Taking Sides: Objective vs. Subjective

so you have allegedly defined a closed system for music analysis? do you have a little dissection kit too? i hope you practice good antisepsis techniques with your stereo.

Closed system? Please. Simply drawn the distinctions which make meaningless the abtruse, frequent, and meaningless debate about intentionality in art.

OK, responding to Phil in the other thread. The main thing you say you're defending, Phil, is that "we have to recognize that the work exists as a bounded entity with specific content, and that that content precludes, or fails to establish grounds for, certain conclusions and critical interpretations." What I'm against is the idea you seem to be expressing that the work stands alone, as far as its meaning is concerned - that it's all contained in the work. I hope you'll agree that it's a fairly uncontroversial point that this is not the case - the stuff (musical, lyrical, etc.) that makes up a piece of music gets its meaning from all kinds of places, candidates for which include: the formal structure of the work, the meanings of words, phrases, and speech inflections, societal standards, biographical information about the performers, personal context the listener brings to the song... all of it. Maybe you'll say that I include too much in there - that there's some smaller subset of those factors that can give us the "objective" base from which all the more personal criticism must flow. But from where, for example, do the cadences in tonal music derive their effectiveness? In part, from the fact that they're well-established as cadences (there's some this-sounds-resolved-to-humans stuff in there as well, but a lot of it has to do with the contingent cultural facts, which one may be more or less aware of). The upshot is that whatever it is you're calling the "objective existence of the work" isn't just pits on a cd, or notes on paper, or whatever. We can't analyze that and say what it means WITHOUT the other stuff you seem to be (? not sure since I don't know what the 'obj existence of the work' is) wanting to demote in importance.

This is NOT the same thing as "believing that anything can mean anything." (But yes - maybe it is. But it takes a LOTTA WORK to change something's meaning like that, the way you seem to be meaning.) All of this other stuff must be negotiated well in order for people to think a criticism of the work comes off OK or not.

The example Phil used of a student defending their own trivial reading of Dante as an example of the evil of absolute relativsm struck me as a bit meaningless actually - of course the student can do this, but even in more gung-ho subjectivist classes if their reading isn't clever and relevant they're not gonna pass the course. People's interpretations usually have to be believable before they become accepted.

That student -- if that's what Dante means to him, if that's how the work impacted him, well, then, you can't tell him how he's supposed to FEEL about something. If I was his prof -- I'd ask him to find those things in the text which led to his reading, then find how the enviornment in which Dante worked and Dante's own authorial existance led to the creation of those things in the text. Then you can read how the *differing* enviornments of production and reception led to this. If we study texts only as they were created, we kill their vitality. If we study texts only as they are read, we kill their independant existence.

Isn't insisting on the validity of your subjective reading of something self-limiting though? Take that leap of faith to build new connections!

Aha! Tarden (now dave p?) raises an excellent point. Does reading = response, or is a "reading" more complex than simply the immediate and visceral response? I think we should differentiate between the two, and use reading to mean the broader, deeper understanding reached when seeking causality for not only YOUR response, but the responses of others as well.

Jesus Christ. Insufferable cunts. Are you not missing the point slightly? Not just the point of music, but the point of, you know, being alive and functioning as a happy, healthy, balanced human being?

Or at least trying to get as near to that state as possible in this fucked-up world.

The 'author' provides the ingredients of meaning, and the 'reader' moulds those ingredients into a form that only they can create, based upon their own individual, unique life experiences and tools of interpretation which arise from those life experiences - ie; subjective interpretation of objective phenomena, or something.

Music, art, film, philosophy, Coronation Street, whatever - these things only have worth if they help you live you life more happily. The is no objectivity in the human consciousness, because it is just that - a consciousness. We are not omniscient, and so objectivity is a crock. All we have to work with is shared territory of emotional responses to things, and our ability to supercede emotional reactions with intellectual thought, and therebye drag ourselves out of savagery.

I'm babbling shit. But so are you lot.

I thought this forum was meant to be about music, not pseudo- intellectual attempts at self-aggrandisement, which is what this looks like to a casual observer.

This is sick.

The Super Furry Animals LP is good, but the Spiritualized LP is much better.

Fuckers.

Heh.

i have a feeling i'm going to be experiencing deja vu soon

'We are not omniscient' - what a fantastic paradox!

I know what you mean.

Sterling:

Not sure if this came from you, but I think two very different things are being conflated on the "subjectivity" side. In the literary world -- (because I hope everyone here realizes that they're having the same debate that's fueled 90% of literary academia for the past fifty years) -- they're differentiated as "Reader-Response Theory" and flat-out "Poststructuralism." They can't both go on the "subjectivity" side as interchangable, and here's why:

"Reader-Response" theory is closer to the kid throwing out the ridiculous interpretation of Dante. It doesn't, as a theory, attempt to validate the kid's interpretation -- it simply posits that the end result or utility of a piece of art is that it provokes a response in an observer, and therefore that response should be the subject of study. It's sort of conducting an objective analysis of a film by watching the audience more than the film. If they, say, gasp, then surprise has been achieved. This cadre would probably argue that the author's intent to create the gasp is somewhat irrelevant to them -- what is important is that here is a piece of art which makes people gasp. You can argue that this isn't a good basis for the study of art, but you can't really argue that it doesn't make sense in and of itself.

The other school -- more along the lines of what Josh was saying -- is probably best summed up by Foucault's (I think) statement that it's impossible to develop a coherent and stable interpretation of any text. This is another one that's sort of self-evident, if you feel like following its logic. Take, for example, Ivanhoe, a straightforward Medieval romance whose imagery somehow became the model for the Klan in the American south. Or Gone With the Wind, which was taken very much at face value upon its publication, but now can't be interpreted without taking into account its depiction of slavery, or would read quite differently in Moscow as compared to Savannah. Or take the fact that while Dickens once read as somewhat lowbrow, he now reads as quite highbrow. Take anything -- the point is that context changes, signification changes, the semiotics of a thing are as bound to change as our culture is. Foucault would say that the interpretation we favor at any given time is simply a function of power and the interpretations of those who weild it. Which is again somewhat self-evident: Gone With the Wind wasn't viewed as potentially offensive until that point at which the mainstream of America became sensitized to such issues, based on a slow process of sociopolitical action introducing that particular "discourse."

When you spend all of your time working through these things in the literary sense -- the amounts of tenure-grabbing writing devoted to these issues are absolutely mind-boggling -- you grow suspicious of anyone who advances a particular critical discourse as the proper one. I prefer to think of each of them -- the two above and the many, many others -- as potential tools for examining a text, all of which can safely be used in congress with one another. It's not as if one of them has to be right.

Oh, and Southall: if you don't like the thread, push off.

But don't be surprised to learn that the vast majority of the decisions that shape the world are predicated on discussions such as this one. Your attitude -- "stop thinking and just do" -- is what makes the world safe for fascism.

I'm with Nitsuh. In this, as in the Breadth v Depth question, it seems like you really want lots of both. But you should try to understand the difference. The "girls with guitars" discussion is particularly plagued, in my opinion, by people claiming that music they don't like (subjectively) is bad (objectively).

I'm a bit concerned that this thread is going to take up far too much of my day off...between that, and the fact that I just woke up, I'm going to try to be concise (ha!).

Josh: Let me try rephrasing my stance in a different way:

The thing that's absolutely indispensable to a critical evaluation (no matter how incomplete) of a work is...the work itself.

If we found a manuscript in the basement of some obscure monastery, written in Latin, of unknown authorship and date, and with no clues as to its origins, we could conceivably engage in worthwhile critical examination of said manuscript. We'd certainly be the poorer for not knowing anything about it beyond what little we could infer, but we've got the work itself. Whereas there are numerous Greek and Latin texts about which we have scads of information -- contemporary criticism, plenty of information about their authors and the times of their composition and the historical context in which they were created and received -- but the works themselves are lost, so no criticism is possible. Unethical writers aside, you can't criticize an album you haven't heard.

Having said that, do I think "the work stand[s] alone"? No. Like the printed word, music is written in a language which must be shared by its audience in order to be fully comprehensible. To use the literary analogy, if you can't read Sumerian, you can't understand Gilgamesh without a translation -- and if you don't know Sumerian idiom, a literal translation won't make much sense. These factors are prerequisites -- things you need to know for the work to be intelligible, and which are implicitly carried with the work (though not, I think, a part of it as such).

