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Dank (pg. 13)
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| Lews |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
How many post-structuralists genuinely exist in the world who aren't either:
1. Academics getting paid to care about it.
2. Students being told they should care about it? |
I'm assuming these memes were made by students being told they should care about it while realising that they should not.
No one who wasn't a post-structuralist would take the time to make such memes, since the whole thing is such a joke already :p |
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
How many post-structuralists genuinely exist in the world who aren't either:
1. Academics getting paid to care about it.
2. Students being told they should care about it? |
What kind of argument is that? You shat on someone earlier for being anti-intellectual but this is the exact kind of argument that people use to defund academia. It goes for literally all of modern philosophy and countless academic disceplines. Modern Analytic philosophy is arguably even more of an ivory-tower discipline since "post-structuralism" at least had enormous impact in many related and unrelated disciplines such as the arts or architecture as well as popular culture. Meanwhile what kind of societal impact have say, contemporary analytic metaphysics, made?
Not to mention that, the idea of post structuralism as some kind of movement is arguable in the first place. Branding a wide range of thinkers with different projects and differeng opinions as non-sense "post-structuralists" is just intellectually lazy. If say, Deleuze's solo work is nonense, so is half of the history of philosophy, including some analytics like Whitehead. |
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| Lews |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
What kind of argument is that? You shat on someone earlier for being anti-intellectual but this is the exact kind of argument that people use to defund academia. It goes for literally all of modern philosophy and countless academic disceplines. Modern Analytic philosophy is arguably even more of an ivory-tower discipline since "post-structuralism" at least had enormous impact in many related and unrelated disciplines such as the arts or architecture as well as popular culture. Meanwhile what kind of societal impact have say, contemporary analytic metaphysics, made?
Not to mention that, the idea of post structuralism as some kind of movement is arguable in the first place. Branding a wide range of thinkers with different projects and differeng opinions as non-sense "post-structuralists" is just intellectually lazy. If say, Deleuze's solo work is nonense, so is half of the history of philosophy, including some analytics like Whitehead. |
:p |
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| Woony |
lol. Yes, I'm slightly upset but the flippancy with which otherwise smart people just entirely discredit a wide range of incredibly rich thinkers (often without even having seriously engaged with it) because of preoccupied beliefs and percepetions just always boggled my mind. You hear this kind of stuff from americans and brits all day ever day. It reminds of Chomsky, who came to the conclusion that while he doesn't understand "postmodernism", people seem to be able to communicate with that terminology and talk about it, so it must make some sense to them. Yet he still went on to declare it as nonense. I obviously have my problems with the benefits analytic philosopy but I also admit that I don't really understand lots of it and I would never declare it as nonsense.
Also, going in the marxist meme thread, then ting on poststructuralism and then teasing me for getting serious is mean :p |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
Modern Analytic philosophy is arguably even more of an ivory-tower discipline |
You seem to have confused me with someone who gives a about analytic philosophy. I was given three years of post-structuralist reading and concluded it was all absolute dog. I don't think I've ever knowingly read any analytic philosophy.
My question goes back to my original musing to you - in which corner of the Internet is this actually a debate?
| quote: | | Not to mention that, the idea of post structuralism as some kind of movement is arguable in the first place. |
Is this supposed to be a parody of post-structuralism's crippling intellectual reliance on "problematising" everything? |
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| Lews |
| If it makes you feel any better, Woony, one of my degrees is in philosophy and I have engaged with my fair share of post-structuralist thinking. But, still, I think its mostly nonsense :p |
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| Woony |
J, you did a degree in english/literature, right? At the risk of sounding somewhat elitist, a lot of the "post structuralism" tought in that field is utterly bastardized and watered down from what the writers originally meant. I once did an elective course on semiotic theory and I wanted to kill myself. I think I did one or two sessions before I left. I mean, it's understandable, right, people in that field didn't care about the nuances of some guy making a nuance argument against 2500 years of metaphysical tradition, they're not philosophers, they want the cool , everything's text, the author is dead, everything's relative yada yada. None of the frenchies every really went the whole "everything's relative, man", even Derrida but that's what's commonly parroted. But without those philosophical nuances those arguments become banal and fall apart and that's why post structuralism in fields like literature and film has often become a farce. I once heard some professor of media science or some have a talk about some random ass video and she was constantly referencing Deleuze and I just wanted to strangle her. I also study history and I heard and read my share fair of entirely unreflected, genuine nonsense post structuralism.
