/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15050709]

>Language is a virus from outer space
-William S. Burroughs

Literally, what did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.15050720]

>i overthink
>language is bad because other people use it in a way i don't feel natural doing

[Anonymous No.15050776]

>>15050709
Taking drugs is the easiest way to see through the game of life that is 'society'. Burroughs just went full blown smackhead crazy with this one though.

[Anonymous No.15051027]

>>15050709
I think you can contrast it against late Wittgenstein's idea of language as a tool– thinking it about the other way around, language is something that uses us. There is a parasitical dimension to it, we don't speak in language, language speaks through us. Think about how certain phrases or colloquialisms spread from person to person– it isn't intentional, the kinds of language we pick up along the way, bits of phrases pass from person to person without realising it. We accumulate language via osmosis, and exchange it between each other unconsciously. I assume the idea of it coming from space suggests that it doesn't have a source (not one that we can determine, anyway– for all intents and purposes it fell out of the sky into our heads).

[Anonymous No.15051116]

>>15050709

Unrelated to your thread but John Zerzan is a boring ass speaker

[Anonymous No.15051150]

>>15051116
agreed

[Anonymous No.15051173]

>>15051027
Nice analysis. Thank you for proving lit still has gems amidst the bullshit.

[Anonymous No.15051176]

>>15051027
reminds me of r/sorceryofthespectacle

[Anonymous No.15051191]

>>15051116
Great writer though, but he goes too far with his war against symbolic thought and ends up like a crappy version of Ted

[Anonymous No.15051193]

>>15051116
also a pedo

[Anonymous No.15051206]

>>15051027
nickland.png

[Anonymous No.15051221]

>>15051027
hyperstition?

[Anonymous No.15051236]

>>15051027
Cringe
Fuck tranny spammers

[Anonymous No.15051243]

>>15051236
cringe

[Anonymous No.15051288]

>>15051236
>everyone who disagrees with me is a tranny: a basedboy's guide to moralfagging hypocritically on an atlantean basket-weaving forum

[Anonymous No.15051295]

>>15051288
cope

[Anonymous No.15051316]

>>15051295
You got trannies living rent free in your head, boy

You need to find yourself a good old fashioned biological woman

[Anonymous No.15051336]

>>15051243
Yikes and cope plus doublehypercringe

[Anonymous No.15051354]

>>15051316

[Anonymous No.15051361]

>>15051336
he cute

[Anonymous No.15051385]

The reddit upvote system really fucks up your language

[Anonymous No.15051407]

>>15051236
That's in every meaningful sense the »non tranny position» u illitterate dweeb.

[Anonymous No.15051431]

>>15051407
>t.

[Anonymous No.15051509]

reddit

[Anonymous No.15051584]

>>15051431
suck my cock faggot

[Anonymous No.15052060]

>>15051584
retard

[Anonymous No.15052069]

dude dropped lsd with his bros and realized they could communicate non-verbally

[Anonymous No.15052108]

>>15051431
What kind of a person do you have to be to scalp a picture of an unassuming, ordinary woman off the internet and use it to mock someone with? Sad. It's not even a good reaction image. Why do you even have it saved?

[Anonymous No.15052124]

>>15052069
He hated lsd actually

[Anonymous No.15052161]

>>15051027
I mean, this makes sense. I don't get the confusion caused by the Burroughs quote. We don't choose language, it is inculcated into us. Who invented language? No-one and everybody. It appears out of 'nowhere'. You parents don't teach you English, it leaps from them to you, just as it will leap from you to your children.

[Anonymous No.15052181]

>>15052161
Indeed. This is used in some analytic circles as argument against solipsism

[Anonymous No.15052287]

Doesn't it also have to do with language as a weapon, a means to control our thoughts?
"Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form."

[Anonymous No.15052358]

>>15052287
>language as a weapon, a means to control our thoughts?
It's certainly plausible. Bear in mind, viruses work by literally altering our genes. So there is a sense in which the language-as-virus infiltrates us, altering our internal processes, changing the very way we think.

What is really interesting is that viruses themselves are neither alive, nor dead– they are simply strings of code. Arguably the same undead/unliving status could be applied to language. After all, we speak the phrases of dead men all the time, when reading poetry perhaps, or even when using colloquial phrases. How much does shakespeare's language "control" our thoughts, when so much of thought cannot take place outside of the words and phrases we have inherited from him? Its certainly an interesting thought.

