Today we begin developing Veeky Forums's literary manifesto for whatever the next school/movement in literary theory/writing/criticism will be. Post what you would like to see or think is coming. Bonus for getting a bit deeper than "muh DFW new sincerity." Flesh it out!
>bonus: dubs decide name.
I'm starting abstractionism. It is the entropy of post-modernism and I will take responsibility for the stages of modernist death.
The whole point of aesthetics is things falling perfectly into place and the point of literature is building the most complex situations that flawlessly settle.
interesting. Feel free to elaborate user.
I am actually interested and wanted to start this thread to see what everyone thought. It would be interesting (though unlikely) if we could come to some sort of a consensus. I just want to see progress and hope that when I am done with my graduate studies I get to help develop the new movement :)
What do you want to see start developing?
I am not sure. I tend toward new sincerity but I think that is a cop out. I would like to see a more critical view of literature and aesthetics as a whole. I am tired of "edgy" work being praised while true works of beauty might be ignored. Maybe I am a bit of an elitist and I definitely have my own ideals as to what art is, but that does not mean I am not willing to abandon my ideas where I am wrong and progress to something more accurate.
I am still working things out which is why I started this thread. I thought it would be interesting to bounce ideas off one another.
As I am still working it out, I am not certain what I want entirely or have personally developed a fleshed out goal. For now I personally would like to see:
>a return to and development of aesthetic theory.
>literature being submitted to critique regardless of age/race/ethnicity/gender/social status
>diminishing of explicit materials or just edgy stuff if the only thing it does is increase the "edge" factor. Just because it grabs your attention does not mean it is the most beautiful or best thing that one could do or write. I think there is a time and place for it but I think now it is used to cover up bad writing and a lack of creativity.
>less focus on the personal narrative that is insular and limited in scope. I want writing that reveals something about humanity and human nature regardless of who wrote it and who is reading it.
>a return to at least some form in poetry would be possible but not necessary.
>these are a few ideas and I will post more as I come up with them. Mostly I just want more rigor.
I guess I crave some form of structure but not for structure's own sake. It is more as a mechanism to uncover truth. I may be an idealist and full of logical fallacies but for me a great work reveals something about the human condition.
I would really like to see some more progressive, praxis-esque literature out there. I mean it completely apolitically when I say that the level of discourse within the communist thoughtgroups is a perfect example. You can see how each new belief or splinter-group is subtly different and has nuanced differences from the doctrines before it. That's a really good way of churning the wheels of progress in my opinion. If we had more literature that could work with that sort of direct progressiveness then we would advance as a people much longer.
This is why we need space.
The discovery of the universe, its facets and physics, presented a new environment of which we only recently have been able to theorize on the effects of. History has impeded us so much so that only in the 20th century have we been able to achieve spaceflight, and this shows the ever-present nature of our fixation on the past; we work to perpetuate the powers we were born into, rather than recognize the historically evidential decline of all powers. This is no surprise when we take into account that we have been confined to our planet and its geographic mundanities for the entirely of our existence. We have built off of our dead empires of old and of the ruins of our brothers before us, each new copycat society further cementing itself to our dying rock. The wars of history have given way to a separatism of the human mind from itself. We have advanced in this separatism now to a point where we have made imaginary borders no longer imaginary, where the earth is now sectioned off into one hundred ninety six separate modes of autonomy, only autonomous in their autonomy from other autonomies of the same nature. The course of history taking place solely on earth and solely relating always to an established state on earth has given way to a societally geocentric view of ourselves. We are too focused on our tiny rock in the great big universe.
In the theorizing of us as a spacefaring people, the revision of our great epochs can be sheared away to these: The transition of civilized ape to civilized human and the rejection of feudalism for the rational science of the renaissance. Our evolution from the anthropoids of the past gave us the knowledge of evolution, and that we as we are now do not represent the pinnacle of our species. The renaissance, unprecedented in its newfound rationality and acceptance of technological progress, presents the possibility for greater movements of rebirth in our future. The harmony of insight drawn from these two definitive epochs gives us greater sight to the nature of our cosmicality. The transition of our species into space will expand the human mind to greater lengths through the implementation of our own technological and circumstantial progress.
Literature can ultimately be used as a tool to get the human race into space.
Interesting! I am not sure I 100% agree on the space part but I agree with an increase in discourse. For an age where we are supposed to be incredulous to metanarratives the literature community definitely has created some pretty ingrained ones that will be difficult to deconstruct.
I always find that interesting. The very same ones that rail for the destruction of previous narratives cling to their own that have been constructed to replace it uncritically.