The line between what makes a prerequisite, though, and what could be called "helpful/illuminating additional information", is very blurry. It's certainly blurry in literary criticism -- for one, the question of how much you need to know about a work's allusions (or references, etc.) to really understand it has never really been put to rest. Though, of course, it never will be put to rest, because the question implies a false binary -- "really understanding" versus its opposite, "not really understanding". Just because Conductor X doesn't know that the third movement of Composer Z's trombone concerto was meant to be a musical representation of the Holocaust doesn't necessarily mean that X's rendition can't be superior to the more-informed Conductor Y's rendition. On the other hand, if you're reading Renaissance love poetry and you don't know that "to die" often means something rather more pleasant, you're missing an aspect of the reading that's fully intentional and arguably rather crucial -- and any interpretation you're going to make is likely to be largely incorrect. The point is that it's not wholly binary, and that the definition of what constitutes a prerequisite is certainly arguable for any given work.

In music, it's even more difficult to work out, because many of the relationships can be intuitively understood. Musical sound is not inherently representational -- in other words, the pitch sequence A-flat - D - F-sharp does not have a specific representational meaning in the same way that "to die" does -- and the assimilation of a musical vocabulary can be largely, or even (conceivably) entirely, non-linguistic. On top of that, there are certain acoustic relationships which do objectively exist. The role of the fifth in Western music (and many other kinds of music) has its basis in an acoustical phenomenon -- it's not a purely arbitrary thing that it's a normative sonority. The corollary, then, is that there are, in fact, certain things that are extrapolatable from an "alien" piece of music that will never be derived in the same way from an "alien" vocabulary. To put it differently, if we're ever visited by extra-terrestrials, I would be willing to bet a few dollars that, while their spoken communication might be wildly different from that of humankind, their native instrumental folk music would make (or would have, at one time in their history, made) heavy use of fifths and other relationships based on the harmonic series.

I don't think cadences are, in fact, quite as arbitrary or purely contextual as you might think, because I do think they reflect a fundamental acoustical relationship that is implicit in the very act of making sound, and the choice to use them or not to use them tells us something significant about the priorities of a type of music (and arguably its access to techniques of contrapuntal sophistication). Of course the way in which they're used is wholly a product of historical events and the influence of individual composers, etc. -- to claim otherwise (in other words that it's all been teleological and inevitable) smacks of the musical version of Deutschland über alles. But I do think that there is some truth -- though it's a VERY limited perspective -- to the argument that the developments in Western music over the last millennium could be to some extent characterized as an exploration of the higher partials of the harmonic series, and of the normalization of more and more remote relationships therein.

So it's both things, really, set in a permanent dialectical opposition (am I using that phrase correctly?) that is forever irreconcilable, and happily so. The work exists both as a discrete, self-contained entity, AND as a nexus in a vast set of relationships, cultural and otherwise, to its origins and intended audience. (And I use the word "intended" very deliberately: an audience with a certain degree of understanding of the musical signifiers employed in the work. An audience who understands the "language" of the work, if you will, to a greater or lesser extent.)

What do you think?

Nitsuh:

To my mind, what both approaches are missing is the "intended audience" factor. As literary critics, our analysis should be a synthesis of a historical reading, where we interpret the signs and signifiers as we believe them to have been understood by an educated audience of the period, and a contemporary reading, in which we examine the relationship of those signs and signifiers to current mores/views/whatever. It's a dialectical opposition (jeez, I'm going to feel silly if I'm misusing that phrase), out of whose irresolvability comes an understanding that benefits from both readings (and avoids nose-in-the-air foolishness like, for instance, excoriating Shakespeare for racism or sexism).

Or I think so, anyway.

Oh for goodness sake: at work I printed out everything up to "insufferable cunts" in order to catch up with it on the bus home, then actually *spent* the bus-ride home gazing slack-jawed out at the pwitty houses, and now you've all gone and done MORE thinking! (well, more talking anyway, heh...)

Didn't that Southall fellow say that Embrace were GRATE on another thread? That explains a great many things.

Phil,

Sure -- that sort of "context of intended audience" thinking can't be left out of the equation, and at this juncture, I doubt you'd be able to find an undergraduate professor of literature whose work wasn't almost entirely comprised of that sort of New Criticism, close- reading school of analysis. Even de Man or Barthes or Foucault, if placed in a classroom with a bunch of 18 year old potential English majors from Ohio, would start there and work up to the poststructuralism.

But I'd take issue with your statement re: Shakespeare, because it's an attempt to impose your values on another person's analysis. If a person is heavily invested in issues of race and gender and sees Shakespeare's treatment of those issues as worthy of criticism, that isn't, in and of itself, foolish -- it's simply a different reading of the text based on attention to values you're not necessarily interested in. What you seem to be implying is not that such conclusions are indefensible, but that to you, said issues are secondary to Shakespeare's use of language or narrative or et cetera. Which is another perfectly fine argument. But if treatment of race and gender happen to be deal-breakers for someone who's particularly concerned with treatment of race and gender -- and if that person isn't necessarily saying that Shakespeare wasn't a fine poet in other, more linguistic senses -- then they're not necessarily being any more foolish than you. They just happen to care about an aspect of the text that you don't attach as much importance to.

And note that we all have similar deal-breakers. Is anyone on this board going to say, "Sure, Skrewdriver was a Nazi band, but I love their first album for the music?" The "foolish nose-in-the-air" types just happen to have set the deal-breaking bar at a different point than the rest of us.

(addendum)

Again, really, an example of the fact that different readings can co- exist with one another and typically complement one another well. In your dialectical sense, Phil, we get:

(a) Shakespeare's texts are amazing.

(b) Shakespeare's texts are sexist/racist/imperialist/whatever.

(synthesis) Shakespeare lived in a sexist/racist/imperialist culture. Therefore those elements are present and should be noted and disdained in what are otherwise amazing texts.

"Even de Man or Barthes or Foucault":
De Man = not a post-structuralist
Barthes = not a post-structuralist (except insofar as he flourished structuralism for a while then dropped it)
Foucault = not really a post-structuralist, though I suppose sold as one in the early days (which just goes to prove that academic genre-tag fashions are possibly even more specious that techno genre-tag fashions)

(I know this was a shortcut to saying something else, and that PS = a shorthand for the "anything goes/reader trumps writer" mob. But the shorthand is actually a lie, when you get in there and read what any of em done and went and DID.)

As usual, I've read abt a quarter of one post, and that was by me.

Nitsuh,

I basically agree with you. My main objection is to the tendency, in certain critical spheres, to "judge" the moral character of past authors based on things in their work that don't jive with contemporary mores. Every generation has a tendency to believe itself the moral superior of all those that came before -- and history often shows such judgments as smacking of hubris, and the height of arrogance. I guess I'm thinking of, for instance, the first-year lit student who refuses to even read author X because of such factors (let alone being able to read author X historically, and with the abovementioned synthesis!).

If a Shakespearean critic of a high order suggests that certain plays are marred by elements of bigotry or sexism, then that's something that needs to be taken seriously, in part because it's coming from someone who presumably approaches Shakespeare's work with considerable understanding and an at least somewhat sympathetic eye. But as for soapboxing freshmen, I don't particularly care how the work makes them feel (at least in the context of their "judging" said work) until they have taken the time to understand the work on its own terms. I like the axiom that, when it comes to criticism (literary and otherwise), understanding needs to precede judgment: we should come to the great works expecting to learn, not to pass sentence. (Humility, baby!)

I also think that most "deal-breakers" can be expressed in terms of the success or failure of the work itself, without necessarily needing to invoke contemporary (i.e. current) mores. For instance, the Nazism that you cited is not just evil, but also intellectually bankrupt, which tends to make works based on its premises flawed from the start. A book written by a virulent racist or sexist will tend to describe certain characters in terms that destroy the verisimiltude of the book, and thus damage the interest of the narrative -- partly because, unlike prior generations, we do have the direct experience to know that group A does not, in fact, conform to stereotype B, and that (for instance) women don't generally swoon if you don't deprive them of oxygen with ridiculously tight corsets, so any plot which would depend on one's metaphysical certainty that women are "like that" is probably not going to age well. (If those references don't show up, it probably won't be much of a problem. Happily, not every Hemingway book is full of anti-homosexual polemics.)

I think that's technological progress and social change, though, and not necessarily moral improvement. Not that I'm saying that we haven't made progress -- I think we have. But I suspect it's best for future generations to decide how well we hold up against our predecessors.

So I agree with your addendum, though I might not use the word "disdained". I guess it depends on the egregiousness of the passages in question. My own preference is to see it, acknowledge it, recognize that it's incompatible with my own moral outlook and doesn't correlate with the world-as-I-know-it, try to understand why Shakespeare (for instance) wrote it and where he was coming from, evaluate the extent to which it undermines his credibility and why I feel that way -- and then, move on.

Phil,

That's a pretty good model for appreciating literature as an individual. Those other considerations, however, become important when people attempt to build a canon, and I think that's why these debates rage among academics and no one else: those who teach literature have to make important distinctions about what is worth teaching and what is not, and the "approach it on its own terms" begins to fail here. (You can't approach everything on its own terms, as you don't have time; you have to select that which is most "valuable.") And if you're reading from a canon-building viewpoint that is invested in certain moral issues, they become a perfectly valid basis for selection.