[Anonymous No.15052404]

>>15051027
Everything wrong with continental philosophy .jpg

[Anonymous No.15052441]

>>15052404
It's an explanation of what Burroughs likely meant by that quote, it has literally nothing to do with continental philosophy. What kind of explanation would satisfy you, I wonder?

[Anonymous No.15052454]

>>15051193

Evidence?

[Anonymous No.15052489]

>>15052441
Language is not a parasite, and we know what its origin is, your explanation is nonsensical and it sounds like something a continental philosopher would come up with.

[Anonymous No.15052520]

>>15052489
I said it is "parasitical", and that was a direct reference to the Burroughs quote, which is a metaphor. I was unpacking the significance of that metaphor, not making any claims as to the way language actually is. You are fucking retarded.

[Anonymous No.15052528]

>>15052489
>>15052520
and also– what is the origin of language? Because that is a question that very few people claim to know the answer to (myself included).

[Anonymous No.15052576]

>>15051191
Please recommend me his best writings if I like Ted.

[Anonymous No.15052594]

>>15052520
>I was unpacking the significance of the metaphor
>sometimes we pick up phrases unintentionally
There is no significance to the metaphor, it's just a trivial statement clothed with fancy language.
>>15052528
It's just an evolutionary adaptation what do you not understand about it

[Anonymous No.15052621]

>>15052594
>it's just a trivial statement clothed with fancy language
So if there was genuinely no explanation for his quote that would satisfy you, if you're just going to be totally cynical about any kind of literary analysis taking place on a literature board (of all places), why the fuck are you posting in this thread when it should have zero interest to you?

>It's just an evolutionary adaptation
Oh, so you're a fucking idiot. Gotcha.

[Anonymous No.15052623]

>>15050709
Language is only transmitted by close proximity with others exhibiting symptoms of language use
not sure how much more plainly he could phrase it

[Anonymous No.15052695]

>>15052576
same

[Anonymous No.15052718]

>>15052161
No it won't haha fuck language

[Anonymous No.15052730]

>>15051027
So different languages are like alien races?
Which one is the nigger language?

[Anonymous No.15052806]

>>15052621
>So if there was genuinely no explanation for his quote that would satisfy you, if you're just going to be totally cynical about any kind of literary analysis taking place on a literature board (of all places), why the fuck are you posting in this thread when it should have zero interest to you?
I am saying that if your intenterpretation is right the author is exposed as a pretentious dipshit, but going by the tone of your post you don't seem to share the sentiment.You seem to think there is some valuable insight to that stupid analogy.
>Oh, so you're a fucking idiot. Gotcha
Science denial too, very nice. Are you sure you don't read continental philosophy, you would fit right in.

[Anonymous No.15052900]

>>15052806
>You seem to think there is some valuable insight to that stupid analogy.
You are literally the only person who has a problem with that analogy. Likely because you suffer from autism, and lack the imagination to think in terms of metaphor. Again, I ask you, why did you enter this thread just to be totally cynical when you knew exactly what the content was going to be?

>Science denial too, very nice
Christ on a bike. I'm not denying evolution, I'm saying you're utterly braindead for thinking "evolutionary adaption" is a valid answer to the question of the origin of the language that we speak, not the acquisition of language as a social tool. I am almost certain however that you are too stupid to understand the difference. Even Noam Chomsky and his retarded concept of universal grammar is at least coherent.

[Anonymous No.15052960]

Just read this OP

[Anonymous No.15053064]

>>15051336
>>15051354
They look like they have some sort of snap chat filter applied to them.

[Anonymous No.15053081]

>>15052960
Oh gee thanks so much Will, now I have brain AIDS. Bet that faggot gets off to spreading viruses like Foucault.

[Anonymous No.15053117]

>>15052806
Fuck you I hate you fuck off
>>15050720
Retard
>>15050776
Idiot
>>15051027
Based cool guy with good brain

[Anonymous No.15053123]

>>15052960
Stopped reading at ‘trap’

[Anonymous No.15053133]

>>15053081
Don't read Foucault. Read Dark Deleuze and Nick Land's stuff.

