SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
Political Science degrees barely teach Foucault let alone Nietzsche. Not relevant at all. I did take a "History of Western Political Thought" or some shit at school. We dealt with, Greek, Enlightenment stuff and Marx and some modern writers.

Remembering all of that is like a bad acid flashback.

Last edited by SuperJail Warden (2020-07-07 11:18:53)

https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
the irony is foucault's most directly applicable writings to BLM, e.g. his writings on prisons and power structures, isn't even 'postmodernist', and definitely isn't difficult to read. it's like a 50-page booklet (ha ha ha ha) and is written like any social sciences textbook. and yet the problem with BLM is, erm, the malign influence of deconstructionist french theory ... because for some reason deconstruction is determining everything at present ... and all forms of social critique or political protest must come from derrida ... christ my head hurts.

god knows how larssen's 'preference for rortyran pragmatism or marxian analysis' (??? sic?) is so self-evidently better here. god knows how it even BEARS on this situation. that's because you're just spouting gobbledygook. are BLM protestors not also in the spirit of marxian analysis when they cite economic inequality and the class basis for struggle?

is he really, in actual fact, just trying to be a smart ass by saying that he thinks compromise, negotiation, and dialogue are better tools? and he has to yank in rorty for some reason to make this point? and drag in french theory to ballast that view? jesus christ. talk about being in out of your depth.

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-07 11:32:09)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858
You're referring to the internal debates among a select group of continental and american philosophers in university philosophy departments as the final conclusion to this chapter in thought, while I'm clearly talking about the long-term influence of these debates and thought on wider academia and society. How can that seriously even be an argument? Do you even understand how societal development in history works? Why do you think the notion of a 'long 19th century' or other similar observations were even made? It's about a progression of ideas and a gradual seeping of them into daily life. The fact that literally about two dozen philosophers, read only really by other philosophers, in the 70s had an exhaustive debate, ISN'T indicative that this stuff is now over and done with and outdated. At all. Rather it's only a starting point.

After that whole episode sociology, conflict studies, feminism, the study of history - they all went through major developments building upon these 'passé' observations and ideas that debate and those thinkers produced. It may have taken until the late 90s at least until concepts on objective truth, narrative construction, the power relations -in language and discourse-, became widely adopted and accepted elsewhere. It's unbelievable that your argument here is 'Oh lol if your stupid ass only read kant, nietzsche, de saussure, wittgenstein, adorno and the entire frankfurter school, Foucault is so easy breezy you dummy!'. Which also just isn't true because philosophers themselves even state that Foucault was needlessly complicated and convoluted in his style. Yes I found Kant even more complicated, but how is that a measuring stick?

It's like saying string theory in particle physics is shit for tumblr bloggers lmao

Last edited by Larssen (2020-07-07 11:26:32)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

the irony is foucault's most directly applicable writings to BLM, e.g. his writings on prisons and power structures, isn't even 'postmodernist', and definitely isn't difficult to read. it's like a 50-page booklet (ha ha ha ha) and is written like any social sciences textbook. and yet the problem with BLM is, erm, the malign influence of deconstructionist french theory ... because for some reason deconstruction is determining everything at present ... and all forms of social critique or political protest must come from derrida ... christ my head hurts.

god knows how larssen's 'preference for rortyran pragmatism or marxian analysis' (??? sic?) is so self-evidently better here. god knows how it even BEARS on this situation. that's because you're just spouting gobbledygook. are BLM protestors not also in the spirit of marxian analysis when they cite economic inequality and the class basis for struggle?

are he really, in actual fact, just trying to be a smart ass by saying that he thinks compromise, negotiation, and dialogue are better tools? and he has to yank in rorty for some reason to make this point? and drag in french theory to ballast that view? jesus christ. talk about being in out of your depth.
Discipline and punish is 318 pages, such a booklet
uziq
Member
+492|3422
ideas about objective truth and narrative constructions were completely out the window in 1900, let alone 2020. these topics were commonplaces in the era of einstein's relativity, larssen.

