The Books/Reading Thread

[Einherjar86]

I could submit that the "substantiation" is little more than post hoc conformity. TBC, I'm not picking on Melville or MB in particular. Merely on the selection of particular works as "capturing the times", etc. - particularly when those works are so far outside the standard of the times.

This is the trick though; it's that Melville communicates something about the cultural unconscious of the period. This is why literary studies gets criticized for being "elitist" for looking at supposedly reputable and "high" literature. They gravitate toward those texts that defy the expectations of the times, because these works often betray the political/cultural unconscious of a particular period, along with all its contradictions.

And it's post hoc conformity because the research is extremely convincing. You can deny it all you want, but you don't have the evidence to do so.

 

[Dak]

This is the trick though; it's that Melville communicates something about the cultural unconscious of the period. This is why literary studies gets criticized for being "elitist" for looking at supposedly reputable and "high" literature. They gravitate toward those texts that defy the expectations of the times, because these works often betray the political/cultural unconscious of a particular period, along with all its contradictions.

And it's post hoc conformity because the research is extremely convincing. You can deny it all you want, but you don't have the evidence to do so.

This appears to me to be very similar to the dynamic surrounding conspiracy theories (so I guess I should be more sympathetic).

 

[Einherjar86]

Ha, oh boy. Whatever. It's nothing like the dynamic surrounding conspiracy theories, which attempts to find the hidden code behind the social veneer.

The political/cultural unconscious is not a conspiracy theory at all because it isn't an intentional master-plan being enacted by government masterminds. There's no code to be found.

 

[Dak]

Ha, oh boy. Whatever. It's nothing like the dynamic surrounding conspiracy theories, which attempts to find the hidden code behind the social veneer.

Not necessarily (although it certainly can be: See symbolism). It can be looking at X/Y/Z occurrence that, after being declassified, is in fact a conspiracy, and looking for and recognizing the same markers in events that have yet to be declassified.

The political/cultural unconscious is not a conspiracy theory at all because it isn't an intentional master-plan being enacted by government masterminds. There's no code to be found.

A story is an intentional master plan.

 

[Einherjar86]

Not necessarily (although it certainly can be: See symbolism). It can be looking at X/Y/Z occurrence that, after being declassified, is in fact a conspiracy, and looking for and recognizing the same markers in events that have yet to be declassified.

I can't stress enough how wrong you are, or how frustrating it is to watch you act as though you think you're right in this case. This isn't how literary studies proceeds, and it isn't interested in exposing secret programs or intentional actions behind coded systems. Which leads me to this:

A story is an intentional master plan.

You're not getting it. First, if you abide by the conspiracy theory analogy, the intentional act must be hidden, and a story in a book isn't hidden. Second, the intentional act of the author isn't what exposes the political/cultural unconscious that I'm speaking of. A text's relation to its broader context cannot be discerned through what its author intended; it manifests through the contradictions and conundrums of the text itself and its relation to its readership.

There's no secret or hidden code to a literary text. Everything you need to know is on the surface. You just need to know how to look at it; and this is what literary scholars explore and study: different avenues of approach and perspective.

 

[Dak]

I can't stress enough how wrong you are, or how frustrating it is to watch you act as though you think you're right in this case. This isn't how literary studies proceeds, and it isn't interested in exposing secret programs or intentional actions behind coded systems. Which leads me to this:


A text's relation to its broader context cannot be discerned through what its author intended; it manifests through the contradictions and conundrums of the text itself and its relation to its readership.

--

There's no secret or hidden code to a literary text.
Everything you need to know is on the surface. You just need to know how to look at it; and this is what literary scholars explore and study: different avenues of approach and perspective.

This seems somewhat contradictory itself. But allowing for that, the "you just need to know how to look at it" is precisely what I am referring to in making the comparison.

The majority of symbols or codes are "on the surface", and are left in plain view for those who "know how to look at it".

 

[Einherjar86]

You need to know how to look at it as in: you need to know how to be able to sense and perceive different and multiple cultural effects weighing on the text. It isn't some secret scheme by the author to critique or perpetuate ideology. There's no grand-master behind the cultural unconscious pulling its strings. There's no secret to be found. There are collections of associations to be explored and subsequently understood as ways in which a text is reacting to and absorbing the culture around it.

 

[rms]

Have you guys read any Virginia Woolf? Just started To the Lighthouse and have to say i'm impressed through the first 50 pages, I like her style and the ideas she presents in her writing. My teacher is a huge Woolf fan(damn fake feminist) so I think we are getting some good stuff on her

 

[Einherjar86]

Nice. I've read To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and Orlando. All are fantastic.

 

[unknown]

yeah I've only read Mrs. Dalloway and loved it

 

[rms]

Awesome, I only had to wait two months in this masterpiece lit class to find something enjoyable to read, we got Brave New World as our next book and heard great things about that as well.

 

[Einherjar86]

Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery; frustrating, at times even racist book:

Victor Pelevin's The Helmet of Horror; weird book:

Re-reading Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark for a final paper as well.

 

[rms]

Racist from a black perspective on whites?

 

[Master_Yoda77]

Starting this for my Victorian prose class. I'm a fan of Hardy's poetry, so I really hope I enjoy this, but we'll see.

 

[Einherjar86]

Racist from a black perspective on whites?

No, racist in that he essentializes racial identities.

That is, he says things about how blacks are better at some things than the French, but the French are better at other things. And the Native Americans would never have let themselves be enslaved while the Africans obviously did.

And he's frustratingly appeasing toward whites, and seems determined on ingratiating blacks to whites while not bothering to consider the ideology he's perpetuating.

 

[rms]

Interesting, i've seen those kind of assumptions a lot in early writings and I seriously consider what motives 'intelligent' people in these eras had for writing them. Jefferson was also incredibly judgmental towards blacks, but not native americans(if I remember my schooling history class corretly)

 

[Einherjar86]

Some people like to reduce it to the fact that they're simply a "product of their times." I think that's a cop-out. Washington's book is an interesting study because it suggests, in many ways, the perpetuation of a black underclass - so to speak - while reinforcing white hegemonic aristocracy (evolved into accumulation of capital). However, he also undercuts black inferiority while simultaneously appearing to imply it; we discussed it today in class, and our professor (who is African American) actually tried to suggest that, at this moment in history when the book was published (1901), Washington didn't have much choice in what he could say.

I'm not saying that he would get in trouble for saying something more radical (W.E.B. DuBois said things far more inflammatory); I'm saying that, at this moment in history, he wanted to try and offer blacks a pragmatic means of social mobility that would allow them to life themselves up by their own bootstraps, basically. Unfortunately, doing so simultaneously reinforces the exact same organization of labor that establishes them as an underclass.

 

[Einherjar86]

Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky:

 

[Dak]

I suppose Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are then also merely racist Uncle Toms while JayZ and Chris Brown and LilWayne are positive role models? Since obviously white people could never have any positive relation with blacks and neither can any black people in suits who have received respect from suit wearing whiteys. Speaking of perpetuating underclassism......

 

[Einherjar86]

Why do you respond in that way? Read Washington's book; he actually insinuates that there are essential differences between races, and he does so in a way that it disgustingly ingratiating to whites. He implies that slavery taught slaves a good work ethnic, even going so far as to suggest (implicitly) that slavery was necessary in formulating the ideal, hard-working black; he envisions a teleological path by which African Americans must be enslaved, then workers (specifically not intellectuals), and then possibly begin to form an "upper" class.