tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post2523769986464696683..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: A little bit from Žižek, a little bit from....skholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-67783146159896876772011-06-17T20:50:42.248-07:002011-06-17T20:50:42.248-07:00"all the middle-sized dry goods you list coul..."all the middle-sized dry goods you list could be construed as the summation of their particular story (just as I am the culmination of my life-story to date)." <br /><br />You can, of course, tell stories about the world and the objects in it, but it is absurd to think that the stories stand in any sort of causal relationship to the objects, not to mention the objects being the "summation" of a story. <br /><br />The simple reason is that the objects were there before anyone started telling stories about them. Some of them were there even before any human being came into existence! <br /><br />You and I can tell all the stories we want about fire including fantasies about walking through fire holding hands with Agni the God of Fire and coming out unscathed, etc. But fire is going to burn us regardless of our stories or beliefs about it. This is plain common sense and someone needs to dial 911 if the storytelling gets out of hand and a person identifies the object itself with the story. LOL<br /><br />"As for atoms, I've heard a lot of stories about them, but I've never seen one."<br /><br />I'm sure you haven't seen microbes or viruses, but, nevertheless, I presume you have had nasty intimations of their presence?<br /><br />Atoms? Ask the Japanese whether they think, not merely whether there are atoms, but whether human beings know how to split them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-46454711287965715132011-06-17T19:14:58.166-07:002011-06-17T19:14:58.166-07:00Thill,
if you check out the original post you'...Thill,<br /><br />if you check out the original post you'll note that the clause "the world is made of stories" is a partial (and slightly mis-)quotation of a Muriel Rukeyser line, "the universe is made of stories not atoms." And you know, I know for a fact that stories exist, as I have both seen and heard them, and all the middle-sized dry goods you list could be construed as the summation of their particular story (just as I am the culmination of my life-story to date). As for atoms, I've heard a lot of stories about them, but I've never seen one. But yes, the line is from a poem and ought to be taken in that spirit, not the willfully tendentious one I've just employed.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-78833600285109211172011-06-17T15:58:12.527-07:002011-06-17T15:58:12.527-07:00"I hate the approach of taking a little bit f..."I hate the approach of taking a little bit from Lacan, a little bit from Foucault, a little bit from Derrida."<br /><br />This seems like irrational hatred since he gives no explicit reason for disliking the approach. Perhaps, he thinks that this approach does not result in a "clear-cut position". But there is no logical connection between combining ideas from different sources and lack of a clear-cut position or eschewing such combinations and having a clear-cut position.<br /><br />The more important issue is whether or not a combination of ideas from different sources is coherent or consistent. If it is, then we do have a "clear-cut position".<br /><br />"I think the most arrogant position is this apparent, multidisciplinary modesty of 'what I am saying now is not unconditional, it is just a hypothesis,' and so on. It really is a most arrogant position."<br /><br />Again, he gives no reason. Reiteration does not a reason make! Again, he strives to connect things or features which are not logically connected at all. <br /><br />Arrogance is independent of whether assertions are conditional or unconditional. It is the attitude someone has toward criticism which tells us whether it is arrogant or not. And, in fact, a dogmatic attitude is usually correlated with a dismissive stance toward criticism, and, hence, is a reliable indicator of arrogance.<br /><br />One shopworn technique of getting the attention of "intellectuals" is to invert truths. So, if you said a dogmatic person is likely to be arrogant no one will pay any attention to this truism. But if you invert it and claim that a person who acknowledges the conditional nature of his claims is actually more than arrogant than the dogmatic one, then you get reviews!<br /><br />"The World is Made of Stories"? LOL<br /><br />Well, I am looking at the world in my vicinity now and see tables, chairs, cups, books, trees, birds, clouds, etc. Although I don't see them now, I know there are insects in my backyard. Where are all the stories hiding?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-79227807446782915052011-06-17T13:18:07.153-07:002011-06-17T13:18:07.153-07:00Hi Larry, & welcome to the comment box
As I s...Hi Larry, & welcome to the comment box<br /><br />As I say, Žižek knows better than to practice the anti-eclectic line. I think he is opposed to a certain kind of academic fashion, which-- the more I think about it-- must have at least as much to do with the relativism I explicitly do not address in this post. I'm far more sympathetic to that stance of his (insofar as I understand it) than to the anti-eclectic stance. N.b., Žižek does not actually use the e-word himself in the passage I cite; that's all me. having said that, though, I agree with you that there's something arrogant about dismissing eclecticism with a word-- and not just arrogant; dangerous, too. It sets you up in an echo-chamber. I read froma wide swathe of conflicting positions and disciplines not because I am just perversely into genre-bending, but because I am, in principle, <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2010/10/friends-and-in-crowds.html" rel="nofollow">against in-crowds</a>.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-79545847755371749052011-06-17T13:17:38.970-07:002011-06-17T13:17:38.970-07:00To Gary, re. Sainstbury's observation: dreams...To Gary, re. Sainstbury's observation: dreams <i>"combine -- of their own nature and to the invariable experience of those who are fortunate enough to have much to do with them — the greatest possible variety with the least possible disturbance. "</i><br /><br />He relates this to prose style. I think I see his point. Badiou thinks mathematics is the language of being (well, he doesn't put it quite like that). I think we want something richer, more connotative. Thanks for this-- it's making the wheels turn. More, I hope, soon.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-3989162772877550782011-06-17T12:05:55.081-07:002011-06-17T12:05:55.081-07:00As a self-avowed "eclecticist iconoclast,&quo...As a self-avowed "eclecticist iconoclast," I obviously have a horse in this race. Still, it seems to me that an outright rejection of eclecticism is the highest sort of arrogance: It essentially asserts "I have nothing to learn from anyone else; no one else can have a valid idea or insight that I have not thought of on my own."Lotushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16774266443353774752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-20862821837139309122011-06-17T08:36:48.472-07:002011-06-17T08:36:48.472-07:00In this day and age, because the publishing indust...In this day and age, because the publishing industry has pushed books on us from right and left for so long, we are all eclectics. The urgent question becomes one of how to put all that massive reading into one coherent whole. Writing about the rhythms of English prose, on page 311 (see link), George Saintsbury wrote this: “It has, I have no doubt, occurred to other students of elaborate rhythmical prose that curiously large proportions of the most famous examples of it are concerned with dreams; and I should not suppose that many of them have failed to anticipate the following suggestion of the reason. Dreams themselves are nothing if not rhythmical; their singular fashion of progression (it is matter of commonest remark) floats the dreamer over the most irrational and impossible transitions and junctures (or rather breaches) of incident and subject, without jolt or jar. They thus combine—of their own nature and to the invariable experience of those who are fortunate enough to have much to do with them—the greatest possible variety with the least possible disturbance. Now this combination, as we have been faithfully putting forth, is the very soul—the quintessence, the constituting form and idea—of harmonious prose.” I’m not sure what that has to do with the topic at hand, but I feel there is something worthwhile to consider there.<br /><br />http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7116598M/A_history_of_English_prose_rhythm<br /><br />By the way, on page 307, he examines what he says is the most beautiful sentence in English literature.The Ontological Nexushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17950312080786100753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-19834985012835075402011-06-16T19:45:55.393-07:002011-06-16T19:45:55.393-07:00Oh yes, this one.
I don't mind being taken th...Oh yes, <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2010/12/face.html" rel="nofollow">this one</a>. <br />I don't mind being taken there, but I'm not sure I want to set out to go there. <br /><br />On the other hand, to cite yet another name: as Lewis Thompson puts it in <i>Mirror to the Light</i>: You can escape in a moment, but only in a moment.<br /><br />Yes, I see now what you mean, and that I somewhat misread your comment before. Thanks.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-70411799197426187182011-06-16T16:23:02.385-07:002011-06-16T16:23:02.385-07:00Hi Skholiast,
I’m mentioned in dispatches, thank y...Hi Skholiast,<br />I’m mentioned in dispatches, thank you. I meant that you could start not from scratch but from your own established body of wisdom. Rough swimming means a little flailing about, there’s no harm in that. I recollect the story of a return to your old home town, the photographic exhibition. Memory and distance, being both inside and outside at the same time can make the person(a) drop away into a shining void. There was more to it than that; the residue of mystery is the mark of the real, the limitless.ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.com