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/lit/ - Literature

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3078483 No.3078483 [Reply] [Original]

"Literature" is a medium, not an assessment of quality or historical/cultural value.

>> No.3078491

"Literature" is definitely not a medium.

>> No.3078501

>>3078483
Bound pages of text is a medium, literature is not.

>> No.3078535
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3078535

I don't think moot gave a shit when he named it /lit/ instead of /bk/ or some shit

I don't see NO GRRM TOO PEDESTRIAN in the rules

>> No.3078572

>>3078535
>Text Board: /book/
>>>>>>/book/

What part of the top of the board don't you understand?

>> No.3078612

>>3078535
There are always implicit as well as explicit rules.

>> No.3078617

it can be a medium. sometimes it is, sometimes not.

>> No.3078640

>>3078483
You're going to make a lot of enemies pointing this out, OP.

>> No.3078639

>>3078612
>There are always implicit as well as explicit rules.
>There are always implicit…rules.
>implicit…rules.
>[implications]
>[implying implications]
>10/22/12/(Mon)04:40:27

What are you implying and who are you referencing?

>> No.3078650

>>3078640
Not really, critique has been universal in its gaze since the early 19th century romantics, and the universal gaze of critique is generally accepted (and considered trite) after 1970. In particular trying to apply critique to ephemeral or "low-brow" texts will merely get you a shrug from people who saw science fiction critiqued by better thinkers than you decades ago; and who still possess the physical paper journals on their shelves that evidence the fact.

>> No.3078657

>>3078650
/lit/ isn't academia.

>> No.3078668

>>3078657
Perhaps you misunderstand the nature of critique and its gaze. Critique is a universalising and totalising function at the heart of human culture which is in the least introspective.

Now admittedly critique isn't the actual concrete praxis of the proletariat, the grounding in material reality that justifies them "not knowing art, but knowing what they like;" and critique is in that way flawed and deficient against the capacity for reason forged in the struggle of class-warfare; but, nevertheless, critique's gaze is universal regardless of the academy.

>> No.3078674

>>3078650
What critiques of science fiction?

I don't think the critique of low-brow texts is in the least a 20C phenomena. I can think of Matthew Arnold's war against the philistines for the 19C and also Mark Twain. I'm not sure anyone gave enough of a shit in the 18C to "critique" bad literature. Poets attacking other poets; philosophes other philosophes. I suppose the 18C equivalent was the attacks on Opera/operetta/ballet, and all other light, dramatic and superficial forms of distraction - the main difference being that opera was an aristocratic vice, but culture looked up then.

>> No.3078678

>>3078668
I understand what you mean. I was referring to /lit/'s tendency to adopt "not knowing art, but knowing what they like;" as a way of defining what literature is or isn't. In other words, you'd make enemies HERE.

>> No.3078689

>>3078678
The thing is that there are three groups who adopt "knowing what they like" on /lit/. A true body of intellectuals, schooled in critique (and some in praxis) who have a reflexive capacity for evaluation of texts. For example, I adore the gay bara:bara love fest that is Aubrey/Maturin, yet I understand Burrough's deep critique of the genre novel.

Secondly, there is an impulsive body of readers who frankly read commercial tripe and enjoy the fuck out of it. They deeply care about Mary Sue shitting her britches in the Deserts of Deep Dalafoon and which Orc the Dwarf Dwarfed in the Dwarfy Orc Dwarf Vampire Romance IN SPAAAAACE. Good for them, it is better than pokémon—and when I say that, you know that I mean that. Usually this group embodies a reflexive praxical understanding of reality that reflects truth only to the extent that they are embedded in class struggle (so it is, of course, mostly false consciousness, and again, you know what I mean by that and what I don't; let's not get into an extended discussion of theories of the superstructure). In capable of critique, but capable of enjoyeement to coin a new Lacanianism.

But in the middle is fuckwits from /mu/ and /tv/ and I'd take an angle grinder to their munts with pleasure.

>> No.3078699

>>3078674
see
>>3078650
>critique has been universal in its gaze since the early 19th century romantics

>> No.3078708

>>3078689
Nice patronizing meltdown br0

>> No.3078712

>>3078699
What my post was suggesting was that critique of everything stretches back even further, but I can't be arsed cracking Plato atm.

>> No.3078721

>>3078712
...to the point where Plato advocates anti-Popperian amounts of totalitarianism and everyone this side of Nietzsche applauds and laughs.

>> No.3078723

>>3078721
Bk 10, Republic, the problem of "art/entertainment" to the morals of the state.

>> No.3078727

>>3078712
Yes, but you pointed to hostility from elites towards popular culture. Need a bit more Marcuse? The thing with the romantics (and the nationalists who weren't romantic) is that they turned critique as the appreciation of texts onto popular culture in a coherent and totalising way. Yeah sure bring Boccaccio and Chaucer and I'll point out that they're first order. Try Drama and we'll point directly at 1) the first order nature, and 2) at the castration of the chorus by the players.

Universal and totalising critique is a post-enlightenment capitalist phenomena operating in the death of God and the requirement for Man to enact a totalisation.

I'll still hold that /lit/ only shits when the undergraduates start to think they're "right."

>> No.3078729

>>3078727
Yeah & I'm saying that goes back at least to an elite and aristocrat like Plato living in the Athenian democracy.

>> No.3078732

>>3078712
This
>>3078721
is
>>3078723
too fucking exciting; but I have marital responsibilities. I'll respond in the morning.

>> No.3078737

>>3078729
I'll just note before doing my duty that the limits of Athenian conceptions of totalisation were all right and good thinking men; which obviously and clearly excluded Spartans, Dalmatians, Dacians, etc. etc. etc. Greek philosophy's claims were politically fantastic and critique did not inhabit the state—compare, simply, to Napoleon III's France where nation, race and Paris itself were remodelled by the compulsion of the intellect to produce correct answers.

>> No.3078768

>>3078737
Except for the fact that Greek philosophy as it is now understood also includes the practical critiques of the Greek school of sophism who were politically active and did inhabit the state...

>> No.3078771

>>3078483
>"Literature" is a medium, not an assessment of quality or historical/cultural value.
I don't think that's a standard definition.

>> No.3078773

>>3078768
And the anti-Socratic sophists were notably instantiated within a state that was not governed by critique nor did the non-Socratics conduct totalising critique. There was a reason to put him in the gymnasium.

>> No.3078775

>>3078773
I would say that the sophists practiced "critique" unless you are using some extremely contemporaneous sense of that word (Althusser's definition of critique, for example); & I'd say that their "critique" was totalising if the sense that the Greek language naturally gave itself to a form of abstraction that was ipso facto totalising and far too easily tread over the concrete with the metaphysical.

>> No.3078778

>>3078773
If a state is governed by the rhetorical expression of certain criticisms conjugated through the various councils and assemblies and private meetings then surely that state is as governed by critique as any state ever will be.

>> No.3078782

>>3078668
>Critique is a universalising and totalising function at the heart of human culture which is in the least introspective.
What about postmodern critique?

>> No.3078796

>>3078782
First you wipe it off with paper, then with a moist wipe. You put the nappy in bucket one and put a dry clean diaper on their arse with some talc. Then you come back and check on them in an hour.