The other thing to remember -- the most important thing, really -- is that those sorts of critiques of literature aren't about literature in the sense that we normally think of it. Someone approaching Shakespeare from a feminist perspective, for example, shouldn't be seen as simply opposed to traditional readings of Shakespeare, because what he/she is doing is completely different: it is a very specific reading of how Shakespeare's texts fit into the intellectual history of sex and gender. If you go to an optometrist, you don't expect him to complement your cardiovascular condition or anything, do you? He's looking at your eyes.

Mark: I'm sure my tagging's completely off; I'm not particularly well-read in these areas. I was thinking of specific slogans, really: Barthes' "author is dead" and Foucault's "impossible to develop a coherent and stable interpretation." De Man, I think, just followed on all of the Nazi talk above. :)

Oh, plus, Phil: I'm not convinced that any artist working within an "intellectually bankrupt" worldview will necessarily create art that is bad in other respects, particularly with respect to things other than novels. In fact, I see absolutely no evidence of that. Elements of that "intellectually bankrupt" worldview may well be visible within their work, but as per your previous arguments, those elements may well be subordinate to their accomplishments in other areas.

My best example of this: Yukio Mishima. An excellent writer / a crazed nationalist. I wince when I read certain passages, but I cannot deny that however bankrupt his worldview, it is expressed with unparalelled precision and grace.

And I was just being an !|\|z|_|ff3r4bl3 z£1f- 466r4|\|d!z!|\|6 cu|\|+, cuz I'm too lazy to argue with/about the "big" stuff on a nice hot day like today, w. big brother only 20 mins off, so I pick teeny tiny holes in the non-relevant stuff instead. Yay me!!

Is anyone on this board going to say, "Sure, Skrewdriver was a Nazi band, but I love their first album for the music?"

Didn't I say this, in the Skrewdriver thread? If not, I meant to.

Anyone who holds the opinion that Embrace are great obviously has a finely tuned radar to all things passionate and true, as well as a having a discerning ear. Whereas anyone who holds the opinion that to "stop thinking and just do" -- is what makes the world safe for fascism might wonder whether that might be a tad oxymoronic? For these after all, *are* opinions.

If logic were the only weapon against fascism, then yes, Mr Southall would indeed be little help. But it's not. Nitsuh was snippy towards NS because NS shot his mouth off v. extremely rudely w/o actually reading (let alone understanding) any of what he was denouncing.

"Whereas anyone who holds the opinion that to 'stop thinking and just do' -- is what makes the world safe for fascism might wonder whether that might be a tad oxymoronic?" Elegant irony works better when it goes hand-in-hand with semi- adequate grammar: a sad reflection of a class-bound world.

My apologies for being illiterate and stupid. But I try me bestest.

I didn't say you were stupid. I thought you were over-ambitious.

Mo,

I realized that sounded a bit ambitious as soon as I posted it, but I decided not to correct because I honestly believe it's true. You say they're just "opinions," but that's not the case -- what Mr. Southall was criticizing was the fact that some of us even have opinions on certain matters, matters he deems to "pretentious" or "pseudo-intellectual" to merit any thought whatsoever. If that's qualifies as an opinion -- that whole "you shouldn't even talk about such things" argument -- it's not by more than a few millimeters.

It's essentially asking people to just react to things (e.g., "the new Spiritualized is good") as opposed to putting any critical thought into why they have the reactions they do. I'm not arguing that people should approach every since moment of their lives critically, but it certainly seems ridiculous to tell people not to, especially with regard to something as far-reaching and influential as the way we develop artistic canons.

As for fascism: isn't that lack of critical thought essential to the emergence of fascism, or totalitarianism in any form?

In any case, if Mr. Southall drops by again, here is the consequence of his logic:

Something has to be taught in literature courses. People are paying for them, after all. Please tell us, Mr. Southall, without recourse to any of the modes of speech you found so offensive here, how those decisions should be made? And please tell us how you'd defend your system against the inevitable objections of others?

Just noticed Southall's comment about "our ability to supercede emotional reactions with intellectual thought, and therebye drag ourselves out of savagery."

Which makes me think the post that started this whole argument was the oxymoronic one . . .

Granted, Mr Southall has a confrontational style. However, on something as ephemeral as the internet, it's all grist to the mill isn't it? It is for this reason that I put it down to opinion as opposed to orthodoxy.

Fascism: I have always been led to believe that fascism/totalitarianism was down to bigotry and intolerance. Unless all fascistic leaders have no critical faculty? In which case I am not qualified to comment.

Something has to be taught in literature courses. People are paying for them, after all. : This is hard for me to comprehend. I graduated in 1988 and I hope that most if not all that I was taught was intended to further my understanding of the physical world. In 1988, the UK had no student loans system nor tuition fees.

Nitsuh's distinction early on up there is a good one, and as he says, I'm shooting for the "impossible to develop a coherent and stable interpretation of any text" one. Because of that, I'm also suspicious of what Glenn hints at - that the distinction is merely one of "subjectivity" (raw "I do [not] like this") vs. "objectivity" ("it's good despite what anyone things"). Subjectivity in Glenn's sense is one of the things that infects, if you will, "objectivity" - which is additionally suspect because of the "coherent and stable" objection above.

What Phil goes on to say about parts of a work that are prerequisites for intelligibility seems solid to me, if hard to apply in practice. The talk that follows makes me think that I've couched my objection in the wrong terms, because what Phil is really peeved about is people "overinterpreting," offering criticisms that are not warranted somehow by the "work itself." I'm sympathetic to this; as someone who does philosophy of mathematics, I'm especially annoyed by people who use Godel's Incompleteness theorem to draw rash conclusions about things, because the matter of what exactly the theorem says or warrants us to say, beyond statements about sufficiently complex formal systems, is totally unclear - and most people overlook or deliberately obscure that lack of clarity. But my objections there are ones that carry different weight because of the fields involved: many of the arguments are, loosely, part of the domain of science, where the goals of argument include truth, accuracy of prediction, increased knowledge, etc. I'm not wholly convinced that the same holds for criticism of art.

Whether or not it does or not, it's important to recognize that a lot of criticism functions under the assumption that its goal is to somehow illuminate the work - not simply so that it can be appreciated more "correctly," but so that it can be better appreciated, in some way. This is a feature of both the extreme slash-and-burn kind of criticism Phil disapproves of, and of apparently more traditional criticism that tells us about the emotional effectiveness of a work, tells us why it's good, etc. A lot of criticism doesn't just talk about the formal content of a work, or what's on the lyrics sheet: it functions on the affective and metaphorical level. The main reason Phil seems to disapprove is that, as already mentioned, he doesn't think that the "work itself" warrants appreciation in these "other" ways. But as Nitsuh has pointed out, whether or not you think so depends on what things you value. Your values may be relatively neutral or standard in the greater cultural context, so it may not seem that you're doing so. Perhaps there's an important difference of degree, or kind; but I think you're doing the same thing as a feminist who "reads" the Ninth as a rape - she's just approaching it with a completely different set of values. I'm also sympathetic to Phil's objection, because it's this sort of criticism, especially in literature, that really bothers me. But I think Phil's argument is misguided, because I think it should probably be directed at the values the critic brings to the table: argue which ones he or she should be bringing, whether or not they're appropriate to the art form, etc. Phil already does something of this, when he talks about how intellectually bankrupt worldviews will "poison" a work (that's more complex, though, because it seems to allow Phil to avoid having to decide whether or not to value the art work "proper" over its moral aspects, by holding to a metaphysical/aesthetic principle that makes sure the bad moral aspects will always lead to bad - or at least worse - art). Hopefully it's not too obscure to say that the aforementioned feminist is doing much the same thing. Becuase of the lack of text (words proper this time, not a postmodern "text"), though, her criticism may seem a bit more far fetched because the moral and social principles behind it may be a lot more abstractly metaphysical - harder to pin down than just a song whose lyrics condone killing Jews, which we already believe to be wrong (the metaphysical baggage is sort of deemphasized).

Nitsuh has already said a lot of this I suppose but I just wanted to come at it from a slightly different angle. I think one key distinction that may need to be opened up is "what is criticism for?" - I suspect Phil wants it to be something sort of different from what I want.

Where to start...

Fascism. OK, while you lot sit around on your arses all day pontificating meaningless shit that is at best tangential to real life and at worst an excuse for avoiding it, I'll be outside campaigning against the BNP. Don't criticise my attitude when you don't know what it is. Fascism... Hmmm. Lovely word. Brings out the reactionary in people. Intellectual bigotry is closer than you think to it.

