Please help.

[nomadologist]

And isn't this the ultimate expression of the decline of 'symbolic efficiency' in a globally reflexivized and mediatized society: the impotence of interpretation (and it took Melfi seven years to reach this despairing conclusion!), and a recourse to a pre-reflexive underlying substantial state which eludes our grasp and is instead irrationally attributed to some brute cause - one's (blind) Nature or supernatural 'evil' itself. So the more that everything today is reflexivized, is reduced to a matter of relativistic 'opinion' and self-rationalization, the more the temptation to, the implicit reference to some inscrutable nature or evil that pervades daily discourse, even the most otherwise rational analysis. Even Tony Soprano is impervious to treatment precisely because he has already rationalized his symptoms in pop-psychoanalytic terms, so leaving his symptoms "intact in the immediacy of their idiotic jouissance."

Yes. Though I still have a soft spot for Dr. M--the way she manipulated her rape to lay the guilt trip on BOTH her on-again-off-again husband/ex AND her son was priceless. Television at its zenith.

Also I really liked that car saleswoman goomah, when Tony has that "profound" moment when he inadvertantly hears from Carmela that she's committed suicide...

 

[nomadologist]

No, just the only one with views that result from a correct attitude ...

Oh please. It's the goddamned internet. People are going to have disagreements, and not get along sometimes. BFD.

Trust me I'm not losing sleep over it.

P.S. I may be a narcissist, and I will readily admit it, but don't try to pin self-righteousness on me. If it sounded that way, it was only because after taking punches from Mr. Tea for months, I lost patience with it. I decided I'd let it all out there, if we were going to play like that.

 

[nomadologist]

HA wait I never thought about TS and JM this way--the analyst and the analysand, both racketeers.

This whole thread "derailment" was worth it just for that I think.

 

[nomadologist]

swears says:
alright

mark says:
hiya
...
mark says:
what do you think, mate?

swears says:
fuck knows

A little Lacan never hurt anyone...Swears you might like to read selected Lacan like Ecrits. You never give yourself enough credit. You're a pretty smart kid--deal with it!

 

[swears]

I think I need to get a proper grasp on the basics of classical and enlightenment philosophy before I can really have any proper understanding of all this structuralist/post-structuralist business. Learning to walk before you can run and all that. I'm still trying to get my head around some of Nietzsche's ideas.

 

[tht]

how true, swears' apologias for intellectual inadequacy never really cut it do they? seems cleverer than his philosopher friend anyway

 

[tht]

the ending of the jennifer melfi subplot was awful, like the closeups of the forensic psychiatry paper and her reaction shots, especially since it didn't need narrative resolution at all

the whole thing could have terminated on the antepenultimate show and would scarcely have irritated the nudnik fans any more than the actual conclusion did

 

[nomadologist]

I think I need to get a proper grasp on the basics of classical and enlightenment philosophy before I can really have any proper understanding of all this structuralist/post-structuralist business. Learning to walk before you can run and all that. I'm still trying to get my head around some of Nietzsche's ideas.

hmm. maybe, maybe not. at any rate Nietzsche is probably one of the most flagrantly and grossly misread philosophers out there, really hard to pin down in some places. i am basing this mostly on heidegger's authority, of course.

you could start like this:

heraclitus=>plato=>aristotle=>leibniz=>descartes=>kant=>nietzsche=>heidegger

the rest is easy

 

[nomadologist]

the ending of the jennifer melfi subplot was awful, like the closeups of the forensic psychiatry paper and her reaction shots, especially since it didn't need narrative resolution at all

the whole thing could have terminated on the antepenultimate show and would scarcely have irritated the nudnik fans any more than the actual conclusion did

yeah, the last season is pretty dissatisfying in many ways. so many film "experts" agreed that the silence just before the end ofthe last episode was a clear and classically "formalist" filmic device indicating that tony would die directly thereafter. the creator claims he didn't mean for that to come across at all. which kind of ruins the entire season for me.

