Want to learn more about theory of narrative and how symbols shape everyday life

So to add, just like says, it would be easy for an ignorant person to just dismiss them without every honestly enganging with them. You see it sometimes here on Veeky Forums, although not as often because of the whole start with the greeks meme. Which just goes to show how much pre-convined notions can affect the reading of the text.

REEEE

I SAID ENGAGE WITH THE MASTERWORK!

NO, DON'T USE LOGIC YOU SHITLORD! THAT'S SMALL MINDED!

>I SAID ENGAGE WITH THE MASTERWORK!
Which is where you miss the point entirely. I am encouraging you to engage with anything you read. Your ideas aren't important in this activity. I don't mind if you call it shit after you've bothered to give an effort.
Sometimes the writer is just asking you to think in a different way, which isn't something you seem interested in.

If you aren't going to engage with it theb why are you reading it in the first place? Just to critique it?

Sounds just like critical theory to me.

so desire for cohesive argumentation is 'baggage' now? argumentation sits outside text, and is universal.

just go browse a dictionary of symbols and do deeper research into what interests you

this isn't debate club. if you think that art should conform to the rules of science, maybe you should take a step back and reexamine your motives and goals for learning about literature.

You're a lost cause.

Will you marry me Lauren?

unironically the least cancerous post in the thread

No, that's you haha! you're just above it all. It's really inspiring. Quite endearing.

thanks :)

:)

McL and 'that other guy'-- the amusing ourselves to death guy? I forget his name too, if he's it.. with that qt i'd read anything anytime. polka-dots!

Postman

Read Shklovsky, Bakhtin, Genette, Todorov, Ricoeur

>art

So what was that "non sequitur line of reasoning" ?

pulling A out of nowhere and basing B around it completely, then making it neccessary for understanding of C to know how B is formed which brings us back to non sequitur A I started the thread with

nice non sequitur

I know, and frog philosophers use it CONSTANTLY

...

Given your absolute lack of articulating the content of Barthes' writing, is it fair to surmise you didn't actually read it?

>Your ideas aren't important in this activity.

>lol just turn off your brain dude

i thought literature was above this

I did read it, until fallacies started piling up. Argument must be sound for theory to be worth reading. You cannot make up stuff like

>and so this is comprised of four elements

(why four? why not five?)

>and these four elements are a b c d
>now let me draw a diagram
>now i will use this diagram founded on arbitrary basis as if it's provable, coherent truth in order to prove my theory

it's too much for anyone caring about western philosophy to endure. very good for pushing ideological agenda or just bluff academicism.

If you want, feel free to post any Barthes' or any other philosopher from his clique here, post any definition of his and I'll be happy to show you why it has no leg to stand on. Just give me a paragraph where he sets it up and the definition itself, shouldn't be hard to find, take any work of his, I'll wait.

I mean you could save yourself time and read Sokal's evisceration of continental philosophy with direct quotes and contradictions but I encourage you to give me material to refute.

Aristotle invented logic you absolute nonce. When from the perspective of modern logic there's nothing non-logical about Aristotelian term logic. It just can't handle all kinds of statements.

*Even

of course they do, Republic itself is worthless as a philosophical work. If you studied philosophy you'd know that they are mostly taken for historical relevance.

Of course they argued profusely against sophism which is deemed worthless and which is the definition of post 1950 french philosophy.

I meant logic in a colloquial way ie. statements that don't make sense or don't seem to follow from each other.

If you studied philosophy, you'd know that good old aristotele and plato still lurk behind every corner. maybe not for analytics, since of course they like to pretend that philosophy before frege doesn't exist.

So he made an assumption? At the start of the book and based it around it? What's wrong with that? The assum. might not be true, and? You always need to assume something user. Would you be angry if someone made up an axiom as well?
Unless im missing something. never read any of the guys books but im just saying here

Is this referring to Mythologies?

>The assum. might not be true, and?

Is this a joke?

Because it is an assumption, it may or may not be true.
Now respond before I come between your buttcheeks

You should pick up Wittgenstein, he's definitely your brand of autism.

You don't start an argument by making arbitrary assumptions.

Enjoying your word games, salon dweller? Oh wait you have no salon, you spent it all on liberal education.

Yes you do. Are you retarded? Have you never constructed an argument before? "If X, then Y." There's always an X. It could be false, but that's irrelevant to the validity of the argument.

You should read my diary desu.

Did you not read this thread carefully? There is no "if" and "then" here, Barthes takes assumption as absolute truth, he isn't interested in examining an argument, he uses baseless assumptions to drive his 'theory' and ludicrous diagrams forward.

Of course, they're all guilty of it, Sokal did a book where he used their direct quotations against them.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

Analytical thomism is very much a thing. Amscombe, Geach, MacIntyre, Feser, Oderberg. I'm unsure how you could deny that Plato and Aristotle play a large role with many analytical philosophers. Godel was also a leibnitzian, who himself had a, in a way, platonic conception of mathematics.