please just stop invoking philosopher's names when you have no idea what you're talking about. you haven't read them, you haven't put them into their place in a philosophical-historical lineage, you don't know their relation to their times or the thinking of their times. these are just names from a university syllabus to you and it's pointless having to re-tread the history of western philosophy to parse SIMPLE SENSE from your statements.

no, foucault and derrida are not responsible for bringing up feminism, post-colonialism, civil rights struggles, etc. do you think BLM would lack a worldview or a vocabulary if it wasn't for fucking derrida talking about the 'signifier multiplying endlessly into chains of signifieds'? you cannot be this stupid.

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-07 11:33:27)

uziq
Member
+492|3422

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

the irony is foucault's most directly applicable writings to BLM, e.g. his writings on prisons and power structures, isn't even 'postmodernist', and definitely isn't difficult to read. it's like a 50-page booklet (ha ha ha ha) and is written like any social sciences textbook. and yet the problem with BLM is, erm, the malign influence of deconstructionist french theory ... because for some reason deconstruction is determining everything at present ... and all forms of social critique or political protest must come from derrida ... christ my head hurts.

god knows how larssen's 'preference for rortyran pragmatism or marxian analysis' (??? sic?) is so self-evidently better here. god knows how it even BEARS on this situation. that's because you're just spouting gobbledygook. are BLM protestors not also in the spirit of marxian analysis when they cite economic inequality and the class basis for struggle?

are he really, in actual fact, just trying to be a smart ass by saying that he thinks compromise, negotiation, and dialogue are better tools? and he has to yank in rorty for some reason to make this point? and drag in french theory to ballast that view? jesus christ. talk about being in out of your depth.
Discipline and punish is 318 pages, such a booklet
it's called a joke you moron. it's a simple piece of writing is what i am saying and not some abstruse work of 'insanely difficult' postmodernism or whatever.

all you are doing is playing into some stupid right-wing phrasebook of 'postmodern cultural marxism', whatever the hell that ever means, being somehow responsible for politics today. it's illiterate when jordan peterson whines about it and it makes even less sense in your own clumsy hands. what does rorty or derrida have to do with BLM? are their philosophies even relevant at all? why can't you just make an argument without needing to be the smart-arse that's making a 'point' about grandiose western philosophy itself, something of which you have ZERO expertise?

what you literally mean is that negotiation and compromise are better tactics than firebrand protesting, don't you? that's basically all you're getting at here, isn't it? like you need richard rorty and derrida to make that point. apparently the intractability and vehemence of the BLM protests is the fault of a dead french theorist who wrote about différance and logocentrism.

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-07 11:37:32)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

ideas about objective truth and narrative constructions were completely out the window in 1900, let alone 2020. this topics were commonplaces in the era of einstein's relativity, larssen.

please just stop invoking philosopher's names when you have no idea what you're talking about. you haven't read them, you haven't put them into their place in a philosophical-historical lineage, you don't know their relation to their times or the thinking of their times. these are just names from a university syllabus to you and it's pointless having to re-tread the history of western philosophy to parse SIMPLE SENSE from your statements.

no, foucault and derrida are not responsible for bringing up feminism, post-colonialism, civil rights struggles, etc. do you think BLM would lack a worldview or a vocabulary if it wasn't for fucking derrida talking about the 'signifier multiplying endlessly into changes of signifieds'? you cannot be this stupid.
I have read them, I have put them in place in a philosophical-historical lineage, I know what their relation was to their times and I know that the philosophical discourse of the 70s was entirely impactful on how many other fields - esp. in the social sciences & humanities - dealt with questions on objectivity and the analysis and dissection of sources (for me particularly historical ones). If you take discourse and narrative analysis, really zooming in on power relations and framing, the link to derrida and foucault and wider related 'postmodern' thought is paper thin.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-07-07 11:39:16)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
you had a very bad teacher if you think foucault and derrida were the bad-boys raising questions about objective truth and the 'analysis of sources' in the 1970s. that was literally nietzsche the philologist over 100 years prior. or how about marx? the entire principle of materialist dialectic was to find the 'tensions' and contradictions inherent in something 'stable', like the status quo, and to extrapolate its overthrow and form new syntheses.

so why aren't nietzsche or marx to blame for all this? they wrote most directly on the relations between subject and subjugator. they wrote most powerfully on the need to overthrow systems of value and invent something new. why are you obsessed with french deconstruction?