I definitely understand that. To me it just seems like the obvious result of things if we want to keep going as a species. But really, any sort of major shift in history would be catalyzed by that sort of shift in discourse and overarching thought.
The way that schools of thought develop within a certain political climate is a good example for it
Meta-symbolism
I've written a Manifesto of meta-symbolism but can't seem to find it. It was terribly bland and uninteresting, but it kept me going. I'll post if or when I find it.
Space is literally the stupidest thing there is.
Much like the delusional post-graduate who thinks that he will get laid in Thailand because "it's foreign", the modern scientist thinks that meaning will be found out among particles of dust and burning gas because it's "unexplored."
Eventually you settle down and start looking for joy instead of novelty.
it's not about novelty at all. It's about our species becoming what it truly can be. Realizing its own potential. And the meaning is not what there is to be found, but rather greater questions. You may dislike an optimistic interpretation of it, but space travel and residency is the future of mankind. The universe will compel our biological, emotional, and spiritual minds forward in a way that is unprecedented. Every human childhood has taken place on this placet, every defining memory and influential event that serves to shape the humans we consider great. This fact has gone, and still goes unrecognized in its importance because of the now realistic possibility of space residency.
It is the prerogative of stagnated human beings to use the tiny speck of dust the universe has given us, called earth, rather than participate in the grand reality.
you think of it in a colonial sense. You are far too statist in your understanding. We will explore not to exploit, but to know.
...
Reconstruction.
Yeah, cannot wait for that to happen and someone screw up and make a hole in the side.
Also it sort of feels bad that we are capable as of today to make that picture come true but we're too lazy.
I think funding is a bigger problem than laziness
that is just a matter of concept as opposed to reality. We have the potential to create so much more than this. This is a concept from the 70s. Imagine what we could do today.
This.
>"progressiveness"
>space
Pick one. It was the "progressive" policies of post-1960s America that destroyed the space program and diverted that money into uplifting blacks. White men create space programs; what you mistakenly believe to be "progressiveness" actively excludes white men and transfers their wealth to people who can barely function on earth.
Concentrism
OP, your picture makes me think of how I sometimes describe myself as a "neomedievalist." I conceive of the movement as a rebirth and second love of the art, literature, and philosophy of the Middle Ages, the way the Renaissance was precisely that to the art, literature, and philosophy of the Ancient World. It would go further than Romanticism did, because Romanticism was a mere surface-level appreciation of things Medieval, while this would be a full recovery and reintegration of the Medieval into the whole of the world order, and it would inform how our future unfolds--just like the Renaissance did.
I actually believe this movement may already be in progress. Much like the Renaissance, I think it's a thing that may have actually been going on for a few decades now before anyone bothered to notice it was happening. Witness the rise of Analytical Thomism, for example, or the increased interest in the Middle Ages by serious scholars.
I would even argue that it possesses a seminal work of thought already: Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si." Laudato Si is fundamentally an neomedievalist work, because it interprets the current environmental troubles of the modern age through the decidedly medieval lens of interconnectedness of the world under God, and even includes hints of the old medieval Chain of Being. It's very pointedly a rejection of the Cartesian/Spinozan/Baconian paradigm about the natural world that's defined the modern world.
I think we're in for some interesting times as this all really gets underway. One might even see the alt right and neoreaction as unthinking alignments with this swing back to the Medieval.
Wake me when Neo-Romanticism hits the streets.
I can see this happening. I've noticed a resurgence of interest in Catholicism recently.
Neothomism has been trying to do this shit for decades. They appropriate the British Hegel, they appropriate Whitehead, they appropriate phenomenology.
If Catholic conservatives want this shit to actually stick, they are going to have to get some cultural currency, not just philosophical. You don't shift people back to Great Chain onto-theology by philosophizing about it in 39-tome editions of Lonergans commentaries on himself commenting on Aquinas.
