Solar

You've already written a thread between your and Enchanted Rose's VMs!

I hope the thread is half as interesting as reading those comments has been.

Oh yeah, sorry - just another (completely different) thought.

You mentioned Visit from the Goon Squad to me agesss ago. I finally got around to reading it a month or so ago. It was pretty enjoyable, and well crafted. I get the feeling that ensemble books are all the rage, because I also read a couple of Franzen books with a huge cast. What disappointed me with Goon Squad was that the female characters were written really badly (unsurprisingly, almost no one does a good job).

Re the links – I skimmed them, but yeah, I think the arbitrariness of laws regarding sexuality (whether it is homosexuality or paedophilia) does need to be highlighted. Scrapping the age of consent is something I’d be too uneasy to agree with, although I see their point.

That is a reasonable criticism, yes. He does project power onto history. But we see that time and time again that many of the great thinkers have their one idea which they struggle with throughout their lives: Freud’s Phallus (sorry to keep mentioning him, but he’s an easy target), Derrida’s Differance, Heidegger’s Being, Deleuze’s Becoming etc etc…and Hegel’s dialectical method which is bizarrely still the paradigmatic one. (more on that particular item another time).

Like you suggested, I think the point is to not get absorbed in their systems (Foucault has taught us that at least). I mean some theorists, philosophers and scientists can be incredibly seductive, especially when they tap into our liberal or anti-authoritative sentiments, and articulate what we already suspected all along (*cough* Debord). Back to the issue at hand, yes Foucault is flawed; but for me at least, his suspect methodology doesn’t really detract from the value of his work. Which is to say, perhaps the value isn’t his text as it is itself written, it’s what generations of scholars can do with it – i.e. if we are indeed subject to different forms of power, what do we do about it? Do we even want to do something about it?

Academia is something that I’m concerned about, primarily for the same reason you articulated (#keyboard warrior). However, you’ll get someone like Zizek voicing the opposite opinion: ‘more thought, less action’.

Keep calm and Kanye on. Good luck!

Woah, those are some weighty claims, which I naturally just can't let lie...What are you specifically referring to when you say he's a pAedophile apologist (aren't you from Canada?)? Admittedly I haven't read his entire works, so I wouldn't know if there was somewhere we he explicitly voiced such views. Or are you inferring just from his shall we say, benign attitude to the mentally ill. Actually, I did watch a Louis Theroux documentary about paedophila which voiced an ambivalence of the detainment of paedophiles which was quite reminiscent of Foucault's main line of reasoning in Discipline & Punish. Anyway, paedophilia tends to repulse me, but I'm trying to be less knee-jerk in my judgement of it. Pro-Israel I won't cover, though I admit it is disappointing. And that's an extremely interesting claim about his conceptualization of history..! I have a few ideas myself, but historiography is something I'm very interested in, so I'd like to hear more detail about what you think he's doing there, if you have the time. Yes, these theorists do tend to be useful, no matter how blind-sided, exclusionary and generally douchey they are (case in point: Freud).
Debord is the shit. It's kind of a teenage love affair which I still haven't gotten over, and probably never will. Althusser I started reading like 2 pages then stopped, but I'm told IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES are essential. Anyway, Marxist (inspired) theory is something which I've never had the leisure to as thoroughly delve into as I'd like, sadly.

I'm not too bad. I'm super busy though and a bit stressed (which begs the question: why have I started to post on KHI again?). I hope you're keeping well too?

OMG DISCUSSION OF FOUCAULT ON YOUR PROFILE.

Did ya ever see this? It's good stuff

COSMARXPOLITAN

You promised me an Intel thread.

He is considered a postmodernist.

I'm fascinated with the question of 'power' (there was a brief period when most of my threads/posts were obsessed with that topic), but I've never actually read Foucault! Only in summaries and paraphrases. I'd love to learn more about those ideas.

TELL ME EVERYTHING

(why do visitor messages have to be at least 25 characters?)

Ahem

But really, I don't have any new ideas for Intel, though I was playing with the idea of a thread on mathematical realism/anti-realism (and now that ▽ is apparently posting again, I'm even more tempted to get his perspective on the question.

But I'm looking more towards Creative Writing recently, to see some of the new stuff they're doing there.

*Gah, sorry for the multiple edits on this message, my new computer is horrible to format with*

I was just thinking an informal thread, where we can pretend to know more about these philosophies than we really do (i.e. Intel Discussion). I don't know if it would actually work as a thread, I was just very entertained by our VM conversation.

last i heard in #junes was that it went south badly, or some sheeeet.

Still waiting for your "Talking Shit about Philosophy" thread.

Yes, I made overly convoluted theories.
All of which would have at least one part of it right.

I don't remember the context either and I'm too drunk to search for it.
And when I'm sober, I won't care to search.

But it was funny.
And I was a massive douche back then. I enjoyed it, but still.

Bah humbug.

(and 25 characters)

This is too much! You'll just have to make your own thread in Intel--call it "Talking Shit about Philosophy." I'll post.

Are you talking about materialism as in physicalism, or materialism as in Marxism? Either way, get thee to my thread!

And yes, it is an odd combination. But we live in a postmodern age, which is to say, we're all actually hipsters.

Speak for yourself then! That's what the thread is for.

I'm alright, though the fact that I'm on the forums so much is probably an indication that I'm mismanaging some aspect of my life outside the forums. I'm not doing anything of much use lately, though I've heard that has its advantages too.

Hahaha! Go speak for the old man then! Goodness knows no one else is going to.

Definitely, my chem professor's lectures basically go like this
"Did you read? No? Well shit, sorry"

Literally what she said lmao

And my comp 2 class has me writing at least some kind of draft every week