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-07 11:41:51)

uziq
Member
+492|3422

Larssen wrote:

So in the wake of this whole BLM thing it's more apparent than ever that the postmodernist wave in philosophy is leaving quite a legacy. Foucault and derrida have never been more relevant and I think my preference for rortyan pragmatism or marxian analysis is especially pertinent. I guess uziq totally missed the mark here by lambasting all that stuff as jejune and old/irrelevant.
can you actually just unpack what the fuck this even means anyway? 'especially pertinent' seems like a rather pretentious thing to say, considering no one has a clue what you're talking about, nothing is self-evident about this at all.

how does rorty's pragmatism bear on BLM? how is derrida in the wrong here? why are foucault and derrida contradistinguished from 'marxian analysis', when they are some of the most significant marxist thinkers of the 20th century? why is marxian analysis lumped in with rorty's thought, someone who wasn't a marxist but a liberal?

if you're really just trying to recommend 'dialogue' and 'compromise' over revolutionary rhetoric and appeals to class struggle, and for some reason feel the need to invoke rorty and foucault and an academic dust-up last relevant in 1970 to cover up your utterly inane hot take on BLM, please GTFO. you contrived muppet.

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-07 11:49:20)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858
Because while influential they didn't immediately upend views on narrative or historical source analysis and truth in other fields? There's a distinct moment in time when that spillover happened and it's AFTER the postmodernist wave, within which Foucault is a figure of central importance.

What I'm getting at most of all is that -among the broader public- ideas about the inherent power structures and inequality in language and discourse have been adopted without any of the nuance. As you well know Foucault himself was totally a firebrand protester and had very controversial thoughts on this matter, even the use of violence as a means to an end (though I don't know if he wrote extensively on that somewhere, but it's apparent in his actions). But ultimately his path was a deeply pessimistic and nihilistic one, as I suppose you alluded to/can certainly glean from the Nietzschean influence, whereas pragmatism offers a much more positive and considered approach. I don't think rorty is anti protest at all, but he's certainly anti radicalism, whereas Foucault will tell you to double down and throw those rocks.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
you have no idea about nietzsche's work and even less about foucault. it really is pointless trying to get into it. foucault did not BELIEVE IN NOTHING. have you read any of his fucking work at all?? jesus christ.

why is foucault the direct link to protest movements and not, er, the massive civil rights movement? you think foucault has had more of an influence on BLM than, er, martin luther king? an entire history of organised protest and 'throwing rocks'?  LOL.

i can guarantee you that noam chomsky has a bigger influence on the US protest movement today than foucault. chomsky was a sworn enemy of foucault. chomsky spent his entire political career writing about the need for suspicion about 'objective truth' by the way, too.

you are out of your depth.

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-07 11:53:56)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858
Also I don't see the link between alt right and postmodernism at all. As you just said they loathe the 'postmodern cultural marxists' whatever that means. I know they abuse views on truth all the same, but they're actually very much against any of the implications made in 70s and 80s philosophy.
Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

you have no idea about nietzsche's work and even less about foucault. it really is pointless trying to get into it. foucault did not BELIEVE IN NOTHING. have you read any of his fucking work at all?? jesus christ.

why is foucault the direct link to protest movements and not, er, the massive civil rights movement? you think foucault has had more of an influence on BLM than, er, martin luther king? an entire history of organised protest and 'throwing rocks'?  LOL.