As for critical faculties and functions, I'm somewhere between Nietzsche and Heidegger on this one. A society is a rabble until it has a table of values, and one must make one's own table of values in order to balance oneself, to make oneself something other than an internal rabble. And I'm also rather fond of the idea of realising the nature of one's existential reality and self, the existence of Dasein, and the critical engagement with all aspects of one's existence. Because I think, in a roundabout way, that Neitzsche and Heidegger are heading towards the same thing, which is some kind of profound awareness of oneself and one's capabilities as an individual.

What would I like to see on literature courses? Keats and Blake, maybe. I don't care at the moment. I've just acquired £8,000 worth of debt getting a degree in Culture and Philosophy, so education is not one of my priorities at the moment. I'd try and slip back into that academic mind-set just to write something condescending and pious back, but I can't be arsed. I really can't. I keep seeing car crashes on a stretch of road I use every day, I keep reading obituaries of people I went to school with, I keep getting phone calls from african friends of mine in Stoke, worried about their safety because of rioting. And you're talking about 'objectivity versus subjectivity' like it matters?

Fuck.

Right.

Off.

I don't see how this is unimportant. I don't see why contributing to this thread would make person X unable to do anything you consider 'important', like campaigning against the BNP. I do see how Embrace are unimportant though.

I think you'll find that a lot more is important to, as far as I know, all of the people involved in this discussion, than you seem to think. What do you do in your spare time? Are you always out waving signs on protest lines? I doubt it. This is what I like to do with my spare time, because it's important to me. If that doesn't sit well with you, then may I respectfully say, don't read the thread if it irks you that much. Go protest; you're obviously wasting your time sitting at your computer, when you could be out gaining profound awareness of your self.

And you're talking about 'objectivity versus subjectivity' like it matters?

Ah, yes. So: car crashes matter, and are Real Life. But trying to understand music, and the way we think about it, doesn't and isn't.

I'm sure the three close friends from high school I've lost to auto accidents would agree with you. Especially since all of them were musicians, and certainly agreed that car crashes, and oh-so-charming-and-hip nihilism like your own, were More Important, and More Real Life, than the music they loved, and loved to talk about, and loved to try to understand.

If you really believe that philosophy and music don't matter, and rioting and car crashes are What's Important, then you'll no doubt get exactly the kind of life you deserve.

Not much more to add to what Josh and Phil have said, except that it truly *is* terribly interesting seeing how somebody who has only encountered the rest of us via a computer screen knows exactly what we are all about, is content to stereotype everyone, and in general replicates the attitude of all he claims to hate while pleading special dispensation because he thinks he is unique in feeling anger and angst. How quaint! How remarkable!

The forum was designed for discussion of the title topic -- attempts to complain that the forum was not designed for another topic in mind are by default laughable. Either participate on those grounds or, as Josh said, participate in other activities that would appear not to offend your sensibilities. I should idly note that there's no doubt a chat room off somewhere currently discussing N'Sync or something which would benefit from your going in there and lecturing to them about why they're not paying attention to what you're currently suffering.

Maybe N. Southall is re-framing the objective v. subjective debate in terms of important v. non-important. Interesting area to explore, if anyone here believes art is informed by artist's politics (and how said politics are expressed), which most people seem to.

i can't really add much more to what josh et al have already said, but, on a personal level, i think discussions like this, and discussions about music, and books etc etc are very important. its part of who i am, part of my life. the personal, and the specific, is always important.

as to objectivity vs subjectivity, i've always come down heavily on the side of subjectivity, and believed objectivity to be a minefield best avoided. i'm not sure how strongly i hold this view though, there's a wealth of fascinating stuff above, that i'm going to have to print off and read on the tube on the way home (too much to digest while at work!)

I'm still intrigued by Phil's mentioning of feminist readings of Shakespeare - I'd never assumed that an analysis of the text using the tools of patriachy was the motivation here; rather, vice versa, being the analysis of patriachy using the tools of the text. Shakespeare and the chosen work are not the subject so much as the device, so the end result (Shakespeare = sexist) is not as damning as it might initially seem.

Not to spend too much time on this:
i. Nick S: if you arrive all tooled up, and yell, "You are all insufferable pseudo- intellectual cunts for even daring to contribute an opinion to this topic and by the way here is MY OPINION which is self- evidently intellectually superior to anything you totalitarian bigots could possibly say," then you are going to encounter disrespectful response. Some places you would get dealt with quite roughly. It is silly and rude to accuse foax of faults that you then go on to demonstrate in identical or greater measure. ("self- aggrandising": yeah, right, ALL of us, but absolutely never ever you, Mr Somewhere Between Heidegger and Nietzsche...)
ii. Nitsuh is correct: use of the word "pseudo-intellectual" is at root a fascist spasm. It says "You [i.e. 'us', in this case] are absolutely not entitled even to attempt to participate in this activity. It is beyond your reach." Well, we ARE entitled, and you are not going to bully us into shutting up. You are also entitled, naturally. But if you simply pepper your contributions with whiny insults, then people will ignore you.

I think Mr Southall, in his own rather vitriolic and semi-incoherant way, is merely using this forum to vent spleen at the world in general, and has probably had his obvious anger and disillusion with the world compounded by the gross intellectual onanism that pervades this forum like a fart in a crowded lift.

Coming from the standpoint of a (largely) objective observer, I have to concede that it does seem rather sad for people to become so obsessed with dry and intellectual dissections of cultural phenomena, which seemingly manage to hoover (or Dyson, if you're posh) up all the passion, wonderment, and excitement out of the object of your discourse.

I quite like hazlenut chocolate. Analysing the chemical reactions of hazlenut chocolate on my tastebuds in an attempt to understand why I like it seems to me to be rather odd and futile, in much the same way as Baudrillard attempting to utilise mathematical formulae to explain cultural phenomena strikes me as being rather pointless and irrelevent. Isn't half the joy of these things derived from the mystery, from the lack of reason or logic that governs our idiosyncratic tastes?

And to accuse Mr Southall of being a 'nihilist' when he so clearly cares very passionately about something (though I'm not sure even he knows what) would appear to be simply erroneous.

As for fascism, well... I don't think that's something many, or probably any, people here are really qualified to talk about, unless one of us actually is a fascist, and cares to reveal their reasoning behind this, shall we say, 'lifestyle choice'.

I don't imagine we'll be hearing from Mr Southall again anyway. He obviously doesn't 'fit in' here, and to allow someone different from ourselves into the I Love Music clique would be unthinkable. I for one hate people who are different and passionate. They're so awkward to deal with.

Objective observer, hmm? I guess it's lucky for you that you're coming in from a dynamic IP address, so I can't really tell if you and Nick are both posting from AOL in the UK.

This forum encompasses, thanks to its varied and excellent posters of all sorts, a very disparate bunch of tastes in music and ways of talking about music. There are plenty of people around here who don't like (whatever) about other people around here - but they get along well. Of course most of us tend not to come raging into a thread calling everyone on it an insufferable cunt. And usually when people get out of hand they post some kind of apology, under their own e-mail address. And resisting the urge to slip in more snide remarks.

Apology?

OK, I'm sorry for barging in and calling everyone cunts.

But to suggest that I am a nascent fascist, or that my attitude is one that allows fascism to grow, is well out of order.

And you are all dull bastards. Insufferably dull.

And probably crap at sexing.

I wonder if astronomy forums ever get posters saying, "Who gives a shit how far away Proxima Centauri is! Stars look nice in the night sky! Quit jerking off with telescopes, you cunts!"

Crap analogy.

y'know how i said i had a feeling i was going to be experiencing deja vu soon? it's beginning to set in pretty much now

Yes, I know what you mean Gareth. "Passion", eh?

Well done, kids. You know I'm rooting for you.

1. Can I have a gold star for having been the first person attacked by the odious Southall?

2. 'Intellectual onanism' - o!! if only it were that much fun. But it is fun all the same.

3. The word 'fascism' crept on to this thread quite unnecessarily. It's a word that hangs around and disfigures debate by its Extremity and making people fink that This Is Important, Comrades. Can't debate about fascism go on a Fascism thread? I promise not to use the word again (having never, I think, used it on ILM; it is largely a red herring *in relation to the things we usually discuss*).

4. Mark S went out of his way to say that Paul de Man, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault were not post-structuralists. This seems a bit like saying that Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix and, um, Pete Townshend don't make Rock Music.

5. The Objectivity / Subjectivity question is real - it's a dilemma, a dialectic, a differend, or what you will. It is worth thinking over in the detailed, serious way that Phil and Josh (and others) are doing; and - to echo what Josh and I said on the Human Nature thread - it *should not be prematurely foreclosed*. We ought to try and think through these terms / concepts / modes before jettisoning either of them. Or: we ought to think about their apparent indispensibility (certainly their enduring quality) before thinking that we can dispense with either. I don't think that there is a quick way out of the duality here; and maybe we shouldn't want one. In this sense I possibly agree with - of all people - Glenn McDonald.

