Annihilation Fridays

okay I got one like it's official

i'm medium on this

i think bad arguments are bad, but mostly i think they should be ignored rather than countered. many things deserve to go into the rubbish bin, but taking joy in it only invites yourself to make mistakes.

for example, I once had to apologize to an ex-girlfriend for a contemptuous position i had taken on Roland Barthes. she was right, of course, that the man's work was worthy of some good consideration.

we have sat too long at the feet of the father, but the instinct to tear the father down leaves us in debt to him still; only by walking away can we surpass him.

I don't disagree with this in regards to the larger discourse, does doing this once a week not allow us enough "range of motion" to start feeling out positions we hold to staunchly or refuse to consider because we worry about how complicated it is to even think about passing judgement on them?

My personal feeling is that this would add a level of whimsy to deep foundational disagreements that will inevitably arise.

Regardless, I'll leave this post up and see what others think, because I do agree that it's a double-edged sword.

Have you read William Gass's takedown of Death of the Author? It's Friday so I'll say it—Barthes was a pseud. Lots of flowery belles letres. Not much of a thinker tho.

Beiser, I think I agree broadly with your points, but I think Crispy's idea cuts both ways. It's as much a containment protocol as a permission-giving, right? Like Mardi Gras before Lent.

oof totally disagree! Have you read Mythologies? https://soundenvironments.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/roland-barthes-mythologies.pdf Go to page 19 of the PDF "Soap Powders and Detergents"—so much insight into how we narrativize "clean"!

@suspendedreason

Beiser, I think I agree broadly with your points, but I think Crispy's idea cuts both ways. It's as much a containment protocol as a permission-giving, right? Like Mardi Gras before Lent.

except every day but Friday is Lent

I'm not really interested in Death of the Author, it's the one that gave me the impression of him as fundamentally boring in the first place. What I do think is worth digging into is the Image Repertoire, which I think has a quasi-computational nature in a way that's we very much need; imagistic thinking is something like a fold on the set of previous images and associations.

There's a kind of character I'd like to distinguish from the pseud, which I think he falls into—his framings are far more important than his individual arguments, and while he fails sometimes on the details, I don't think that's necessarily a cause for abandonment. Dave Graeber was a little this way too—sometimes loose with facts, always incisive on the narratives.

yes! strongly agree with the David Graeber comparison, this is what made me skeptical of Graeber at first but I think he has some important points to lend us and that have, by way of culture, automatically been lended to us. Same goes for Barthes, though I think Barthes was a better writer, personally.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/01/11/cringe-and-the-design-of-sacred-experiences/

Have you read the whole book yet bi$ch

no, gotta keep these GPUs hot

@crispy

yes! strongly agree with the David Graeber comparison, this is what made me skeptical of Graeber at first but I think he has some important points to lend us and that have, by way of culture, automatically been lended to us. Same goes for Barthes, though I think Barthes was a better writer, personally.

Yeah I wanna get a post up about Graeber's bullshit jobs concepts, because it's one of those instances where he captures a feeling and narrative really well, but his actual description of the game dynamics are just abysmal. Completely incoherent. And that needs to be summarily inventoried + steelmanned under a new org-theory frame.

@beiser I read Lovers Discourse + some of Mythologies + DotA, is there somewhere I should go for image repertoire?