Sure, but analytic thomism is definitely a niche. Many comtemporary analytic papers are so deep in the rabbat hole that don't ever cite or reference anything before Frege.

Try designing a philosophical system without baseless assumptions. Hint: you can't.

Sokal is a fucking idiot.

You do realize that metaphysics died with Hegel? Epistemology has been the only worthwhile movement in philosophy since late 19th century, it's your fault that you continue to read Marxist offshoots.

You can always read the hooligans of that wretched island nation and then proceed to jack yourself off until your body runs out of fluids over formal logic and being forever mad about Lacan's charlatanry.

I'm not that user but
>tfw you now know that this guy is not even an undergraduate
How boring and shallow.

McLuhan is good. Erving Goffman is good.Chris Lehrich's The Occult Mind. Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics.

Wew

>too pleb for fucking Barhes
holy shit can this place get any worse

L A U R E N

But the point is that it's easy to cut through his bullshit.

Obscurantism is not patrician.

I love all those guys, but I understand that you need to approach them in a very specific way. Barthes is especially not a good starting off point, but Saussure's linguistic stuff definitely should not be conflated with his somewhat poetical style.

If you're still interested in 'unlocking' these guys, then start with Saussure's general course in linguistics (or maybe even look up some of his stuff online, you only need the basics, everyone basically modified him after that.)

If you want more straightforward and formalist approaches to narratology then you can check out the russian formalist guys like Fabula. These guys are more interested in stylistics than 'how symbols shape everyday life'.

If that's not your thing, you can check out Mikhail Bakhtin. He's not as abstract as Barthes and the rest, but he's not a simple read either. He was really interested in the novel and it's narrative as demonstrating a 'social act/event'.

If your focus is on signs particularly, you can pick up any general textbooks on semiotics, although a lot of them will owe a lot to Saussure and some of the guys I've already mentioned.

As a side not: Lacan is only worth reading 'through' someone else's reading of him. I personally have a strong dislike for him and his cult, but it takes a brilliantly imaginative mind like Zizek (I know) to get anything of worth out of his work.

On the note of Foucault, also, he was a lot more interested in politics and history than anything else, but his 'What is an Author' essay is super important to modern literary criticism, both philosophically and politically.

Take my suggestions on board or no, but I don't think you should be so quick to write Barthes off; like I said before, you need to approach him in the right way.

' Barthes takes assumption as absolute truth'
You haven't read him, have you?
One of the things he talks about the most is that there is no 'end meaning' in any text; he absolutely rejects the notion of 'absolute truth' throughout. This is another classic misrepresentation of Barthes and it's getting tiring.

Barthes is creating a framework in doing this, he invites anyone to modify that framework and did so throughout his career. His saying that there are four elements is him constructing a certain way of understanding something, he never maintains that this is the only way of looking at something or that these four elements are essential. Stop reading him like he's a sociologist.

ITT: Reading cultural theory as though it were analytic philosophy.

You aren't a pleb for not understanding, you're a pleb for being so dismissive out the gate.

>Pick up others
>Same exact thing
This really makes me doubt that you read any of them. De Saussure studies linguistics/semiotics, and his theories have a pretty solid grounding in his own empirical research.
Lacan isn't that hard to follow as long as you're paying attention. His theories are speculative, but he does back up his claims with psychological studies (there are parallels between his work and scientifically-grounded modern theories of child psychology, in terms of psychological development of self-awareness, etc.). Essentially what he is doing is applying structuralist theories of linguistics to Freud's model of child development. It's actually pretty interesting stuff desu.
Foucault definitely makes assumptions and broad claims that he doesn't really back up (tons of major blanket assumptions in his History of Sexuality). Still, his work is an interesting combination of theoretical speculation and historical case study. His work on surveillance is genuinely interesting to read.

>talking shit on saussure

Swap Foucault and Lacan and I agree with this 100%

I like some of Lacan but his mirror phase stuff is utter tripe.

richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html

More like ease of access makes retards think they understand when they really don't. This thread is the reason for obscurantism.

Isn't it a fallacy in and of itself to assume because an argument features fallacious arguments it, itself, is false?

>He's only pretending to be retarded!

I can agree that Bakhtin makes some interesting points and formalism in general. I agree with Bloom's assesment how literary theory went to toilet after formalists were done.

After reading this thread I'm convinced that most of these people do not belong in university and that they represent the broadening of scholarly studies to the point where you can (and you can) get a degree in anything. And then write clickbait for gawker.

When you'll sit through your first lesson of philosophy you'll see they'll give you the Euthyphro to read.
Not Derrida, Deleuze or some other irrelevant sweaty French :D

It's called History of Philosophy class for a reason

No one is pretending they're relevant.

Read up on 'conversation' between Searle and Derrida.