The only reason I'm odious today is because I'm playing football tonight, and haven't bothered to shower this morning.

That's a pun, by the way...

Oh, and...

Back to analogies.

Perhaps a better one would be to say - "I wonder if people who love their pet cats cut them up with knives to see what the component parts that inspire the affection look like."

That's a dreadful analogy, as the analysis ILM posters indulge in doesn't destroy the object being analysed.

My point is precisely that it does.

Not physically destroy the wax or plastic disc or the magnetic tape, but certainly detract from effects that the contents have, ie; the joy / pain / boner / whatever that people get from listening to music because they like it because it moves them.

Which I see as rather blasphemous. And which makes me angry. Hence I swear and am rude.

but certainly detract from effects that the contents have, ie; the joy / pain / boner / whatever that people get from listening to music because they like it because it moves them.

this could be true, of that i have no doubt. but what if partaking in analysis or discussion of stuff you love didn't detract? for example, i like talking about music (hey i even post to an music message board!), but it doesn't detract for me on a personal level. obviously, i cannot generalise from this, but i like discussing the things i like (i imagine others here do to). i spose the only way out of this is for the ones who enjoy discussing to discuss, and the ones who enjoy not discussing not to discuss.

Analysing music doesn't ruin it for me.

Oh but Nick, most (possibly all) of the people you've attacked above have expressed various and extraordinary enthusiasm for music of various kinds, on this board and elsewhere. For your argument to work, you'd surely have to demonstrate that their love (or whatever) has been destroyed or corrupted, no?

If the kind of analysis above destroys your love for music, then staying away may be your best choice. I don't mean to sound rude, but if the kind of talk above threatens your happiness in that way, you should steer clear.

Evidently. I'm certainly considering staying away.

Music, I feel, should be something to enrich life, and should largely be relevent to life and about life (but not exclusively).

And part of life is humour and silliness and irreverence. Well, a large part of my life is anyway.

And it does seem so insufferably serious and humourless here.

Angels take themselves lightly, and that's why they can fly.

Oh well.

sp: 'relevant'.

pinefox, that really is very naughty...

There aren't really many threads like this on this board, and there is plenty of silliness (even more on the sister board).

Are you thinking that your puckish and witty presence here will shock people into behaving differently?

Are you really saying that if people enjoy thinking about music differently to the way you think about music, you consider it blasphemous and you get angry? Is that the time when you take yourself lightly and fly like an angel? Or is that another time?

Oh, you *South* Devonians.

Yeah, perhaps you should try the other 'I love...' board, that's way sillier than this one.

No it's not, Pinefox. And in order to persuade me, you have define "post-structuralist' for me in such a way as to include these three theorists (and structuralism, if you like!!). Bearing in mind that I think it is an ill-formed concept in the first place: almost as utterly manky and meaningless as p•st-m•dern. But you can do it in your own time, and you don't have to do it on ILM, since it will apparently crush Mr Southall's kitten.

"Pseudo-intellectual" as a dismissive group description is as unacceptable as "fascist".

Implying I can't be irreverent about the music I love is pure idiocy on Southall's part. That makes me madder than anything other spew he's said. As for cat@thehat.com and all, maybe this is just doompatrol once again having fun. Poorly.

If it is, and I honestly don't think so, then we know who he is now, as he's given us his website. I think this rules out NS as DP, considering how DP liked to cackle about how we'll never know who he is etc...

Fucking hell, Nick's site is depressing.

It may interest Nick to know that, while taking part in many "serious", "intellectual", "analytical" threads on these forums, I have also been so committed to political protest and action to actually confront the Tories head-on by mounting a counter- demonstration at their conference last year.

But I suspect Nick won't notice or care. He's too busy being a Fearless Genius.

MS: well - I could attempt to define 'post-structuralist', but shall not do so. The point about the term, from my POV, is not that it Means anything precise and cogent, but that it gestures at a bunch of ideas, people, books and dates. What is poetry? Oh, it's what you find in Shelley and Yeats. What is post-structuralism? Oh, you know - have a look at S/Z, Blindness & Insight and Revolution in Poetic Language...

This is not simply me being evasive (though I do have to run). I think you do understand, really, that this is how a lot of words work. My original point was, roughly: if these Defining Names Of Post- Structuralism aren't P-S, then what / who is?

None of this amounts to a) a claim that P-S is good; b) a claim really to understand the relevant texts, much or all of the time; c) a claim that P-S is a cogent concept or a body of works which all add up to one argument; or even d) a claim that P-S is a useful word which we all ought to go around and use often as possible. If you would rather call Barthes something else (an Aesthete, a Cultural Phenomenologist, whatever), then I'll be interested. My point is just that, for good or ill, P-S is what he and the other names mentioned have been called so often that that is what they are. Or rather, They are what It is.

Where is this Nick link again? I wish to partake.

You know, I should have said "totalitarian" instead of fascist, just to keep things a little calmer. But we all see what I meant, right? That if people are ordered not to think critically about a given topic, they're bound to accept whatever they're offered, and they'll be unable to come up with coherent, defensible alternatives to it? I mean, I imagine Southall in earlier centuries shouting down abolitionists or suffragettes: "What's all this pseudo-intellectual babble about the humanity of Africans and the ethics of slavery and the philosophical basis of natural rights to representation? Life's about fun, people!"

Not to mention the fact that placards or no, you're not going to get very far against the BNP without developing coherent and deep-down defensible arguments about precisely these sorts of issues. The sheer political force of belief and numbers is a powerful thing, but it's ten times more potent when backed up with an equally powerful philosophical system.

The hazlenut and cat analogies are both deeply flawed in countless, countless ways. The cat one could be improved if we pretended that we were all planning to buy a cat, but disagreed on what sort of cat we wanted, and were discussing the specifics of that disagreement to figure out what kind of cat would make everyone happiest in the end. Although that's still leagues off.

Nitsuh: I admire your posts and don't fundamentally disagree with this one, so I hope it won't seem picky if I say that I am not totally convinced that

>>> you're not going to get very far against the BNP without developing coherent and deep-down defensible arguments about precisely these sorts of issues.

The response that springs to mind is hand-me-down Rorty: ie. well, those arguments might do some work, but they might not. They'll only be 'deep-down defensible' if a lot of folk say they are. And even if they are (in your or my view) 'deep-down defensible', will that mean owt in a Concrete Rhetorical / Political Context? Lots of us may think that arguments vs. Faceless Corporations, Third World Dept and Nuclear Stockpiles are deep-down defensible. Maybe they are - it would be nice to think so. But if they are, that doesn't seem to be helping them make a lot of headway vs a system which is not too bothered by them.

This is not suppose to be a counsel of cynicism, or a claim that nobody should ever develop arguments, or whatever. I'm probably just nitpicking. If I have a large point it is: however sure you are of the correctness of your argument, it may still not play that well politically. What plays politically is a rhetorical / strategic / pragmatic / contingent matter (etc). I apologize if this is too Rortyan. If you think it's wrong, then - good!

I'm finding a new alehouse.

Goodbye.

You are all asexual.

TIMMY

Ooh, I wonder who Timmy is. I bet he'll make a lot of worthwhile contributions in the future.

It's www.lushalcoholsaint.co.uk, Ned. I know, it's tragic ...

blah blah blah blah...

Quick! Everyone go to his forum and be rude to him!

Not wanting to be vindictive (well, okay, maybe just a little), but I note with interest the bibliography for Southall's essay on postmodernism and music:

The Procession Of Simulacra; Jean Baudrillard and Popular Music And Postmodern Theory; Andrew Goodwin and On Popular Music; Theodor W. Adorno All contained within Cultural Theory And Popular Culture; A Reader, Second Edition; Edited by John Storey; Prentice Hall Europe, 1998. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic Of Late Capitalism; Fredric Jameson; Verso, 1991. Nobrow; John Seabrook; Methuen, 2000. The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way); Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond; KLF Publications, 1988. Intellectual Impostures; Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont; (English translation) Profile Books, 1998. Cool Rules; Anatomy Of An Attitude; Dick Pountain and David Robbins; Reaktion Books, 2000. The Society Of The Spectacle; Guy Debord; (English translation) Zone Books, 1995. Subculture, The Meaning Of Style; Dick Hebdige; Routledge, 1979. No Logo; Naomi Klein; Flamingo, 2000.

Yeah, it's all about the music, maaaaaan.

How can you claim to TRULY love a cat if you don't want to cut it up and see what's inside it...

Yeah yeah yeah.

That essay was an extended version of one I had to write for my degree course, and was the penultimate essay of my academic career (and probably life).

