Posts by Paul Litterick
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Sometimes "clarity" does not illuminate the messy beauty of the world, despite its tempting reassurance of truth.
Ah yes, of course, it is all too difficult to talk about in terms we can understand. F.O. to that: if you can't make a point clearly, you don't have a point.
Phelan's discourse is messy but it is not beautiful. People on this thread have made a much better job of interpreting his words than he could. Most of the points he makes are unsubstantiated. Perhaps that sort of mess is acceptable in Phelan's 'habitus.' It would not be acceptable in any real academic environment.
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I find Wittgenstein very lucid, but perhaps that is just me.
The comparison with Einstein is not just, because everything in Relativity is mathematical. Its claims can be demonstrated or disproved. The same could not be said of Derrida or any philosopher.
"... that complaint is used in a blanket manner, mostly by people who can't, won't and resent having to deal with the kind of questioning that those ideas entail." Perhaps some people think the questions do not make sense, let alone the answers.
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No, but there is no reason to retreat into the dense prose of some PoMo writing. If you have a clear point to make, then you should be able to state it clearly. I suspect that some theorists are just using difficult words to sound clever and to conceal the paucity of their thinking.
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Madness and Civilisation, The Order of Things.
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So, the idea that we should go beyond "the works of Balzac" and the unique psychology of Balzac, but rather look at the times of Balzac, the cultural milieu in which his works were produced, the inescapable influences, the unintented meanings, seem without merit to you?
No, but it creates a different relationship between author, critic and reader. I am not saying this is a bad thing.
And Foucault's elaboration on the same theme, his reflections on the author function, don't seem to you relevant to understanding how culture works?
I think Foucault was a really bad historian who put his theory ahead of the facts for his benefit.
Do you think it's a power play, the critic taking control of literature (as if it hadn't been the case previously, when the critics decided who belonged to the canon and who didn't)?
Yup. But the critics and theorists should be upfront about it. To return to the subject, Phelan's essay is an attempt to rubbish non-academic critics and give his people, the academic critics, a privileged place in the training of journalists.
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How about Barthes, for a start. He kills the author and so demands privilege for the critic as an interpreter of meaning.
So, how about that Battlestar Galactica, then?
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No doubt Paul Litterick will correct me, but I bet that art schools have valuable staff members who nonetheless cannot produce compelling works of art themselves.
I think that is a matter of opinion, or taste. A more persuasive analogy might be the relationship between Art History and Art. I am an Art Historian, but that does not make me an artist. I know about Art, but I cannot do it competently.
Phelan sneers at practitioners, but no activity would exist without its practitioners. Academic theory is only an interpretation of practice. What Phelan appears to want is influence over practice, a desire which is beyond the normal bounds of academic work.
It does strike me that many PoMo theorists talk about power and privilege in derogatory terms while demanding power and privilege for themselves. They will not even let authors speak for themselves; only the opinions of the theorists matter.
I could go on but I will probably get myself into trouble again.
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Short version of the author's argument: unless you think like us and worship our ideological gods, it doesn't count as thinking. The experience of the "practitioner" is to be especially distrusted.
Shorter version: they didn't ask me.
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whilst you are right that "peering" is not mentioned, I assume that this is what the paper means when it talks of "interconnection at neutral points of presence".
We appear to be having some communications difficulties. If I were cynical, I might say that the report was written in dense jargon to conceal the absence of any real ideas.
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To get this job done, Mr Key will need a Quantum Faster Charger.