you are out of your depth.
Did I say he believed in nothing? He quite clearly argued however that overthrowing power structures (while perhaps just) is a pretty pointless exercise because he believed that the imposition of new power structures and inherent inequalities was unavoidable. I don't think he ever formulated an answer here. Point me to it.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-07-07 11:55:21)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
it's not my job to educate you larssen. a huge strain of postmodern thought fed into the far-right. look up nick land and accelerationism. lots of the tendencies in postmodernism, the bringing down of the system, turning over of values, etc. were readily co-opted by technological fetishists, trans-humanists/post-humanists who critiqued liberal humanism as being 'outmoded', fascists, etc. it's all there. it's almost like you should read a book.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

you have no idea about nietzsche's work and even less about foucault. it really is pointless trying to get into it. foucault did not BELIEVE IN NOTHING. have you read any of his fucking work at all?? jesus christ.

why is foucault the direct link to protest movements and not, er, the massive civil rights movement? you think foucault has had more of an influence on BLM than, er, martin luther king? an entire history of organised protest and 'throwing rocks'?  LOL.

you are out of your depth.
Did I say he believed in nothing? He quite clearly argued however that overthrowing power structures (while perhaps just) is a pretty pointless exercise because he believed that the imposition of new power structures and inherent inequalities was unavoidable. I don't think he ever formulated an answer here. Point me to it.
so how is he relevant to BLM again? because they literally don't think that? tick-tock, tick-tock.
Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

i can guarantee you that noam chomsky has a bigger influence on the US protest movement today than foucault. chomsky was a sworn enemy of foucault. chomsky spent his entire political career writing about the need for suspicion about 'objective truth' by the way, too.

you are out of your depth.
I know uziq, lemme pull up this from the archives:



Chomsky's influence on the social sciences is very little compared to continental and american philosophical debates of the 70s/80s. His notions of human nature you'll be hard pressed to really find anywhere.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Larssen wrote:

Also I don't see the link between alt right and postmodernism at all. As you just said they loathe the 'postmodern cultural marxists' whatever that means. I know they abuse views on truth all the same, but they're actually very much against any of the implications made in 70s and 80s philosophy.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/ … ristchurch

you like articles, don't you, you ignorant dummy?

These killings were often linked to the alt-right, described as an outgrowth of the movement’s rise in the Trump era. But many of these suspected killers, from Atomwaffen thugs to the New Zealand mosque shooter to the Poway synagogue attacker, are more tightly connected to a newer and more radical white supremacist ideology, one that dismisses the alt-right as cowards unwilling to take matters into their own hands.

It’s called “accelerationism,” and it rests on the idea that Western governments are irreparably corrupt. As a result, the best thing white supremacists can do is accelerate their demise by sowing chaos and creating political tension. Accelerationist ideas have been cited in mass shooters’ manifestos — explicitly, in the case of the New Zealand killer — and are frequently referenced in white supremacist web forums and chat rooms.

The mainstream ethos of the 1990s was thoroughly capitalist, the collapse of the Soviet Union creating a sense that the spread of the American economic and political model was inevitable and irresistible. This coincided with a technological revolution — the rise of widespread internet access and the birth of mass internet culture, a sense of a world defined by and connected through technology in previously incomprehensible ways.

At the University of Warwick, a relatively new but well-regarded English university, a young philosophy professor named Nick Land argued that the triumph of capitalism and the rise of technoculture were inextricably intertwined. Drawing on the work of famously dense continental theorists like Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, Land argued that capitalist technological advancement was transforming not just our societies, but our very selves. The self, he believed, was being dissolved by the increasing speed and pace of modern life — the individual was becoming less important than the techno-capitalist system it found itself in.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

i can guarantee you that noam chomsky has a bigger influence on the US protest movement today than foucault. chomsky was a sworn enemy of foucault. chomsky spent his entire political career writing about the need for suspicion about 'objective truth' by the way, too.

you are out of your depth.
I know uziq, lemme pull up this from the archives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8