I got one mark off a first for it, incidentally.

Yes, I have read all those articles and books in the bibliography, and yes, I can engage in intelligent and lucid critical discourse if I choose to.

I just don't see the point. It doesn't help me understand or appreciate music particularly.

How come none of you have had the guts to post on my messageboard then? If you're willing to slag off my record collection and a bibliography for an essay?

Who the fuck slags off a bibliography? Strikes me as being a bit sad.

I propose we decamp from this tetchy thread and MAKE A NEW NICE FRIENDLY START elsewhere. Reasons posted at length on STROKES thread (seeing as little of worth will happen there in.ref. Strokes themselves).

Or we could kick-start the discussion OBJECTIVITY AND THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED: if people get pissed off by the very IDEA of objectivity (ignoring politeness of expression of said rage) isn't this IN ITSELF a BIG OLD WARNING FLAG against the helpfulness of objectivity as an explanatory device?

Mark: sorry, I have to disagree somewhat with your last point. Yes, Objectivity seems to bug people, seems unworkable, etc. But there is also something seemingly 'unavoidable' about it: it is part of the structure of our thinking about Value. We have, I think, to persist trying to think Obj. and Subj. together, as far as we can. That's roughly what I meant above, in saying that the debate or duality must not be foreclosed upon.

OK: put it a better way. The anger generated is not just some epiphenomenon that can be placed on one side untiol the discussion is concluded (the way some economists treat enviromentmental degradation as an "external" in the perfect running of a free market system); it is THERE and it is as REAL as anything actively intended by the artist so-called in contact with the objective whatever-hood of his work so-called. (Epater-the-B gets all muddled up with this, I think...)

ie. the anger generated by talk of Objectivity? OK, fine - I think I agree. But so is the confusion, the uncertainty, the giddying loss of grounds and seeming loss of coherence produced by discarding all claim to Objectivity. So that should be in the mix too?

Again, I am not trying to defend the standards of Obj. vs the barbarians of Subj. - or vice versa. I'm saying that we seem destined to think our way between or around both poles for a good while yet.

No, I agree abt that. Part of prob (possibly) = insistence on discussion of OBJ vs SUBJ in LANGUAGE of OBJ = seemingly hardwiring the debate from the off.

I have found GRATE QUOTE delivered by one of Logical Positivists (Carnap?) abt why sex = rubbish and perfected machine-future will deliver us from messy same. Didn't Moritz Schlick get gunned down on college steps in Love Triangle Shocker? Things you don't get taught when studying THE PHILSOPHY OF SCIENTIFIC LOGIC as a nignorant young'un....

barbarians = MEN WITH BEARDS: where is T.Ewing skulking? Uh, what is this hair on my own face? AAARGH! AAARGH! AAARGH!

When you've finished shaving, I wonder if you could find time to say sth about what you mean by 'Language of Objectivity' (hardwiring debate etc). I have a Rortyan interpretation of this idea, but I doubt that that's what you imply.

Computers and other machines are objective. Software and humans are subjective. That's about all I can think of to say, fortunately or unfortunately.

This thread had the promise of greatness. I think it's a real pity how it's been derailed, or perhaps (less inflammatorially) been left to rust in a siding.

Objectivity: a slap on the face. Subjectivity: your reaction. The Stoics were quite clear on the difference: that much personal pain and agony cd be avoided by heeding yr subjective reaction, analyzing it, slicing it like a cat, and so destroying it, in order to see the slap for what it is, and possibly the slapper's intent ("The Slapper's Intent" - new band?) Subjectivity = irrational passion to be called out and discarded. I agree with the Stoics right up to the discarding part, because I think the reaction to the slap remains useful even after one has identified it. Why? Hrm.. I'll let you lot help me out w/that.

I had an enormous argument w/previous housemate that v. nearly became Serious and Emotional abt this very subject. Stemmed from famous incident several years ago where 2 mathematicians write an utterly uninformed text/critique/poem, created sui generis as a parody of modcult writing, submitted it to Famous Modcult Periodical, which accepted it, proving (to the mathematicians) intellectual bankruptcy of all LitCrit scrawlings. (Lessons mathematicians ought to have drawn = parody has its internal logic; anyone can do theory, even them; attempts to be nonsensical ALWAYS FAIL)

Anyway, our argument was abt either Avital Ronell or Luce Irigaray - both extremely poetic yet extremely rigorous thinkers, both take "cross-disciplinary" approach to new heights (or lows, depeding on yr POV) - one of them at some point says that E=MC2 is a "patriarchal" formula. My housemate = gobsmacked. HM: "Patriarchal?? It's simply describing the universe! It's a physical verite!" ME: "But she's making a point." HM: "About what?" ME: "The exactitudes of science... erm..." HM: "But it is exact! It holds up! It's not famous for nothing!" I remember having lots of smart stuff to say in Irigaray/Ronell's defense but can remember none of it.

Subjectivity is a weapons test site, the experimental failures rot away irradiating everything slowly while the successes are used as prototypes

Tracer, you sure you're not thinking of Sokal's (a physicist) submission (essay) to Social Text?

That does sound like the Sokal thing to me. It almost caused a serious ruction with one of my flatmates as well. Not particularly about the article (which proved a whole lot of not very much), but concerning Irigaray's views on science. I think Cixious' name cropped up as well wrt to some over-egged analogy of vaginas with something (in my eyes) utterly unrelated. The argument stopped dead when I started ranting about over-extended metaphors and was then accused of being an essentialist. Cue lots of shouting...

Yes, he is. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't let this turn into a thread on The Sokal Affair.

Regarding the pinefox and mark on unavoidability of obj. talk, hard-wiring of obj./subj. dichotomy: at the beginning of one of his books, forget which one, Michael Dummett talks about various kinds of realism and antirealism, understood broadly, and about how antirealist critiques of realist positions have typically been bundles of smaller critiques, not always totally related. The realist positions are often a lot more monolithic = thus hard to dislodge. Realist here = objective, of course, and antirealist = subjective.

sp.: 'siouxsie'

!!!

May I have this dance Miss Death?

And also, I read your post in the Strokes thread, Mark, and a) no, I was never under the impression that Nick was anyone else, I just thought he was being extremely rude. He provoked the reaction he earned all on his own. b) "Sorry" (not really) for talking like a graduate student, but it sort of my thing. The reason I wanted to have this discussion was to get a better feel for where Phil stands, since I respect his thinking on music even though it's got some differences from mine. If what I'm tossing out sounds a little too received, well, you've got 20 years on me.

Um - "What Josh Said".

I'd be sad if this thread ended because I haven't really posted on it. And I'd be sad if Nick left the board, because I think he has something to teach me.

But I for sure disagree with Nick about one thing. In my opinion there aren't nearly enough attempts at self-aggrandisement in this thread.

I like my version w/the 2 mathematicians. Don't spoil my fantasy! How about: objectivity = the details; subjectivity = the POINT

Re: Phil's discreteness theory of art as an object swaying in a network of associations: yes, I think I agree. Last year I was at O'Connor's (really), Spike was playing one of his 1,000,000 tapes of old TV loops, when it hit a section of sambo-style blackface cartoons. Some at our table were NOT happy about this. The same people who, several months later, were eager to see a different Spike's "Bamboozled" and described to me the closing credits, behind which run clips of old blackface routines, as "thought-provoking". Maybe this situation defines one end of the spectrum, where the content of the "work" is utterly beside the point, and any critical dissection of it as such is just taxonomy, or the history of a specific technical craft. At the other end wd be a work whose social implications are universally accepted, whose context varies its meaning extremely little. I don't know what that wd be.

I are sorry for being stoopid, what what is this 'Sokal Affair', apart from sounding like an episode of Star Trek?

What I described above; "2 mathematicians" = "Sokal"

This links to most of the relevant material.

Let's go and flame him.

(Episode of Deep Space Nine at best...)

Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. I like these men.

Sokal wrote a nonsense paper that was based on the writings of various (mainly french) post-modern theorists, in an attempt to reveal their (the post-modernists) use of cross-disciplinary mathematics and physics as empirical back-up for their social/cultural/psychoanalytic theories as both inaccurate and irrelevant. Sokal's fake paper, which uses all the po-mo buzz phrases like 'hermeneutics' and 'paradigm' and so on and so forth, was accepted by Social Theory, a much respected American Cultural Journal.

Sokal's paper was gibberish - it meant nothing, but syntactically (sic) and grammatically it was bona fide; those words fitted together in that order according to the structural rules of language, it's just that the sentences meant nothing. Sokal's paper was called "Transgressing The Boundaries; Towards A Transformative Hermeneutics Of Quantum Gravity."

In a stroke of seriosuly heavy irony, Sokal's paper was published in a special edition of Social Theory which was aimed at rebutting the criticisms levelled against post-modernism and social constructivism.