Yes, critizing a meta narrative when talking about poststructuralism is a bit funny but I honestly think generalizing such a wide range of authors to say that they are nonsense is a bit too much since they are all so different.
And no, I didn't think you were into analytic philosophy, I just wanted to show that if anything, your criticisms hit all of modern philosophy.
They are theory discussion groups on Facebook. Some of them even have thousands of members, although the level of discussion varies. Honestly, a lot of people there aren't even students or teachers, a lot of academics seem to avoid the internet for discussion for obvious reasons. |
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
If it makes you feel any better, Woony, one of my degrees is in philosophy and I have engaged with my fair share of post-structuralist thinking. But, still, I think its mostly nonsense :p |
What authors did you read? Genuinly curious. I mean, I find some of the guys like Baudrillard insufferable to read but I would never aquate someone being hard to read (even intentionally so) with them being nonsense. I think being "obscurant" and nonsensical are not the same things. And of course, a lot of the derivative stuff published in poststructuralist journals in the wake of the big names is genuine nonense. I also don't particularily like Foucault and I find a lot of the terminology that he has spawned obnoxious but again, I wouldn't call it nonsense. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
And no, I didn't think you were into analytic philosophy, I just wanted to show that if anything, your criticisms hit all of modern philosophy. |
I'm sure it does. But the -posting in this thread is all coming from one corner.
And I'm sure a lot of of what I was taught was bastardised. After all, it only made up a small sliver of my studies, rather than the focus of the whole degree. However, even at the age of 19 when reading the primary texts, intellectual alarm bells kept going off for me. Front-line big-name theorists still taking as gospel obviously obsolete and debunked ideas from 50-100+ years prior, for example. Or intellectual arguments that clearly only existed as allusive suggestions in particular turns of phrase.
Yes, there were some great ideas that came out of post-structuralism. I don't think all of it is totally worthless. What I'm talking about is more the ongoing proliferation of this narrow school of thought from 50+ years ago, with the resultant churn of absolute that you're touching upon. Much of this area of academia is just a massive intellectual pyramid scheme, with students as the bottom tier. Most of it is literally only being perpetuated so academics can make a living from it. And yeah, that's probably true of a lot of contemporary academia. But again, the trolling was only coming from one quarter. |
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| Woony |
lol, I wasn't even deliberately posting, I just thought they were funny :p
I think both of your problems are related, the more academia becomes a get-a-job-factory, where people are expected to get some kind of monetary value out of it, the more people in certain disciplines are forced towards the academic grind because that's often the only way to make money out of it. This leads to increased competition and in-politics, especially when funding is also being cut, which favor groupthink and certain styles, which leads to movements where obvious garbage is published in large amounts. I mean, it even affects the natural science, with all the rampant p-value hacking going on etc. Although this isn't entirely a modern problem, there have always been "schools" following big thinkers, most of which end up in obscurity eventually. Everyone still reads Kant, almost reads 19th/early 20th neo-Kantianism etc. |
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| wotyzoid |
| Thanks for that great argument against capitalism, Jack. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
J, you did a degree in english/literature, right? At the risk of sounding somewhat elitist, a lot of the "post structuralism" tought in that field is utterly bastardized and watered down from what the writers originally meant. I once did an elective course on semiotic theory and I wanted to kill myself. |
YES!!! My thoughts, exactly!
I wish I could have some warmer words to say about post-structuralism, but most so-called post-structuralism I heard came from discourse analysts and I feel it's probably a bastardisation of the real thing. Problem is, the real thing is so confusing I can't even have an educated opinion about who's good and who's not.
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
They are theory discussion groups on Facebook. Some of them even have thousands of members, although the level of discussion varies. Honestly, a lot of people there aren't even students or teachers, a lot of academics seem to avoid the internet for discussion for obvious reasons. |
Recommendations? |
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