and British Hegemony to have occured?

[Anonymous No.10695592]

>>10695432

>unironically believing that some cultures are more valid and objectively better than others

Yes, a resounding yes.

[Anonymous No.10695608]

>>10694797
>false
false

[Anonymous No.10695614]

>>10695432
The fact that western culture can question itself doesn't make it superior?

[Anonymous No.10695626]

>>10695614
Only if it concludes that it's not.

[Anonymous No.10695633]

>>10695050
>on basis of author's intentions
I didn't do that.
Also fuck off back to your lit theory department.

[Anonymous No.10695643]

>>10695432
>all cultures are equal
>racism and sexism are bad
really gravitates the electron

[Anonymous No.10695692]

>>10695416
>Not being a part of the western culture doesn't make you a savage.
That is right, acting savage makes you a savage.

[Anonymous No.10695716]

>>10695432
>unironically believing that some cultures are more valid and objectively better than others
That's a misdirection. People (who aren't fools) don't say barbarian cultures are invalid or objectively inferior, they say they are not conducive to circumstances that the vast majority of people would find subjectively pleasant, and that many do actively cause great harm to people through ideas and practices that are present in theirs, but not in our culture. Likewise, there are ideas and practices that lead to an improvement of the mental and material well being of people over time in some cultures, which are absent in other cultures.

Clearly some cultures are preferable to others,and while not objectively inferior in an abstract way, they are factually inferior if you measure certain metrics.

[Anonymous No.10695904]

>>10695419
Am i memorable because i'm always right?

[Anonymous No.10695928]

>>10695633
Well it was either that or on the basis of Marlow being an 'unreliable narrator' which he really isn't - and even if he were the prejudice evinced by the text isn't fucking explicitly voiced by the characters/narrator (how often are you gonna miss this point?), but is something 'unconscious' to the text that we draw out when we read it

[Anonymous No.10695931]

>>10692208
Interestingly enough, the former atheist meme man Christopher Hitchens has actually defended Elliot's poetry against such charges in a piece called 'How Unpleasant to Meet Mr. Eliot', occasioned by a then recent study by A. Julis, T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form.
From Hitchens: 'Was T.S. Eliot an anti-semite? What a question! Of course he was, if the term retains any of its meaning. [...] But are Eliot's poetry and prose hopelessly infected?'.
Yes, according to Julius, but Hitchens concludes: 'the Julius book reminds one, yet again, to hesitate once, hesitate twice, hesitate for a hundred times before employing political standards as a device for the analysis and appreciation of poetry'. It's a short read and goes to show that you might call Hitchens an insufferable atheist meme, but at least he wasn't an aesthetic illiterate.
Meanwhile, for criticism, I suggest you just go back to the classics on the matter, like C. Brooks.

[Anonymous No.10695948]

>>10692327
Lol all of my Norton editions do this. The Aquinas' one has essays on why he is conservative and sexist. Hamlet one has a few Marxist critiques. But I do like reading Comrades Congo diary so I keep it.

[Anonymous No.10695951]

>>10694795
Hey ass hole, I have mulatto friends!

[Anonymous No.10695962]

>>10692327
Lol all of my Norton editions do this. The Aquinas' one has essays on why he is a medieval conservative and sexist. The Hamlet one has a few Marxist critiques. But I do like reading Conrad's Congo diary so I keep it.

[Anonymous No.10695971]

>>10695928
>Marlow
>not an unreliable narrator

The literal state of /lit/

[Anonymous No.10696055]

>>10695971
In what sense is he peculiarly unreliable? He's only as unreliable as any diegetic narrator is on some level - but his fallability is hardly a prominent aspect of HoD

[Anonymous No.10696185]

>>10692208
You aren't looking in the right place, then. Which poem?

[Anonymous No.10696458]

>>10695962
Are these newer editions? Because this hasn't been my experience with Norton critical editions at all, granted I only own a handful, but for example my Austen (P&P from 1966) doesn't have any bits on feminism, maybe it came just a tad too early for that, but social history with a Marxist lean was definitely a big trend by then, at least it's something for which I often look when buying books from around then, and there are no essays like that either.

[Anonymous No.10696515]

>>10694631
>That line about how abhorrent it is to steal land because people have darker skin and flatter noses than you
>It's literally in the intro when Marlowe is on the Thames

[Anonymous No.10696575]

>>10695229
haha! sure is !

[Anonymous No.10696582]

>>10696575
is that a boy (girl)?

[Anonymous No.10696614]

>>10694901
>It's very obviously in part a critique of colonial mismanagement
Not the same as a critique of tribal society, it seemed like the tribesmen were put in it to represent human savagery in general, I'd say thats a pretty positive theme for the time
>the point is that Conrad uses the 'typical' congolese tribe as a blank vessel for his myth of savagery, and then uses this myth to criticise Brussels/London.
I just don't see the problem with this.
>the point is the meaning of the word in contemporary discourse generally, not his particular intentions
Go fuck yourself, I thought I would like deconstructionism but in application its just another tool for ideology

[Anonymous No.10696751]

>>10695506
>>10695416
This is why women shouldn't ever get involved in politics, or history for that matter. When their opinions are presented anonymously it sounds like a 12 year old, because it might as well be; its a foolishly juvenile world view thats creeping its way into hegenomy through the equality meme.

[Anonymous No.10696767]

>>10696751
how many levels on irony and/or r9k are you on though

[Anonymous No.10696790]

>>10696751
>fem grug think different idea than grug; fem grug is sdoopid and 12 year old

[Anonymous No.10696798]

>>10696767
I'm just old fashioned, there's a reason every culture in history treated women like grown children, they're to prone to affects and hysteria

[Anonymous No.10696806]

>>10695416
>Not being a part of the western culture doesn't make you a savage.
It literally does

[Anonymous No.10696812]

>>10696798
wow so many examples
why don't you go back to /his/

[Anonymous No.10696826]

>>10696798
>grug dont like think of fem grug; grug want back time of old, old and wise grug

[Anonymous No.10696828]

>>10696798
he says posting edgy anime girls

[Anonymous No.10696829]

>>10693695
>don't get upset when literary scholars don't want to study literature and actively prevent others from doing so

[Anonymous No.10696857]

>>10696828
Animes are perenially latent in the spirits of every noble men through history; it's leisure for the warrior class-- you wouldn't understand; you probably think liking cute boys is gay as well

[Anonymous No.10696866]

Untrue. Unless perhaps you are using the brokeass bootleg Saudi Arabia-sourced search engine that came with the malware you got off of The Daily Stormer.

[Anonymous No.10696881]

>>10696614
yes I didn't say there was any problem with it being a critique of colonialism, except that its not that great of a job of it. the critiquing colonial mismanagement is the 'nice intentions' i was talking about.
the point is that its a total misrepresentation and effacement of whatever the various tribes/civilisations/societies were that existed in the congo at that time- when i say he uses them as a blank vessel for his myth, i don't mean he uses his creative licence to invent an idea of savagery to attack the colonial administration, I mean he speaks through a myth of savagery that had already been generated within and perpetuated by the very same ideology that drives and sustains the colonial administration. That is, the text is unwittingly caught up in the discourse it tries to attack, not realising that it shares an ideological foundation with that which it critiques.
and about the discourse: i wouldn't exactly contradict anything conrad/marlow say explicitly. Like when marlow says its wrong to steal land from people just because their a different colour, yeah obviously we can take that at face value, well done conrad you're not an absolute scumbag. But this doesn't mean he can't also write racist texts - this is not a complex idea. it's like people saying 'i have a black friend therefore i'm not racist'. it's really on the same level as that argument, if you say because the text at certain points explicitly criticises some aspects of colonial practice, means it can't be racist.

the really frustrating thing is that none of this is what I would ideally like to talk about when it comes to conrad and HoD - but when people are so fucking obstinate and can't stand the thought of a single stain on their pristine fucking canon, you know, it really tickles the pickle

[Anonymous No.10696889]

>>10695432
>all cultures are equal
because ???????????????

[Anonymous No.10696921]

>>10696889
because it would be mean if they werent and they would be excluded and thats sad :( we cant have that
what are you some mean conservative

[Anonymous No.10698129]

>>10694901
>reductive and ideologically laden terms like 'civilised' and 'savage' are.
Only someone living in a civilized country would see the distinction as 'reductive' or 'ideologically laden'.

[Anonymous No.10698157]

>>10692208
only people who haven't studied eliot will fall for this bait
Which essentially means all of /lit/

[Anonymous No.10698161]

>>10695626
Lol.

Why is it that SJW types fit so perfectly into a particular mindset?

If Western culture is so awful nothing is stopping you from selling your PC/tablet, moving to the jungle and joining them. I am sure they will welcome you with open arms.

[Anonymous No.10698162]

>>10694949
lmao whitie doesn't think racism is an experience because he has never experienced it. I guess gettin ya dick sucked isn't a human experience neither. back to pol you retard

[Anonymous No.10698169]

>>10696055
This. It's hardly Gone Girl or even Name of the Wind.

[Anonymous No.10698183]

>>10696055
Yes it is. The book is through him, not through an objective source. That's what an unreliable narrator is.

[Anonymous No.10698198]

>>10692208
Which poem? Gerontion?

[Anonymous No.10698231]

>>10698183
Do me a favor: Google search unreliable narrator and read some of the results

[Anonymous No.10698521]

>>10698231
Do me a favor and read a fucking book in your life instead of depending on le google you fucking plebbitor

[Anonymous No.10699082]

>>10698183
No it isn't.
Just because a book is written in first person doesn't mean the narrator is 'unreliable'. An unreliable narrator is a specific literary device to intentionally throw the reader and not one Conrad used as such. FFS......

[Anonymous No.10699109]

>>10698161
The fact that western culture is the only one that enables such high mobility and control and people stay with it is proof of its superiority, one such proof anyway. Of course you can't reason with these leftists, their PoMo bullshit has eroded their brains.

[Anonymous No.10699127]

>>10695028
D A M N

[Anonymous No.10699150]

>>10693886
this post made me lose my shit for some reason
thanks anon

[Anonymous No.10699188]

>>10695608
>false
true

[Anonymous No.10699209]

>>10692208
I love Aggie, so, so much!

[Anonymous No.10699231]

>>10694631
all the psueds replying to you are wrong, HoD is racist but its good that its racist. Niggers are stupid savages but they don’t deserve enslavement or colonization
ok?
>>10695931
kys
>>10695229
what does he say that is anti-Jew? i don’t want to read Eliot he’s a fucking pseud
>>10696575
kys
>>10696582
its a girl, a girl trying to look like a little girl to please pedophiles online, who also tries to look like she’s abused and other pedo fetishes.
>>10696857
it is pederasty and this is extremely fucking gay, rich Chads don’t watch anime you stupid fucking retard they play FIFA, watch Premier League and Black Mirror and go to the club on Friday Nights fucking kys you fucking faggot
>>10698198
again would someone please point out how he was anti-Semitic and where he inserts this in his writings. Niggers are dumb no one cares about niggers being niggers nigging inside nigger land

[Anonymous No.10699644]

>>10699082
That's not what I said. You might have autism.