It's beautiful really, if you think about it.

Sokal them teamed up with Bricmont to write a book that furthered their criticisms of po-mo and the like, resulting in 'Intellectual Impostures' (published by Profile Books). It's a very interesting and enlightening book. But I still prefer AA Milne.

This book basically informed most of my last two terms of university, and I cited it many, many times in my finals. Most of my lecturers hadn't heard of Sokal and Bricmont, and post-modernism was one of the key theories we studied. Fucking criminal. I was an informed trouble-maker in their eyes, shooting my mouth off about how Baudrillard was a cunt because he used language as a tool to obscure the fact that he had no substance to his thoughts and theories. Onanistic intellectual verbiage as a tool towards achieving respect in ropey and undefied academic circles. In my final project/dissertation thingy, I took apart Lacan and Freud with the aid of Deleuze and Guattari. In my one of my last exams I took apart Deleuze and Guattari with the aid of Sokal and Bricmont.

I graduated last month with a 2i.

This is why I do not like intellectual verbiage - it is too easily used as a hoax to disguise the hollowness of insubstantial fools who are hungry for respect. Why use ten words when one will do, unless one is attempting to evoke something in the name of art? In the context of intellectual discourse, it is not only unnecessary and confusing, but it is also, in my eyes, elitist and divisive. Intelligent thought and theory should not be the exclusive playground of those with huge and expansive vocabularies. It should be accesable to all.

I actually almost enjoyed that. Christ, I must be slipping...

I was gonna spend this summer playing football, taking drugs, and getting laid. But Oh No, events always conspire against me,a nd I'm still sat at a computer till fucking 1am typing shit about irrelevent crap when I could be asleep/partying/at a gig/drunk/fucking a beautiful girl/boy/animal/vegetable/mineral.

Why God, WHY?!

Especially after pinefox kindly asked you not to.

I'm sorry I brought it up. S*kal v. Cultural Theorists doesn't break down neatly into objectivity v. subjectivity anyway. Tho I'm sure S*kal would argue otherwise.

Nick: isn't "demolishing" Del/Guat with a physicist a bit like demolishing Einstein with a cultural theorist? What actually ends up demolished, besides own brain? Using metaphors from other fields ought to be a constructive pursuit, a way of learning, rather than the illusion of destruction. It sounds like you've got enuf destructive illusions this summer, anyway. Fucking a geode = ouch

Sorry, pinefox.

I am going to say one or two things in Social Text's / pomo's favor, but I want to note that I've found myself disagreeing and agreeing with both sides. I think it's a bit more complicated than just 'they're all worthles cunts'. First of all, Sokal was deceitful in submitting the article. In doing so he violated the good-faith understanding in academia that one will actually be trying to say something (and by that I mean something direct, in the paper, not any kind of "experiment" or meta-comment based on whether the paper is accepted) in one's journal submissions. Also, if I remember correctly, Social Text was unreferred/peer reviewed, right? That just makes it worse, because one of the positive functions of unreviewed journals is to let people get ideas out that they might still be working on. I think that makes Sokal's deception even worse. And even if he believed that the people he was (implicitly) testing or criticizing lacked intellectual substance, that doesn't make his deception any more right. He had some valid motivations, but there are much better ways of voicing them.

Nick, what sort of thinkers / writers do you like? I don't really believe that a lot of the big-name postmodern philosophers and critics are without value. But the way you put it, I'm not even sure how you could find value in most any writer. Yes, there are plenty of academics who I don't like because of the way they employ various theories. But this doesn't mean all the theories are corrupt. Or that the language is.

Actually, I like the idea of submitting a paper purely as an experiment to see if it would get accepted. Seems like good sociological practice to me. But then I always got a kick out of reading those old social psychology studies where the test givers instructed the subjects to give electrical shocks to people in another room, and in that other room were stooges who screamed as if in pain whenever they received a "shock."

Well, yes. That's simultaneously one of the good and bad things about the Sokal thing. But as a sociological experiment or a critical statement it doesn't go very far. I think it would be fairly easy to submit a paper in the sciences (particularly some of the stuff that's still fairly new, like 'complex adaptive systems' or 'evolutionary computation') that was on the surface acceptable, but which was actually full of shit. That's what journals are for, academics putting out their work so that it can be seen and evaluated by others. Some journals have higher standards than others, but then some good stuff comes out of the journals that aren't as strict (or, another way: more daring). I don't think 'postmodern' journals are especially culpable due to their subject matter.

There's also the problem that, as far as the editors tell it (of course, they probably want to cover their asses), the paper seemed a little dodgy, but because they weren't experts in the stuff Sokal was on about, they thought they'd give him some leeway in the interest of getting a scientist in and trying to start some dialogue, blah blah blah. Says something, I think, about the rift between the sciences and the humanities - all that scientific holds a lot of political and rhetorical power.

(1) Back in the day, I wrote a review of Spoonie Gee's The Godfather of Rap. Near the start I said, "He raps all about love and sexual prowess, but his voice gives you frustration. He mixes, like, eighteen emotions at once. He's been punched out - his words tell you that in so many ways. He wants to be a lover, but it's a fight." Then at the end I wrote: "The words are drums; they have beats: 'He'll pop you, stop you, then he'll drop you.' That's heavyweight Mike Tyson. 'This girl ain't gonna/Make me or break me/She might shake me.' That's Spoonie's girlfriend. 'You'll wind up flat on your back like the canvas is your bed.' That's if you go against Tyson. Go against Spoonie, girl, and your bed is the canvas." Question: Is the word "girl" in the final sentence objective? Is it subjective? Does it describe an album on the album's own terms? Am I creating a unified reading of the work with it?

(2) One day in 1987, two 12-year-old girls in the aisle at Cala Supermarket on Mission Street were chanting "I met a guy, his name was Tussy/Took him to my house and he ate my pussy." This was a takeoff on Too $hort's "Freaky Tales" (or perhaps this chant and "Freaky Tales" have a common ancestor). Same questions: Are the girls being objective when they sing "Took him to my house and he ate my pussy"? Are they being subjective? Are they describing "Freaky Tales" on its own terms? Are they creating a unified reading of the work?

(3) Two years ago I'm at a friend's house, and I'm playing Britney Spears's "Crazy" for Lia, her six-year-old daughter. Lia demands that every time we hear the word "crazy" I lift her up over my head. This is many times in the song, and Lia has me play the song over and over. Same questions: Objective? Subjective? Its own terms? Unified reading of the work?

(4) Kid is working at Burger King, spitting on your onion rings, or in the parking lot circling, screaming "I don't give a fuck," with his window down and his system up. (Same questions. I won't repeat them.)

(5) I'm wearing a T-shirt that says "Metallica" on it. Is the shirt objective? Subjective? (Etc.)

(6) I'm wearing the same shirt, but I've written "I Hate" above "Metallica." Same questions. (And if you say "The sentence 'I hate Metallica' is subjective" but you'd given no answer to (1) through (5), ask yourself how the transmogrification took place, how "subjective" suddenly became relevant.)

(7) If someone slaps me, and I slap him back, is my slap back objective? Subjective? (Etc.)

(8) If I hear a record that offends me, and in a review I do the verbal equivalent of slapping it down, am I being objective? Subjective? (Etc.)

I don't know if these questions will strike any of you as relevant to this thread, but if they're not relevant, then this is a problem with the thread, because the things I wrote of above are representative of about 95% of the verbal life that pertains to music, and they play a big part in my writing, too. These things have little status in academia and journalism, however; and the words "objective" and "subjective" are used in those environments as a way of bullying people into keeping these things out of their prose. Somehow, all these things get classed as "subjective."

This thread feels like a misfire, even in regard to the 5% it might pertain to, because it's posing questions in general that can only make sense in the specific. It seems to be asking, "What is relevant to a discussion?" and "What is intrinsic to an object?" and "To what extent must the object of study authorize our description of it?" I find such questions impossible. If I ask "Relevant to what discussion?" and you say "Any discussion," I throw up my hands.

Something's going on in this thread, and I enjoy the people and the social interplay. But I feel that there are questions here that don't know how to ask themselves, and what I'm reading instead is a substitute.

This is GRATE.

As I have said (here? maybe not can't remember), what I wanted here was to suss out better at least where Phil stands. You're very very right, though - a lot of the things I think are relevant dropped away once we started getting into it.

Really? I wasn't too struck by it at all ...in fact it depressed me. It just seemed like a deliberate mixture of metaphors in order to make a discussion of ideas look silly and highfalutin' and irrelevant. Ha ha, is a shirt objective or subjective?