 

[gek-opel]

hmm. maybe, maybe not. at any rate Nietzsche is probably one of the most flagrantly and grossly misread philosophers out there, really hard to pin down in some places. i am basing this mostly on heidegger's authority, of course.

you could start like this:

heraclitus=>plato=>aristotle=>leibniz=>descartes=>kant=>nietzsche=>heidegger

the rest is easy

Don't forget Hegel.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

HA wait I never thought about TS and JM this way--the analyst and the analysand, both racketeers.

This whole thread "derailment" was worth it just for that I think.

Not a thread derailment at all, really, all things considered. [Actually, I found this indignant reaction by America's actual psychoanalytic chattering classes, including even the American Psychoanalytic Association, to the identity of Melfi's 'star patient' being exposed at a dinner party, superbly - and depressingly - revealing of just the extent to which the mainstream pseudo-psychobabble industry is both a racket and a bourgeois perversion].

yeah, the last season is pretty dissatisfying in many ways. so many film "experts" agreed that the silence just before the end of the last episode was a clear and classically "formalist" filmic device indicating that tony would die directly thereafter. the creator claims he didn't mean for that to come across at all. which kind of ruins the entire season for me.

That's certainly suggested itself, though not unambiguously. It's also the 'classically formalist device' of something else entirely: the self-satisfied epiphany, the reassertion of the patriarchal status quo, the capitalist-realist this-is-the-way-things-are, classically-cliched quotidian pleasures of the well-here-we-all-are united family unit with the patriarch in ecstatic-silent anticipation of the imminent arrival of his daughter. Oedipal reproductive futurism at its purest. In this sense, the ending - discounting for the why-aren't they-talking/arguing//blabbering-as-usual anxiety - is no different to the average episode of that immortal family unit, The Simpsons.

you could start like this:

heraclitus=>plato=>aristotle=>leibniz=>descartes=>kant=>nietzsche=>heidegger

Very, um, pedagogically [classical linear-chrono narrative] structuralist

Now the thread's derailed.

 

[nomadologist]

Don't forget Hegel.

If I'd added Hegel, I would've had to end with Zizek. I thought about putting Bergson in there so I could put Deleuze at the end.

My real canons are more like microcanons:

freud=>bataille<=lacan=>irigaray<=cixous

saussure<=baudrillard=>virilio

heidegger<=derrida=>agamben

 

[nomadologist]

Very, um, pedagogically [classical linear-chrono narrative] structuralist

Now the thread's derailed.

See--I'm not so far gone that I don't remember what they learned me up at my school.

Now all we need is for someone to post a really huge bandwith-hogging picture file with something obscene or cutesy and some colorful CAPITAL LETTERS IN BOLD

 

[tht]

this is an unfortunate casualty as these things go too
i seem to have instigated a dozen or so posts about shit and there was no going back from there
sorry jaie :x

 

[dssdnt]

Very, um, pedagogically [classical linear-chrono narrative] structuralist

Not stricly chronological, considering that Decartes writes before Leibniz, surprising error there. Certainly not pedagogical, as no one's teaching anything, and sure as hell not structuralist, under any comprehension of the term. Not to mention, if you had even the least acquaintance with the writings of Nietzsche or Heidegger, you'd know that the notion of a linear history of philosophy was destroyed long ago.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Not stricly chronological, considering that Decartes writes before Leibniz, surprising error there.

Thank you for that crucial clarification, O Wise One. We will now shamefully retire to the back of the class until we chronologically rectify the error of our ways.

Certainly not pedagogical, as no one's teaching anything,

Specifying, selecting a specific approach to learning/beginning-to-learn/study a subject is a pedagogical strategy, Professor von Pedant.

and sure as hell not structuralist, under any comprehension of the term.

Not under any comprehension of the term, under many, Professor of Sure-As-Hell Certainty.

Not to mention, if you had even the least acquaintance with the writings of Nietzsche or Heidegger, you'd know that the notion of a linear history of philosophy was destroyed long ago.

