Cultural Theory Greatest Hits

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
paul virilio, hyperreality, capitalist realism...

what are the best theories? not the most true ones, the most fun ones. things for being clever on dissensus with.

i don't know anything about it at all, so i don't care how obvious it is.

theories, writers, books, essays. all of it. i want to be like a kid in a candy shop of people reading too much into things. joining fun dots together.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Nothing's ever had greater troll value than Baudrillard's trio The Gulf War Will Not Take Place / The Gulf War Is Not Really Taking Place / The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Nowadays people spoil it a bit by saying "of course Baudrillard acknowledged that bombs were dropped, people died etc, he was just saying that 'the Gulf War' was largely a media spectacle, and what really happened was a rather one-sided succession of applications of US firepower", but this is a bit pacifying - the argument is that our entire social apparatus for grasping and representing reality now deals wholly in simulacra, so the issue is less "what really happened" versus the media image, and more the fact that what really happened, happened to a large extent for and in the media. "Smart bombs" were detonated, and filmed detonating, as much for the sake of the image of their detonation as for the tactical effects of blowing up whatever and whoever they were being used to blow up...
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text is probably my favoritest

a joy to read, broken up in nice little aphoristic short sections, a mind rearranger for me aged whenever it was (21?)

The Lover's Discourse also by Roland is wonderful - similar style and structure - but less applicable to other things as so focused on romantic love
 

luka

Well-known member
Sometimes I think of this stuff, for all that it 'situates itself' in the philosophical tradition, as the
The true inheritor of modernist poetix.
 

luka

Well-known member
D&G attempt the make the kind of knowledge native to literature available to philosophy, and probably bend philosophy out of shape to do so. Not that they are the first or anything, and, like Heidegger is impossible without poetry, but just saying. I think of philosophy as a second order discourse with poetry being the primary discourse. We invent reality, philosophers sniff it and poke it.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I've been reading a few of the Semiotext(e) little black books because you can get them cheap and I used to be intimidated about how cool they were. "Simulations" by Baudrillard is mental and brilliant. D&G is is probably pretty great if you're stoned.

Kodwo Eshun's "More Brilliant Than The Sun" is readable and very Dissensus but has that bonkers edge to it still. (It's there but lurking too far in the background in Blissblogger's books, sorry Blissblogger!)

I'd say for things that are actually useful you can't really go wrong with Paul Gilroy though.

Stewart Home's "Assault On Culture" was a big one for me.
 

luka

Well-known member
I don't understand any of this btw. Not at all. Understanding has never been my strong point. But I do sometimes enjoy reading bits here and there. Lefebvre has a book called rhythmanalysis which should be made for Barty but I'm not convinced it's that good.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
What does useful mean? I don't know this word!

Well I think Gilroy has helped me understand the world.

D&G are essentially wafty nonsense that is a lot of fun but it's hard to quantify exactly what it's for which is also cool. It is basically bonkers pomo marxist psychoanalytical poetry that takes you into a different space.

There is also poetry in what Gilroy does though. :)
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I don't understand any of this btw. Not at all. Understanding has never been my strong point. But I do sometimes enjoy reading bits here and there. Lefebvre has a book called rhythmanalysis which should be made for Barty but I'm not convinced it's that good.

Well I think, like me, you understand some of it. But also like me you lack that confidence to bullshit about this stuff that the philosophy blogger set had in spades.

I think part of that comes from having mates who will take the piss out of you when you go off on one, which is a mixed blessing but probably ultimately good.
 

luka

Well-known member
Well I think, like me, you understand some of it. But also like me you lack that confidence to bullshit about this stuff that the philosophy blogger set had in spades.

I think part of that comes from having mates who will take the piss out of you when you go off on one, which is a mixed blessing but probably ultimately good.

"Grounding"
 
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