Chomsky's influence on the social sciences is very little compared to continental and american philosophical debates of the 70s/80s. His notions of human nature you'll be hard pressed to really find anywhere.
chomsky's main influence in american public life is as a political activist and polemicist. he is MANY TIMES more popular for that.

it's fucking so funny that you'll stress foucault and derrida's influence on BLM and dismiss chomsky

you are simply out of your depth, it's incredible. well done for knowing about one of the most infamous debates of the 20th century though!
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
I don't think he holds a direct immediate link to BLM as I said, but his thought and the broader postmodern debates I can clearly see in the analytical lenses deployed in feminism/gender & racial studies. Now as your publisher self is more well-read than I am, I'll concede that perhaps other american thinkers were more directly in tune, though I don't think that matters much or makes it less applicable. After all people can have similar ideas across different 'realities'. As an example Kuhn and Foucault published about paradigms and epistemes only a few years apart without having any contact or knowledge of one anothers' work. Yet the concepts are quite related.
Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

i can guarantee you that noam chomsky has a bigger influence on the US protest movement today than foucault. chomsky was a sworn enemy of foucault. chomsky spent his entire political career writing about the need for suspicion about 'objective truth' by the way, too.

you are out of your depth.
I know uziq, lemme pull up this from the archives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8

Chomsky's influence on the social sciences is very little compared to continental and american philosophical debates of the 70s/80s. His notions of human nature you'll be hard pressed to really find anywhere.
chomsky's main influence in american public life is as a political activist and polemicist. he is MANY TIMES more popular for that.

it's fucking so funny that you'll stress foucault and derrida's influence on BLM and dismiss chomsky

you are simply out of your depth, it's incredible. well done for knowing about one of the most infamous debates of the 20th century though!
Yeah I know so why bring Chomsky into this? He has nothing to do with BLM. He's influential most of all for his outspokenness against american foreign policy... that can only be very, very tangentially relevant to the current protests. I'm not seeing it.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-07-07 12:07:26)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
he doesn't hold a direct link to BLM? do you know anything about chomsky's position and role in american public life? he was THE main 'public intellectual' for about two decades. he was like the main fucking political critic of american liberal life! he is HUGE! he has written as a sort of pater familias and commentator on EVERY american debacle! chomsky always has a soundbite! whether it's the bush era wars, civil rights struggle, school shootings -- anything! chomsky has a book on it!

and chomsky ... hates foucault! hates french theory! like most american thinkers who rejected it in the 1970s!

and that's because ... he ties into a very alive, and extant, american tradition of protest, and activism, that has nothing to do with french theory or revolutionary marxism. all that continental shit really has had no major influence on american life. it didn't take two french guys in the 1970s to bring feminism, disputes over truth, power, civil rights, etc. to america. are you seriously dense? all of those topics, the civil rights movement, the labour movement, the feminist movement, the post-colonial struggle, etc. went way back into the 19th century.

chomsky, martin luther king, malcolm x are many, many times more relevant to BLM than fucking derrida or deleuze or whatever.

you literally have a barely working knowledge of western philosophy. claiming that chomsky's 'main contributions are into human nature' (they're not, he is a lingust who wrote on universal grammar and cognition) is like skimming a wikipedia article.

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-07 12:11:52)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

Also I don't see the link between alt right and postmodernism at all. As you just said they loathe the 'postmodern cultural marxists' whatever that means. I know they abuse views on truth all the same, but they're actually very much against any of the implications made in 70s and 80s philosophy.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/ … ristchurch

you like articles, don't you, you ignorant dummy?

These killings were often linked to the alt-right, described as an outgrowth of the movement’s rise in the Trump era. But many of these suspected killers, from Atomwaffen thugs to the New Zealand mosque shooter to the Poway synagogue attacker, are more tightly connected to a newer and more radical white supremacist ideology, one that dismisses the alt-right as cowards unwilling to take matters into their own hands.

