/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7118437]

Is it just me or does "critical theory" / "cultural theory" / societal commentary seem like not much more than posturing, constant over-analysing in unfalsifiable ways, edginess porn, and blatant attempts to scam money out of educated types.

*I don't mean actual scamming, I just mean selling magazines / novels / books

[Anonymous No.7118447]

Do you have any examples or are you just complaining to justify your superficial knowledge of the subject?

[Anonymous No.7118456]

>>7118437
Hmm... I've never thought about that anon. Very original and well thought out post. Allow me some time to ponder.

[Anonymous No.7118470]

>>7118437
Yes it is.

There are plenty of insights to be gained from Critical Theory, but its focus on critique over empirical analysis with its obfuscating jargon and philosophical revisionism is part of why contemporary Marxism is in the toilet.

>>7118456
The only people I've seen that actually like Derrida are faggots who suck dick for a living.

[Anonymous No.7118473]

>>7118447

>unfalsifiable
self evident
>edginess porn
Admittedly I'm doing what I criticise by making this topic
>attempts to scam money out of educated types
All of Zizek's layman books

And another thing: /lit/ starts with the axiom that literature quality is objective and then they go on and on about this being true no matter what... and even the famous people have no agreement about what is good. If tolstoy was posting anonymously on /lit/, he'd be slaughtered

[Anonymous No.7118479]

>>7118470
Phallogocentric tbh fam

[Anonymous No.7118487]

>>7118437
It's not just you, and people are slowly starting to realise Lacan, Baudrillard, Derrida, Foucault etc. have a few basic ideas they dress up with incessant verbiage and obfuscation.

[Anonymous No.7118497]

>>7118473
>If tolstoy was posting anonymously on /lit/, he'd be slaughtered
If he posted on /lit/, he (and any other big author tbh) would be slaughtered because his normalfaggotry would trigger our autism owing to 4chan's edgy contrarian private language and insular meme mindset.

[Anonymous No.7118512]

>>7118437
Everything that doesn't produce food or water is a scam/superfluous with the exception of medical science maybe if you do some mental gymnastics.
I'm not an edgelord and I am 100% pro-social but I don't think anyone should take this world seriously.
Everyone knows that post artificial niche human behaviour is only 'real' according to an invented and declarative precedent and not any genuine law of nature.
Look at evolution of language and you'll see that abstract thought codeveloped with declarative language and creativity.
Because abstract thought is naturally an artistic process and not a hard scientific one.
That's why mathematical and science thinking aren't intuitive, though they seem so obvious when you grow up in a society where they are prevalent.
The thing about ideology is it's all made up and the points don't matter.
This is why businesses are replacing governments as leaders in global politics.
This is why economics is replacing politics.
Ideology is a thatch roofed mud hut to the STEM McMansion.
One is useless but soulful, the other is elegant and lifeless.

[Anonymous No.7118514]

>>7118487
can't speak to those authors but of the Marxists I know there's definitely an increasing attempt at obscurantism
also the hijacking of accelerationism to try and make it left wing
see:
http://reflexes.co/reflex/an-object-of-labor-2nd-edition.pdf
I see things like this regularly linked on facebook

[Anonymous No.7118540]

>>7118512

>implyign all scientific and mathematical explorations are not completely effected by metaphysics and culture

"Ideaology" alwasy matters, it was always there for us and always will be. It is part of the histroical stream of human society and it underlies everything we do.
It is as much real as we are real. These systems, science, economy, ideaology, technology are all connected and effect ach other.
You think mathematical and physical equations are not effected by our internal ideas and views of time and space?

[Anonymous No.7118544]

>>7118514
But acceleration can be leftist, see grundrisse's fragment on machines as well as Marx's thoughts on free trade.

[Anonymous No.7118571]

>>7118514
buh-arf
Fuck I'm grateful for JMP.
Americans so damn thirsty.

The left's goal has always been to make itself obsolete. I don't understand how accelerationism CAN'T be left win.

[Anonymous No.7118579]

It's not just you.

It's all just a big circlejerk.

[Anonymous No.7118597]

>>7118544
>>7118571
of those I know that are into it it seems less like something they arrived to through research and more like a way to reconcile their hyper capitalist consumption with their left wing ideology
I know it's anecdotal
accelerationism can be adapted to a leftist vision of the future but to me it seems silly, then again I think all of leftism is silly besides maybe the labour movement

[twinshia !b2E8KBMQGk No.7118604]

>>7118512
>Everything that doesn't produce food or water is a scam/superfluous
This seems unrelated to the thread and I wholeheartedly disagree.

[Anonymous No.7118623]

>>7118437
M Hardt wrote something about the accelerationist manifesto

[Anonymous No.7120043]

>>7118437
someone put "shut it down" on this pic pls

[Anonymous No.7120106]

Critical theory seems to have this very bizarre style of using really ornate language for everything. Sometimes it is technical language but it's also just plain overwritten. It's not something you find in a lot of other philosophical fields, even continental philosophy. I think the problem is that with some literary philosophy, it's not inherently very interesting. When you dumb it doubt you risk exposing what you are saying as very trivial. In other philosophical fields its considered a faux pas or, worse, bad writing, because you absolutely don't want to risk not conveying your ideas for no good reason.

This is an example of the writing given to me when I took a fiction class a year or two ago, it was for an essay that got really good marks:

>It is fitting, in this age of exponential connectivity, that any discussion of late stage capitalism must account for the linkages and interconnections that crowd in on the term. As a phrase which represents, among other things, the global and the simultaneously incorporated yet decentralised nature of our historical epoch, it must be made clear from the beginning that to discuss ‘late stage capitalism’ in splendid isolation would be a mistake. In the course of this essay, I shall present a view of late stage capitalism that pays the necessary attention to the interlocking theorizations of postmodernism and postmodernity that accompany it.

To me it's just bordering fucking nonsense.

As for the ideas themselves, I always struggled with them. They often seem vague and unimportant. To me they read like the late stages of a 4chan argument by some very clever people. It's like you've lost all sight of what you were arguing about and so you're kind of just squabbling with each other. When you should just bin that shit and start again.

[Anonymous No.7120154]

>>7118540
>You think mathematical and physical equations are not effected by our internal ideas and views of time and space?
give an example of this

[Anonymous No.7120163]

>>7120154
Lmfao

[Anonymous No.7120704]

>>7118456
Derrida's cat is about to shit on him.

[Anonymous No.7120709]

>>7118597
>of those I know that are into it it seems less like something they arrived to through research and more like a way to reconcile their hyper capitalist consumption with their left wing ideology
Read "Lenin in England" and the autonomists for fucks sake. 1960s Italy.