And Frank, "95% of the verbal life that pertains to music" -- whose verbal life? If you're going to define "verbal life" as something that mostly precludes any articulate attempt to understand how and why we feel and think the way we do about music, then of course it won't be part of that. But so what? Is a kid spitting in onion rings somehow a refutation of the notion that it's useful to talk about ideas that aren't necessarily accessible or relevant to him, or to 12-year-old girls?

I still subscribe to the notion that principles are of value, I'm afraid, and that talking about HOW we approach criticism -- a topic which is necessarily a largely abstract discussion -- is an important and worthwhile thing. All of the scenarios that were cited could be a window to an interesting conversation which could, conceivably, lead to a discussion of general principles of the kind we were having -- if you were willing to ask the right questions. But I don't really see what the point is of closing that window by purposely pairing them with incongruous questions.

For what it's worth, some of the questions I was trying to head towards were: is it possible to assess the value of a work in terms that are not purely subjective? In other words, if two people disagree about the quality or value of an album, are there any criteria by which one opinion might be said (or shown) to have more merit than the other, and if so, what are they? Or is it all just a matter of opinion? Is there no good or bad in music, only what you like and don't like? Are there no means by which Beethoven's Fifth Symphony might be determined to have more musical value than, say, a 10-second recording of flatulence? And, since we exist and will always exist in a social context, is there any relevance to claims that all of our evaluations of merit, or the lack thereof, are merely "socially constructed" -- in other words, plastic, disposable, and thus Not Real?

(Unlike, say, car crashes and riots...)

Why do you WANT to determine that the Fifth has more musical value than a fart record?

Phil, I wrote this post before I read yours; I don't know if this will make you feel any better about what I was saying.

Eleven years ago I wrote this passage:

"A fifteen-year-old's relationship to a pop song also puts her in relation to other fifteen-year-olds and to their relationship to the pop song and to other fifteen-year-olds etc." Yes, and believe me, all fifteen-year-olds know this. But the sad thing is that the fifteen-year-old who writes empty truisms like "a fifteen-year-old's relationship to a pop song also puts her..." etc. and shows it to the teacher gets an A-plus, whereas a fifteen-year-old who writes something that actually puts her in relation to other fifteen-year- olds knows better than to give it to the teacher, knows that it's not welcome. E.g., from recent Smash Hits (Australia):

"Calling all gorgeous guys on Earth who are 14 or older. We are two 15 year old chicks who are absolutely in love with Guns N' Roses, Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, Poison, and stax more! Interested?"

"I'm sick of it! Once again I was game enough to wear my Bon Jovi badge to school and what do I get for it? A black eye. I'm sick of people always saying that Jon Bon Jovi has AIDS, they know it's not true but they say it just to shit people up the wall. So to all you terrorists out there, I think you're jealous because you're not as good looking or popular as him!"

Of course, the fifteen-year-old's relationship to the teacher puts her in relation to other fifteen-year-olds too, and I'm not claiming that she's failing to live her life when she's writing down teacher-pleasing generalizations. And I'm not saying the Smash Hits letter style is in all circumstances better than the vague social generalization. I tend to think that analogies are better than generalizations, both aesthetically and intellectually, but here I've just made a generalization.

Actually, both the truism and the Smash Hits come-ons need to be elaborated on before they get very interesting. And in fact some of my teachers did let me put fighting and flirting into my prose, and I wouldn't be surprised if that stuff is more welcome now than when I was in school. The exact opposite is happening in rock criticism, though, where the intellect could go full guns thirty years ago, and now the clampdown rules, and smart and alive criticism is barely hanging on. More later, if I can stay awake long enough for another post. My point here is that the Smash Hits kids are engaging in social relations and so for sure are using their intellects, and the 15-year-old theorizer is for sure living her life when she speaks of the social patterns around her. But the school sets up behavioral rules that gull people into believing that they're either living their lives or they're talking about the subject matter but that they can't do both at once. And Nick's right to rebel against these rules, but he accepts too much of their terms anyway, so he'll go with the cliché that in footballing and fucking he's living his life while in theorizing he's not.

Phil, I like the impulse behind your questions, I'm for sure not slagging off that impulse, but I want you to slag off your questions and replace them by better ones. Your questions contain iffy assumptions that you don't seem to know are assumptions. I don't know what you mean by "subjective" and "objective," and I don't think you do either, but you're writing as if their meanings were self-evident.

This is one of your assumptions: that when I'm lifting Lia up over my head or when I'm blasting "The Real Slim Shady" out of my car window or when I'm using Too $hort's lyrics as a model for my own or when I'm directly addressing the reader at the end of my Spoonie Gee piece or when I'm wearing a Metallica T-shirt I'm somehow precluding any articulate attempt to understand how and why I think and feel the way I do. On the contrary, not only am I not precluding it, I'm doing it. Of course, reflection might play a role too, but the stuff I mentioned (plus hundreds of other behaviors like it) is a good deal of the way I learn to understand why and how I and others think the way I/they do. I'd even bet that these behaviors (or your own equivalent) are a good deal of the way you come to understand how you think and feel the way you do.

More assumptions that you make, this time without comment from me (though bear in mind that I find the words "objective" and "subjective" to be confusing, destructive messes).

(1) That for an opinion to be right (and presumably "nonsubjective") it must be able to compel agreement; otherwise it's just a matter of opinion. (You don't use the words "compel agreement," but it underlies many of you questions.)

(2) That "objectivity" can be associated with "able to compel agreement." (Again, I'm putting words in your mouth, but if you don't associate the two, I really can't make sense of you.)

(3) Perhaps we have no means right now of determining that Beethoven's Fifth is better than a fart tape.

(4) Social constructs aren't real. (Or were you being sarcastic here? I hope so.)

Why SHOULDN'T intelligent thought be the the exclusive playground of those with huge vocabularies?

I'm well up for anyone hoaxing people, whether they do it ina rude way or not. It's a way of keeping people on their toes, the price of freedom being eternal vigilance and all that.

Sokal's gripe with the po-mo people, as far as I can tell, is that the cross-disciplinary metaphors they were using to assert their social theories (etcetera) were either a; simply factually inaccurate in terms of the equations, terminology and formulas used (ie; Lacan getting sums wrong and citing his wrong answers as empirical proof), b; irrelevant (the notion that E=MC2 is a sexed equation because it 'priviliges the speed of light over other equally necessary speedsd' - E=MC2 doesn't fucking work if you substitute the speed of light for, say the speed of syrup falling from a spoon!), or c; both at once.

If people are going to make analogies and comparisons inorder to back up ideas that rely on precision both linguistically and scientifically, then those comparisons have got to be valid. "1+2=3 is just like by cat farting, man" just doesn't work. Vague, nonsensical analogies and metaphors work fine in terms of evoking feelings and sensations, but they cannot be used as evidence to back up complex theories. If you strip away the verbiage and irrelevant analogies from Baudrillard, say, then it seems that, beneath that, there is very little content.

As for using Sokal and Bricmont to deconstruct Delueze and Guattari, it is relevant if Sokal and Bricmont's research reveals Deleuze and Guattari as guilty of the kind of linguistic and intellectual sins that Lacan and Baudrillard and Irigaray and Kristeva were shown up for.

Um... I've just finished work, my brain's not working, I've got a busy weekend ahead.

As for what theorists I like... In terms of social and cultural theorists, not many of them. Heidegger and Sartre, and Nietzsche to an extent, I found empowering. Benjamin Hoff deserves mucho respect. At heart I'm a fucking hippy (don't tell anyone I said that, or I'll slap you down hard), I'm just looking for simplifying ideas and notions that can help to uncomplicate my life and aid me in achieving contentment. Only I'm such a contrary and angry bastard sometimes that I shoot myself in the foot by mouthing off and swearing and being very un-Zen (had you noticed?).

My head hurts.

Well, dave q, because I think that hiding knowledge from people is one of the evils of our world, because it disempowers them. Most people can understand most concepts, if only they are explained in a way they can understand.

If you tell people they are stupid often enough, and condescend and patronise them, they will come to believe they are.

And that's evil.

(Nick: I did smile when you mentioned zen...)

It doesn't "disprove" all of Lacan to show that he dodgily hefted a bit of maths into a bit of his work somewhere (or even lots of his work lots of places). If S&B were a leetle scrupulous than they are (they TOO hid knowledge, after all), they would have CHECKED whether the LOCAL PROBLEM cd be snipped out of the totality w/o effect on the totality. But to do that, they would have to offer enuff respect to the totality to DISPROVE the actual real point they were making, which was because of obvious shenanigans here and here and here, totality is a total waste of time. But this does NOT follow.

How's your higher maths, Nick? E=mC2 can work just as well with any other constant: eg suppose speed of syrup from spoon [which is obviously NOT a constant but suppose it is] = k, and suppose for the sake of argt that 1,000,000 x k = c. Then E= m(1,000,000k)2. