So who deleted the pomo posts?
At the suggestion of a mod, I wanted to ask who deleted a couple of, in my opinion, rather inoffensive and deliberately humorous posts I made about postmodernism recently. csalisbury's reply to them was also deleted. We had a bit of a pointed scuffle, to be sure, but no threats or anything untoward occurred.
Comments (94)
You think so? I find a lot more jokes in Derrida than Quine, I must say. Analysis doesn't lend itself to a sense of the absurd, at least in my reading experience. J.L. Austin excepted.
I like Austin, and I know postmodernists use satire, irony, or absurd humour about others.
I didn't read any part of the thread in question, but I wonder why ridiculing French intellectuals is off limits but ridiculing adolescent Americans isn't.
That's the problem, see. People trying to be funny. Didn't you read the guidelines? NO DELIBERATE HUMOR especially at the expense of any schools of thought known to be subject to all sorts of unfortunate and outrageous slings and arrows by privileged, white, male, Americans shites!!!. Who do you think you are, anyway? Why can't you understand the glaringly obvious TRUTH that post-modernism has immense liberatory value to oppressed people attempting to rebalance the power differentials inherent in Euro-technical oppressions exercised upon those afflicted by excessive melanin, estrogen, deficits, and haggis§?
You all can say what you want IF you have cleared it with us pontiffs. Otherwise, just stick to the gayly forward and narrow. And you specifically, just shut TFU about postmodernism already.
§A hideous concoction of low-value meat bits, noxious root vegetables, and horse meal boiled in goat guts. Beloved by the Scots, who else, even if they live in France and have paradis culinaire la porte à côté. (Probably too cheap to eat decent food.) Obviously a product of dour Presbyterian discipline from which they should have long since recovered in this post-modern age.
Yeah, but you think that everything is off-topic if it's not focusing on whatever "point" you personally want to focus on.
Quoting jamalrob
By the way, why did you assume this, since you already know who I am? I posted in the old forum, registering there in 2011 or something like that, and I was already well out of adolescence by then. Perhaps you mean to say that I act like one without being one. In that case, you would appear to have a rather low bar for what counts as such behavior. The main point, however, is that I violated no rules so far as I am aware, so that my posts ought not to have been deleted.
Can I expect any olive branch or are going to remain bitter toward me?
>:O Crank, you are the greatest, I swear!
My post was about comments you make about whether something is on topic or not. My post wasn't about you deleting posts. (And now you'll say that then this makes my comment not on-topic, lol)
Yeah, I'm surprised.
I like to think I would even do that for Ayn Rand. I'm saying that to lay down a public commitment so that, should I come across such things in a serious Rand discussion, I will be motivated to overcome my personal Rand aversion and hold to that lofty principle of moderator ethics.
Interestingly, there hasn't been much Rand discussion here recently. It seems to occur in waves. Or has Randism been supplanted by Trumpism?
I'm not comparing Derrida to Rand by the way. I don't understand Derrida and hence am not in a position to either criticise or support his ideas, whereas I understand Rand much better than I would like to.
Should moderators root out posts in which unreasonable statements are made? Well... probably not. They don't have all day to read and reflect on the degree to which unreasonableness is present in each post. I am inclined to think unreasonable statements should be left alone. Perhaps a trigger warning could be posted. Participants in the thread will certainly thrash out how unreasonable unreasonable statements are.
Personal characteristics are part of the total package. I don't know whether "French intellectuals look like "douches"", nor do I know quite what is meant by a "douche". Something more than a shower, presumably. Perhaps an orifice irrigation device is what was meant. Well, that's odd but it isn't exactly a rare term, these days. Would just an ordinary "asshole" have been ok? I didn't read the post that said so-and-so was upset that [french intellectuals of some sort] smoke pipes. Perhaps the author of the comment thought it an unnecessary affectation. Perhaps? Or perhaps so-and-so is a public health fantastic who thinks pipe smoking is a very bad personal practice.
It sounds more flippant than anything else.
Oh no!
“I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.” Flannery O'Connor
Would this be deletable? It is, after all, pretty disrespectful.
Anyway, yes, let's all be friends again.
What are you on about, BC? I deleted the post for low quality, not because it was disrespectful or humorous.
It would be silly of me of me to say that "French intellectuals look like douches, therefore, what they say is nonsense." That would be an ad hominem. No, I merely offer the observation that they appear as such. I mean, look:
How can you look at these and other pictures with a straight face?
I blame Camus for starting this stupid trend, a writer whom I greatly admire and would not count as a postmodernist. (Am I not impartial?) I think this was the douchey look that started it all:
Again, I love Camus, but he looks like a douche here, and his obscurantist postmodern progeny have unfortunately followed suit in the photograph department. :-|
There have been several comments implying a that there is some sort of 'Thought Police' type of attitude in deleting such comments. Such comments miss the point. The Thought Police didn't just delete your heretical statements. They dragged you off to the Ministry of Love for torture and reprogramming. If anybody thinks that deleting a discourteous interjection to a discussion, with no further repercussions and not even a reprimand, is somehow draconian or lacking a sense of humour I'd love to know why.
To me it's like a heckler complaining that Amy Schumer lacks a sense of humour if their 'Show us your tits!' ejaculation was deleted from the recording of her live performance.
I'm sure we can continue on good terms. You're a good contributor. I honestly didn't think you would get upset or even remark on the deletions at all; I assumed you would have appreciated my reasons and would not have minded.
Dear andrewk, as someone interested primarily in Schopenhauer, I can't tell you how many times I've read, both on the last forum, on this one, and on the Internet at large, comments that seek to discredit his arguments on account of his alleged personal failings. It's one of my perennial frustrations, but these comments are never deleted and nor would I want them deleted.
Unlike said comments, I'm not even trying to advance an ad hominem but am merely poking fun for its own sake. If that's not allowed on a forum, then that forum is far too self-important.
Well there's your problem! Your standards are stratospheric, jamal, sheesh.
Quoting jamalrob
To be honest, I don't all that much, and would not have brought it up were it not for the suggestion of another mod. It's water over the dam now.
But it's not true that it's not allowed on this forum. I do prefer, however, that it is not allowed to derail serious discussions. It's about context.
I feel the same about people interjecting irrelevant comments about Heidegger's Nazi party membership into discussions of his philosophy of being and time, even though I have a dislike for Heidegger the person and do not understand his philosophy.
If you feel that deletion of such interjections is too self-important, that's fine. But if you choose to make a fuss about it, isn't that being rather self-important about your heckles?
By the way, I'm intrigued by this:
Quoting Thorongil
It sounds like you regard the word 'douche' as somehow insulting or disgusting. The only meanings I know of for that word are that it is French for 'shower' and in English refers to the act of washing out a woman's vagina with some fluid, usually introduced by a flexible tube - a practice that was mistakenly believed to help with contraception.
Can you explain how either of these meanings cause the word 'douche' to be an insult?
There are a whole host of examples that are continually brought up. The main one I come across is his not living the ascetic life he so exalts in his philosophy.
Quoting andrewk
That's another great example of what I mean. I would be in favor of making fun of Heidegger for being a Nazi, but I wouldn't claim his philosophy was bunk (if I, too, could understand it) on account of that fact. Another example I just thought of is Wagner. Lots of people won't listen to his music simply because of his anti-semitism. Well, I think his music stinks, but I don't listen to it for that reason, not because he was an anti-semite, which would be silly. All the same, I wouldn't personally report anyone who said such a thing in a comment.
Quoting andrewk
I don't see why it would be, no.
Quoting andrewk
Yeah, in the US, but maybe not elsewhere in the world, calling someone a douche or a douche-bag is basically to call them a smug asshole and someone who's trying way too hard to look cool. So I think a lot of postmodern theorists look like smug assholes in their photos, which they do.
To me, that's his saving grace.
I've always thought this portrait of Kant makes him look like a total nerd:
Of course, there's the other oil painting of him which centers on his forehead that makes him look like a badass.
You damn hedonist.
Here's the pic I posted in my deleted comment. It's schopenhauer. He's posing.
I think what's happened is that smugness has become associated with that style in retrospect, because those philosophers are sometimes considered today to have been part of a smug, affected philosophical tradition. I don't think they look especially smug, myself.