I'm tired of you neo-conservative neo-Catholic fucks thinking you're hot bananas because the maelstrom of postmodern whogivesafuck has temporarily decided it wants to experiment with arbitrary grounds of being again. There are like eight of you guys walking around my university with your dicks up your own asses in sheer self-satisfaction over having a Grund to stand on, when everyone in the room goes "I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO AFTER DERRIDA???? DO WE JUST HAVE ORGIES OR WHAT? I'M TIRED OF PROGRESSIVISM!" and you get to chime in with
>Ah, excuse me, if I might.. recommend Mother Church. *straightens faggoty bowtie*
IT ISN'T GOING TO WORK! JUST BECAUSE THE RAGNAROK LEVIATHAN ZEITGEIST TEMPORARILY ALIGHTS ON YOUR PENISY PHILOSOPHY BECAUSE IT'S ROLEPLAYING HYPERREAL NAIVETE POST-DECONSTRUCTION DOESN'T MEAN YOU'VE ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING! WHILE YOU'RE GALAVANTING AROUND PRETENDING ANYONE IS GOING TO GO BACK TO PRE-TRANSCENDENTAL METAPHYSICS BECAUSE IT'S RETRO CHIC, DEGENERATE SUFIS ARE RECRUITING HALF THE FUCKING "CREATIVE MINORITY" OF THE WEST
WHY IS SOMEONE EATING CHIPS WITH THEIR MOUTH OPEN IN A FUCKING LIBRARY?
Peace be with you, user.
I'm not quite sure what your talking about but from what I understand Traditional Catholics are planning the exact opposite of a zeitgeist or movement, they want to take the church towards the Mormon route of being insular, selective, obtuse, etc with a smaller but devouter membership.
try Marxism lol
Dialectics already exist. Read Jameson, Marxism and Form, for the literary-aesthetic component. Also Adorno's Notes on Literature
I'm imagining that the next movement will be something like a Chestertonian sincerity where the common things are given the meaning and attention that they deserve. Something like his novel Napoleon on Notting Hill or The Flying Inn.
This thread is pathetic. Why don't you write instead of telling others your ridiculous projects on an imageboard?
it will be called fapcism and works in this movement will be laced with subversive mastrubatory themes and connotations (both literal and metaphysical).
dubs pls
start writing folks
>he doesn't know about the Nazarene movement and Italian purism
kek, lurk more
I wanna start developing comedic literature through the use of old, modern and picturesque english
Although a part of me feels that I dislike emoji's far tol much which would result in a lack of pictures but what do I know
This is a puerile idea, but it's written pretty well.
This combined with Miles Mathis level rigor.
>A chair moved in the dark. I opened my eyes wide but saw only more blackness. Who had turned out the lights? Then I saw it-- a sliver of light, making a slight shadow on what I had initially thought to be the room's darkness. I reached out my hand, touched a mass of soft, rigid flesh. The room was fully lit, the mass in front of me was its darkness.
This, my friends, is a pioneering example of "literal" Fapcism.
This thread is now about Fapcism as the new literary movement.
Fapcist reading: the repetition of "blackness" and "darkness" in this narrative excerpt, though repetitive, is a clear allusion to a large, black penis and a great example of Fapcist literature. This post may be regarded as being "metaphysically" Fapcist because of its self-masturbatory nature (I am the author of the referenced post and also the creator of the Fapcist literary movement).
Fapcism is thriving.
These ideas are all fine and dandy, but most of you seem to be treating movements in thought and literature as isolated phenomena. But these changes through history have only come about after periods of radical progress/decline/changes in the day to day experiences of millions of people.
I'm not going to get into the reasons, but there's good reason to expect a large decline among Western nations within our life time. The United States' global presence will deteriorate, as will the relative stability of the current world political climate.
We're in for a nasty ride. Basically a repeat of post-wwII, on-the-dark-side-of-the-iron-curtain Europe. But this time revolutionary new schools of thought will likely come largely from Eastern countries. Maybe post-revolution China when. They're economy finally collapses from the loss of the trillions they'll have invested in the US currency when it loses all its value and long term results of mass human labor exploitation.
The West is a barren field of new ideas. The evidence is in this thread. Young people year in for purpose, finding none, and turning to strangers on the internet for help.
Right now we're seeing a huge rise in identity politics of all kinds due to globalization as well as information technology essentially allowing for the removal of subjective, material considerations like race, geography, and class, which only cause people to retreat deeper into these constructs. The disembodyment of the individual only allows for greater individuality, which is scary.
The traditional political camps are trying to use this, but it's clear that the Black power Marxists and white power fascists screaming at each other in the streets and on our airwaves are just two side of the same pathetic egotistical id-fixated coin. The real conflict is between the individual and the constructs that demand his affiliation.
Ive even seen college campus groups attacking individuality as a construct of white power, or a "privilege" for only the super rich. Even Obama tries to argue this in his book. It's all a pathetic attempt to reduce such a beautiful ideal to their level, and attack it through an identarian assault which demands everyone take sides.
On the other side of this with have the noble notions of high modernism. The individuality of Pierre Trudeau, the flighty rebelliousness of the futurists, the artistic freedom of the decedents (a rebours especially, as the rise in NEETs and the immersive capabilities of the internet only makes it more relevant every year) and even the post racial character of Italian Fascism itself.
I feel like that camp is primed for an artistic resurgence in society. People everywhere are tired of being told who they are by politically motivated puppet masters. As a mascot, I suggest the Jannasaires. A group of people untied not by race or religion, but by a lack of it. A genuine otherness that manifests itself as slavery to the state, elitism, and celibacy.
If you don't have anything nice to say about Fapcism then you can go fuck yourself.
Completely agreed.
thats foolish. Vast swathes of space has yet to be explored/discovered. Including the possibilites of life on other planets, how could you not be drawn to that?
oh lord yes
This thread is pretty good, surprisingly. I love this place sometimes.
that's what im saying. space is inevitable
t. cuck
>implying we aren't all planning to produce meaningful works of art and philosophy that further our stated aims
Or at least I hope everyone here is, otherwise yeah this is all just wankery.
It is pretty evident this is all just wankery
Pretty sure prior movements didn't have dopamine deprived twenty somethings brainstorming with each other over why people would give a shit about their ideas in 100 years.
They had coffee houses with but a fraction of the intellectual fermentation that goes on here.
We truly are the greatest generation.
Commie scum.
One that might happen soon is auto-generated literature. You create some algorithms with restraints of grammar, train it with certain authors to develop a writing style, then provide some final thematic input to give a context for the AI to write about.
It's functionally feasible today, would just take substantial effort codifying English in such a way that sentences were defined building blocks and followed some logic (inb4 claims that English is a logical language).
The idea scratches the post-literature itch I have. In reality I doubt literature as an art form will be long-lived and we'll eventually reach a stage where it's merely for baseline historical documentation (e.g. in case shit hits the fan we'll have backups).
We've been given this incredible medium. We didn't do anything to deserve it.
There will really be very few of us with Wikipedia pages to our legacy.
I can understand the appeal to think otherwise, but there is so far no reason to believe we're a part of anything special.
you reject the future
You underestimate the evocative power of aesthetics.
There's a reason Einstein had a profound love for music.
"we will go to space only for the mental gainz. Free funding yall"
*tips spatial fedora
There will be a return to traditional realism over pomo "abstract" art. But now the "realism" will look like steampunk shit since our society has transformed, so basically it'll be scifi but without the fi.
Also, expect more YA trash about loneliness. Seriously. Our generation will probably feel lonelier than any other previously, just because of social media and fomo.
awesome post needs more (you)
I can dig neomedievalism
this like progressivism and AI and humanists are why the phrase road to hell is paved with good intentions exists. im serious you fuckers are so caught up in what isnt here you dont consider the consequences. total naivety
the future of aesthetics is vaporwave. it will remind us that the future will not belong to us, only memories of a past we never had
who cares if we do find life on other planets? do you think discovering a new form of mushroom is going to somehow make your life better?
have you ever seen a penguin in real life? if you did, did viewing a new kind of strange animal suddenly make your life click?
space exploration is the opium of the educated masses.
floating in zero g out in space under the light of another star doesn't mean you are living up to your potential. there are no geographic solutions to spiritual problems.
even if we do (somehow) meet other forms of intelligent life the result will be the same. our meeting will be cool and unique for about a decade and then fade into normalcy, like the blue jeans wearing aborigines of today's outback.
Not a fan. Inherently flawed and overused and misappropriated. All the current English professors are "Marxist" yet sure do enjoy their first world luxuries and 300 dollar shoes.
have you ever heard of a discussion or sat in on an academic discussion or I dont know ever seen a thread on lit? GTFO
also I hate to say it but
>9641722
dubs decided
You need a pope and a Rome. Without a pope and a Rome it is just another renascence, but with Rome in the place of Athens.
The third-world has a pope and a (Rome). Want neo-medievalism? Go to Africa.
ehhhhhh I think if you read theory and actually look at some college campuses there is a resurgence in interest in the high church. Also even if you are not a catholic some catholics are doing some pretty interesting things. Take Charles Taylor for example.
>we begin developing Veeky Forums's literary manifesto for whatever the next school/movement in literary theory/writing/criticism will be.
straight forward school with no abstract meanings or symbolism
OP SUPPORTS THIS
I want to counter personal narratives. Viewed as a collective corpus of texts, narratives can reveal far more about human nature than a work written specifically to enlighten readers about human nature, although that in and of itself also tells us something.
the title inevitably reminds me of Hamsun's hungry protagonist's unwritten essay, "Crimes of the Future."
40k
Please don't use all caps.
That, the angry rhetoric and the reddit spacing don't give you the most credible impression.