[Anonymous No.15053170]

>>15053133
Already read FN and the CCRU, as well as bunch of Land's articles, Urbanomic books and JG Ballard. To be honest with you, If anyone is gonna have an immunity to brain AIDS at this point, its probably gonna be me.

Then again, I could also be a neolemurian time agent incubating in human form. Who knows what would happen if you said the right activation word to me...

[Anonymous No.15053184]

>>15053123
traps aren't gay, nothing wrong about a girl with a feminine cock. post-op trannies are gay. Know the difference: it could save your life.

[Anonymous No.15054702]

>>15051191
>guy that wants to reject language becomes an author
Pottery.

[Anonymous No.15054710]

>>15052454
Also a pedo

[Anonymous No.15054724]

>>15050709
He probably played Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

[Anonymous No.15054784]

Burroughs is clearly talking about how tribal gathering early man only vocalized gruff sounds like an animal and communicated telepathically the way that animals do, until a reptilian extraterrestrial race enslaved humans and forced them to learn to communicate in speech so that their communications would be manifestly discernible, in this sense it was a disadvantageous transition in some ways and the fact that he metaphorically calls it a virus is probably due to the propulgation of language to take on attributes of other language the way a virulent strain of a disease would develop

Psychic geometry would be a far more useful module of communication for a life form than language at least in efficiency, and the confusions one abates when stringing dialogue together in a meaningful way is similar to the effects that a disease can have on mobility

[Anonymous No.15055248]

>>15053133
somehow gayer than reading the works of a gay man, impressive

[Anonymous No.15055273]

>>15050709
This thread is what I thought Metal Gear Solid V was going to be.
Instead, I have The Phantom Pain.

[Anonymous No.15055275]

>>15054724
>He beat me to it before I read the entire thread
here's the only reaction image on my laptop

[Anonymous No.15055314]

>>15052576
Can't even get a book recommendation related to OP 10 hours later, just a load of meme posting and throwing around insults. This place is fucking trash.

[Anonymous No.15055528]

>>15052489
This. Sorry anons. >>15051027 makes no sense to me.
>language uses us
>it speaks through us
>language is parasitical
>we accumulate it through 'osmosis'
>we exchange it unconsciously
>it doesn't have a source
Each of these statements is either completely false or just a bad explanation of what's really true. Either way I respectfully disagree.

This post has the same problem >>15052161
>Who invented language? No-one and everybody. It appears out of 'nowhere'.
This is like asking who invented legs or opposable thumbs. Sure,the answer should be no one, but why even ask that question? Obviously these things are adaptations brought on by billions of trials and errors over many years. Language is the same. It does not "choose" us or "use" us. It is an ability that our species acquired as it developed more and better ways to interact with its environment.

[Anonymous No.15055651]

>>15052730
Each language is its own distinct human activity, yes.

[Anonymous No.15055673]

>>15055528
That post is an explication of burrough’s metaphor, not a description of the reality of language as is. I don’t know how much clearer I can make this point. Why are people incapable of distinguishing between literary and philosophical analysis? Why does no one on a literature board have any imagination to flirt with ideas that may not be true to reality?

>another reference to evolutionary adaption
We are not talking about the origin of language acquisition (which is obviously evolutionary), we are talking about the way in which the ACTUAL language we use appears in our vocabulary. That is entirely open to speculation as there isn’t a concrete theory as to how the brain selects between different syntactical structures or phrases it hears, and then repurposes them for its own use. Why are some phrases so much more “viral” than others for example, why does their use spread so much faster than others? You cannot say that we have any agency in the matter, because the simple answer is that we don’t. Thus the idea of language speaking “through” is, proliferating itself across different cultures, mutating both itself and us in the process. See >>15052358. Are you able to authoritatively assert that the language you use has absolute no control over the way you think?

[Anonymous No.15055706]

>>15055528
t. Analyticuck.

[Anonymous No.15055814]

>>15052520
hey retard. don't participate in tranny spam threads and then maybe people won't call you a fucking retard

[Anonymous No.15055827]

>>15052576
Elements of Refusal.
The retards talking about rejection of symbols have never read him

[Anonymous No.15055889]

>>15055814
>actual on topic thread about Burroughs is “tranny spam”
The level of discourse on this board isn’t even mediocre at this point, it’s literally just been reduced to buzzwords and shitflinging. Your attitude to literature and discussion is miserable. How have not killed yourself yet when your posts have so little value?

[Anonymous No.15055904]

>>15055889
you're just retarded. zero awareness of who spams the board and for what reasons.

[Anonymous No.15055926]

>>15055904
I don’t give a shit. I like Burroughs, and if people got something out of my analysis, then that’s all I care about. Ironically the way you make out this thread to be some insidious infiltration intended to manipulate is actually a confirmation of the language-as-virus hypothesis. Trannycode accessing and bonding to the genetic script of standard 4chan discourse, altering it from the inside. So thanks for only further proving me right.

[Anonymous No.15055947]

>>15055926
but you said you didn't believe that.
and cringe.

[Anonymous No.15055974]

>>15055947
Holy shit you don’t know how to take a joke, do you? /lit/ is so riddled with autism that we deserve all the trannyspam we get. Hopefully it will encourage humourless retards like you to fuck off. Consider this my last reply, you’ve had far more than you deserve.

[Anonymous No.15055990]

>>15055974
>i was just pretending to be an autistic retard spamming this thread because of my high genetic humor replacement therapy
post one joke you made in this thread anon. at first you sperged out because people didn't take you seriously, and now you want them to see the humor in your sperging.
which is it anon?

[Anonymous No.15056301]

>>15052900
There is no significance to the metaphor, it's just a trivial statement clothed with fancy language.
You are literally the only person who has a problem with that analogy. Likely because you suffer from autism, and lack the imagination to think in terms of metaphor.
You are so full of shit that you can't reply to the argument without strawmaning it. I understand your stupid metaphor perfectly well, the point is that calling language a virus because sometimes we pick up phrases unconsciously is pretentious verbal masturbation that makes no interesting point.
>and also– what is the origin of language? Because that is a question that very few people claim to know the answer to (myself included).
>Christ on a bike. I'm not denying evolution, I'm saying you're utterly braindead for thinking "evolutionary adaption" is a valid answer to the question of the origin of the language that we speak, not the acquisition of language as a social tool.
So after realizing that the idea that we don't know the origin of language cannot be defended, we back down to the position that we don't know exactly the mechanism by which language is learned. So language is a virus from outer space because sometimes we pick up phrases unconsciously and because we don't know exactly the mechanism by which we learn it. You just proved my point, it just two trivial statements clothed in fancy language to give the impression that some interesting point is made.

[Anonymous No.15056315]

>>15052900
>There is no significance to the metaphor, it's just a trivial statement clothed with fancy language.
>You are literally the only person who has a problem with that analogy. Likely because you suffer from autism, and lack the imagination to think in terms of metaphor.
You are so full of shit that you can't reply to the argument without strawmaning it. I understand your stupid metaphor perfectly well, the point is that calling language a virus because sometimes we pick up phrases unconsciously is pretentious verbal masturbation that makes no interesting point.
>and also– what is the origin of language? Because that is a question that very few people claim to know the answer to (myself included).
>Christ on a bike. I'm not denying evolution, I'm saying you're utterly braindead for thinking "evolutionary adaption" is a valid answer to the question of the origin of the language that we speak, not the acquisition of language as a social tool.
So after realizing that the idea that we don't know the origin of language cannot be defended, we back down to the position that we don't know exactly the mechanism by which language is learned. So language is a virus from outer space because sometimes we pick up phrases unconsciously and because we don't know exactly the mechanism by which we learn it. You just proved my point, it just two trivial statements clothed in fancy language to give the impression that some interesting point is made.

[Anonymous No.15056318]

>>15055974
>Consider this my last reply

[Anonymous No.15056336]

>>15050709
Corona is caused by hate speech.

[Anonymous No.15056407]

>>15050709
>outer space
Nice deflection. It's from the spaceless 'where', the platonic and spiritual realms.

[Anonymous No.15056448]

>>15050709
>>15051027
>>15052960

I can't tell who is the bigger faggot.

[Anonymous No.15056488]

>>15056407

[Anonymous No.15056508]

>>15056488
No human understands symbols, nor can they properly express themselves with them. Yet here they are.

[Anonymous No.15056553]

>>15056315
This is precisely what I mean when I say you have no imagination. Literature isn’t about making “interesting points”, what a shallow and aesthetically stunted attitude towards it. It’s about imaginative exercise in the gaps where science or reality doesn’t have the answers. Yet You literally only care about point scoring and the truth-validity of art, it’s tediously mechanistic and closed-minded. Again, it’s obvious you haven’t read ah-pook is here, and it’s obvious you have no interest in Burroughs as a writer. I cannot imagine dedicating so much time to being cynically reductive about a writer I don’t like, rather than posting in threads about about writers I do like, posing my own examples of literary analysis and incentivising discussion. But you don’t want to do that, you want to cynically shut down conversation about literature, all because “noooo it’s not real life it’s all evolution you are stupid you can’t be creative with the truth!”. Modern society is full of cretins like you, and we are all the more miserable and disenchanted because of it.

[Anonymous No.15056602]

[Anonymous No.15057453]

>>15055314
all of his essays are available for free online, just read them. you don't need to have shit spoonfed to you if you're willing to put a little bit of effort into looking for things, you absolute fucking faggot. I highly doubt you've actually read anything from Ted and you won't read anything from Zerzan either. Pluck out your eyes and cut off your fingers.

[Anonymous No.15057504]

>>15050776

[Anonymous No.15057520]

>>15057504
jez approved.

[Anonymous No.15057650]

>>15050709
Language is a parasite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJVxPAiB7as

[Anonymous No.15057701]

>>15050709
Language will always be "alien" to us and it's bad for reasons he doesn't name

[Anonymous No.15058130]

>>15051027
the only board where the schizos are hailed

[Anonymous No.15058904]

Read Ludwig Klages' The Spirit as Enemy of the Soul if you want more info as to why this is bad

[Anonymous No.15059202]

>>15058130
>the only board where the schizos are hailed
literally >>>/x/

[Anonymous No.15059490]

Current 93

[Anonymous No.15059502]

>>15059490
Hell yeah brother !!!!

[Anonymous No.15059620]

>>15051116
I interviewed him once and I asked him maybe 3 questions and he just rambled for about an hour. Pretty entertaining though honestly.

[Anonymous No.15059844]

Can we think of idioms as memes? Are buzzwords and cliches effectively just memes?

[Anonymous No.15060030]

>>15056553
A metaphor doesn't necessarily have to make an interesting point, but even if you see it from a purely aesthetic point of view it has to at least be lively or picturesque, and to point to an interesting analogy. Calling language a virus from outer space because uhmmm sometimes we pick up phrases unconsciously and who knows exactly from where language comes from anyway is neither interesting philosophically nor it has any aesthetic merit in terms of the imagery it evokes. It is not even a good analogy. I don't understand why anyone would want to defend it, it's just pretentious flowery language of the lowest aesthetic caliber.

[Anonymous No.15060388]

>>15050709
Based and truthpilled, language is where humanity went downhill

[Anonymous No.15060393]

>>15056553
Based as fuck.

[Anonymous No.15060518]

>>15060030
Just read one of Burrough’s texts if you actually want a holistic picture that isn’t one line of text, ffs. You are refusing to even acknowledge that there is a wider context to what is being said. In fact, all you have actually done is added an “ummm” at the start of your crude imitation of my post in order to ridicule it, and then said “I don’t think it’s interesting, it isn’t a good analogy”. That is literally the limit of your critique. You aren’t even capable of explaining what is bad about it, you just posture from a position of miserable, unreflective cynicism. I genuinely feel sorry for you.

[Anonymous No.15060534]

>>15060030
>calling something language a mind virus pretentious flowery language
?

[Anonymous No.15060726]

>>15054784
>communicated telepathically
Yeah he was pretty obsessed with telepathy and trying to use images instead of language when trying to think

[Anonymous No.15061150]

>>15050709
Is that the radio host of that anarchist radio show where Adam Lanza spoke once about some insane chimp and how that chimp's predicament mirrors his own?

[Anonymous No.15061760]

>>15050709
Zerzan is such a loser.

[Anonymous No.15062401]

>ITT: nameless assholes with a case of the Yacks