One last one - there's a pipe :-O
Cioran always looks pained and anxious:
Pascal Bruckner is a Frenchman who manages to look normal:
What's he got in his hands, a rifle?
Just trying to work out what is and isn't douchey in the world of Thorongil.
The Ugly Christmas Sweater: From ironic nostalgia to festive simulation
But check out this selfie with Che and de Beauvoir:
(OK probably not a selfie but close enough). There's others with him and Castro too, really cool shit.
I find it difficult to understand (and I don't mean this rhetorically, it's authentically mystifying to me) how you can't see the way in which Schopenhauer and Cioran have clearly taken pains to make sure they are photographed in a certain way so as to enhance their suffering genius-ness.
The only thing I can think is that, maybe, the valorization of the suffering genius is something you hold very dear, so that you're blinded to the kitschy elements of such photographs (the same way a very sentimental grandfather might be blinded to the kitschy elements of Norman Rockwell.)
Anyway, yeah, a lot of French thinkers pose, I agree, but, like, most people pose, even the v smart sadboys what are misunderstood.
Sounds like quite the hunk. I was thinking that maybe the French picked up that look from the American beatniks, but now I see it was the other way around.
#1 Jean-Paul Sartre Was Literally Obsessed With Crabs. Also, Mescaline.
#2 Speaking of Mescaline, Sartre Was Essentially the Junkie Equivalent of an Ubermensch
#3 Soren Kierkegaard Employed an Array of Ridiculous Pseudonyms That Might as Well Have Been Pulled from the Pages of Harry Potter
#4 Albert Camus Really Liked the Central Park Zoo and Credits Soccer With Everything He Knew
#5 Franz Kafka Loved Weird Porno and Paying for Sex
#6 Nietzsche Went Crazy, Saved a Horse from Whipping, and Proceeded to Believe He Was Napoleon (who-- the horse or Nietzsche?)
#7 Simone de Beauvoir’s Work is Still Banned in the Vatican for Being Lesbian Propaganda
#8 Camus Essentially Predicted His Own Death
#9 Dostoyevsky Was Once Seconds Away From Being Executed
David Chalmers
Victoire.
Doing my best French douche.
Too true, too true.
That one makes a whole lot of sense to me. Here I am like a week or two ago after doing a roof, I always have a giant goof expression, and my face is usually obstructed by shadow as I wear a hat because I'm bald, and would prefer to let people assume otherwise until given reason not to, lol.
Lol, oh I am.
Certainly it would be an ad hominem to attack Schopenhauer's philosophy simply because he was a dick - but it really was the case that good ol' Arthur could be a real ass, even going as far as to rip ad hominems on Hegel and co. For example, Schopenhauer has this to say about Hegel:
"An unbiased reader, on opening one of their [Fichte’s, Schelling’s or Hegel’s] books and then asking himself whether this is the tone of a thinker wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan wanting to impress, cannot be five minutes in any doubt. … The tone of calm investigation, which had characterized all previous philosophy, is exchanged for that of unshakeable certainty, such as is peculiar to charlatanry of every kind and at all times. … From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavor to beguile and deceive the reader, first by producing an effect to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in his eyes and mystify him as much as possible."
In other words, Schopenhauer was pissy cause everyone went to Hegel's seminars and nobody went to his own, even though he scheduled them at around the same time. Interestingly enough I think this criticism of Hegel's works can be applied to Schopenhauer's works at times, what with his worship of Kant and his assertions about human development (accurate or not). If tone was all that mattered to truth, then Schopenhauer would be right with his despised nemesis.
He was an elitest, a misogynist, a hypocrite, and he hated his mother (oh my!). None of this touches the validity of his philosophy - but it certainly doesn't paint him in a good light either. No wonder nobody wanted to be associated with him.
(That's Kit Fine)
If only he'd spent less time with women of questionable virtue.
Also this, although I suspect it isn't genuine. The gun looks too modern.
Interestingly, House Speaker Paul Ryan is quite the fervent Ayn Rand acolyte, and also happens to currently be in a nasty tiff with...Donald Trump. Coincidence? I think not...
Yeah, to me, in other photos I've seen he always seems to look like a character out of Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.