Barthes

[malelesbian]

It doesn't explain what is good about a book to me.

Fair point. But what does? Surely more than just arbitrary preference...

 

[entertainment]

There is no system for that. Which is why I would prefer approaching the text without an elaborate analytic scaffolding.

 

[malelesbian]

Do you rely on intuition then? Or a method? What is your standard for aesthetic judgement?

 

[craner]

Nothing that extensive or seriously scholarly, but for a while when I was in more of autistic state, I was really focused on something like a phenomenology of knowledge, or a study of the experience of building expertise in a given area of discourse. I referred to it as nootopology, and designed an autodidactic methodology around it:

MoGenPro Background

An overview of the development of this program so far.

solosalon.substack.com

I remember this.

 

[craner]

The central question of Dissensus isn't 'Is Luke a genius?' or 'Why did Mark leave?', it's what is Version a version of?

 

[entertainment]

Do you rely on intuition then? Or a method? What is your standard for aesthetic judgement?

The basic point of Barthes' semiotics is to reach an appreciation of a text which lays bare the ideological traps embedded in the language. I'm less paranoid of those and I think if you seek that degree of knowing of what goes on, you naturally flatten some of the more immediate enjoyments in reading.

I don't go by authorial intent but I also don't think it makes sense to completely disregard a shaping consciousness behind the text. I like having that contact to another human trying to reveal something about the world through a story, getting an idea of how their brain works.

I enjoy the sheer force of imagination.

I like the sharp moments of insight into a characters' consciousness. The way that layers of significance interact in their world, how thought conditions emotion and vice versa.

I also think that there is a larger feeling to reading a text, some aggragate ambient sensation that is unique to the text, which is not deconstructible.

All of that is basically absent from the reading he makes in S/Z. Barthes would maybe say that those things are naive or argue that they pressupose a hierarchically structured interpretation which priveleges the denotive level. Which it does but which I don't see anything wrong with.

 

[entertainment]

I'm sure though that someone could completely rinse me for these points and I would be slightly dissappointed if it didn't happen

 

[Clinamenic]

I remember this.

Stan is an Extropian

Extropofascism

 

[craner]

Terraforming with Stan: A Guide for the Perplexed

 

[craner]

Extropofascism: Stan and the System of Life

 

[luka]

poor entertainment hes arrived at dissensus 20 years too late

 

[luka]

It occurred to me today that Version is the Last Man. A significant, symbolic entity whose significance lies beyond the mere confines of Dissensus.

culture having never been a living vital presence. just the enigmatic relics of a vanished civilization.

 

[craner]

culture having never been a living vital presence. just the enigmatic relics of a vanished civilization.

There he is, the gazer, the sifter.

Consumption is too definitive for him.

 

[craner]

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and shrug!

 

[craner]

I sound like I'm being mean, but I'm not. I find Version a genuinely fascinating, enigmatic character of historical dimensions. I mean, I only realised this the day before yesterday, but there it is.

 

[craner]

Greatness has been thrust upon him despite the fact he never leaves the house.

 

[craner]

I forgot about the Hugh Grant thing. About a Boy.

 

[craner]

Good morning, Version. I am just about to go and have some lunch.

 

[craner]

It's just stuff to me.

Amazing.

 

[craner]

To be honest, I don't really get what's any different about the way I process stuff compared to the way anyone else my age or younger does. I don't feel particularly unique in my sense of things feeling somewhat arbitrary and weightless. That's just how the internet feels in general to me and many of us live on the internet now.

You are the distilled essence of your time. Of course you're not unique, you're literally a version. But you are such a pure version of everybody else that you are the Ideal Form. Abstract, perfect, unchanging.