It’s called “accelerationism,” and it rests on the idea that Western governments are irreparably corrupt. As a result, the best thing white supremacists can do is accelerate their demise by sowing chaos and creating political tension. Accelerationist ideas have been cited in mass shooters’ manifestos — explicitly, in the case of the New Zealand killer — and are frequently referenced in white supremacist web forums and chat rooms.

The mainstream ethos of the 1990s was thoroughly capitalist, the collapse of the Soviet Union creating a sense that the spread of the American economic and political model was inevitable and irresistible. This coincided with a technological revolution — the rise of widespread internet access and the birth of mass internet culture, a sense of a world defined by and connected through technology in previously incomprehensible ways.

At the University of Warwick, a relatively new but well-regarded English university, a young philosophy professor named Nick Land argued that the triumph of capitalism and the rise of technoculture were inextricably intertwined. Drawing on the work of famously dense continental theorists like Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, Land argued that capitalist technological advancement was transforming not just our societies, but our very selves. The self, he believed, was being dissolved by the increasing speed and pace of modern life — the individual was becoming less important than the techno-capitalist system it found itself in.
I'll read all of this later but from the snippet you quote Land seems to argue this case in a general sense with which I won't disagree, but why then apply it only to the alt right? Breivik isn't exactly a committed postmodernists rather he's a reactionary against these forces...
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i didn't say all of the alt-right was postmodernist. i said the postmodernist moment, with its 'deconstructive' turn, in the 1970s unleashed just as many  right-wing tendencies as left ones. that you can just as easily point to fascists and white supremacists today as the 'legacy of postmodernism' as you can make claims about BLM being a 'postmodern' organization (it's not).

it's just a small example of why you invoking these big terms is stupid and pointless, because you don't know what you're talking about when you drag them up.
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
It's funny how you can have a rather indepth internet forum discussion about these topics while still insisting the other party is a dummy who doesn't understand anything. You must be painfully annoying to work with.

I dislike chomsky and think he's wrong on almost everything he comments on.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

I know uziq, lemme pull up this from the archives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8

Chomsky's influence on the social sciences is very little compared to continental and american philosophical debates of the 70s/80s. His notions of human nature you'll be hard pressed to really find anywhere.
chomsky's main influence in american public life is as a political activist and polemicist. he is MANY TIMES more popular for that.

it's fucking so funny that you'll stress foucault and derrida's influence on BLM and dismiss chomsky

you are simply out of your depth, it's incredible. well done for knowing about one of the most infamous debates of the 20th century though!
Yeah I know so why bring Chomsky into this? He has nothing to do with BLM. He's influential most of all for his outspokenness against american foreign policy... that can only be very, very tangentially relevant to the current protests. I'm not seeing it.
chomsky has spoken on FAR more than foreign policy. he wrote an incredibly influential book called 'manufacturing consent' about the american liberal media and how 'objective truth' is distorted by monied interests. he is FAR MORE FAMOUS for this work than any of his work on grammar and linguistics. you are illiterate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

chomsky was talking about black lives matter at harvard in 2015.

https://iop.harvard.edu/iop-now/noam-ch … nnial-take





these videos are from 2015!

it's almost as if there's a lineage of radical thinkers and protestors in american life, going back to the 19th century, which has nothing to do with and no need of french theory! chomsky is a perfect example because he was so vocally AGAINST french theory himself!

what about cornel west, to take another example? do you think derrida has more of an influence over BLM than cornel west?

you are fucking tripping, my guy!

Larssen wrote:

It's funny how you can have a rather indepth internet forum discussion about these topics while still insisting the other party is a dummy who doesn't understand anything. You must be painfully annoying to work with.

I dislike chomsky and think he's wrong on almost everything he comments on.
great. shame you haven't read hardly anything in your life. i listen to someone who rejects chomsky (i often do) when i trust they've read and know what they're talking about. you haven't read shit. you produce big names and you don't even know their basic philosophies. you are literally full of shit, it's funny. it might have worked in 5 minute spurts in a seminar room, larssen, but stop.

Last edited by uziq (2020-07-07 12:20:53)

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