Which wasn't, strangely enough, the point I was making [a trivial one, as I'm also sure Nomad is also well aware], Oh Noble Professor, but non-linear, arborescent, non-academic, hypertextual modes can be much more effective, seemingly, and sometimes actually are, apparently.

[The original remark was also made entirely in jest, but perhaps the smiley quota was insufficient for your exacting requirements ]

 

[dssdnt]

Thank you for that crucial clarification, O Wise One. We will now shamefully retire to the back of the class until we chronologically rectify the error of our ways.



Specifying, selecting a specific approach to learning/beginning-to-learn/study a subject is a pedagogical strategy, Professor von Pedant.



Not under any comprehension of the term, under many, Professor of Sure-As-Hell Certainty.



Which wasn't, strangely enough, the point I was making [a trivial one, as I'm also sure Nomad is also well aware], Oh Noble Professor, but non-linear, arborescent, non-academic, hypertextual modes can be much more effective, seemingly, and sometimes actually are, apparently.

[The original remark was also made entirely in jest, but perhaps the smiley quota was insufficient for your exacting requirements ]

Hardly a surprise that you would answer with sarcasm. Hypertextual modes are effective for that approach, too.

 

[Dial]

heraclitus=>plato=>aristotle=>leibniz=>descartes=>kant=>nietzsche=>heidegger

Theres a little bit of benign posturing going on with this list don ya think. Who is really going to read the canon without real pressure and support, not to mention aptitude. Moreover Neitzsche's own railing against attempts at mastery are particularly germane here.

Here too...

Originally Posted by swears View Post
I think I need to get a proper grasp on the basics of classical and enlightenment philosophy before I can really have any proper understanding of all this structuralist/post-structuralist business. Learning to walk before you can run and all that. I'm still trying to get my head around some of Nietzsche's ideas.

To which one can only say why? why must you try to grind yourself into some ideal position of control and knowing. It doesn't exist. Chances are you'll fill your head with constructs that have no ground/purchase in your own lived reality. In short nothing but ill vapors to make you queasy. Or worse ecstatic.

Better to grasp one good rhythm than a thousand 'canons'. Then extrapolate, apply.

Myself I'd go for one of the micro canons Nomadologist listed. The one with the best fun/accessibility yield would have to be Sassure, > Baudrillard,> Virillio. And whatever you do, be a little afraid, but not too afraid, of secondary texts, so as to unmess your head now and then, Swears.

And last but not least a little bit of intent reading is way better than its converse. Unless it's Derrida's Spurs, or some such like, in which case just swim away at it. Sense will happen along the way.

Of course, I stand corrected, and sort of (very sort of) envious if you do have the next two or three or four years to devote to that canon.

I think it would just make you fucking miserable, myself. Ha.

And just for the record, I enjoy the theorizing in this thread and elsewhere.

 

[nomadologist]

Not stricly chronological, considering that Decartes writes before Leibniz, surprising error there. Certainly not pedagogical, as no one's teaching anything, and sure as hell not structuralist, under any comprehension of the term. Not to mention, if you had even the least acquaintance with the writings of Nietzsche or Heidegger, you'd know that the notion of a linear history of philosophy was destroyed long ago.

I was actually making fun of Heidegger. Be literal if you want to be. I won't say that Leibniz before Descartes was intentional, but think about that for a minute in light of Heideggerian "cosmology"?

I have ample 'acquaintance' with the writings of everyone I listed.

Heidegger's "history" is FASCISTICALLY linear, as a matter of fact. His classicism-cum-ontology was eventually swallowed up by the fucking Nazis, that's how LINEAR in his thinking Heidegger was. WTF are you talking about?

It's not until post-structuralism that we see "linear" history slowly fall apart.

 

[nomadologist]

Thank you for that crucial clarification, O Wise One. We will now shamefully retire to the back of the class until we chronologically rectify the error of our ways.

you just know dssnt went and actually LOOKED UP when leibniz and descartes were writing.

no doubt on wikipedia.

pffff.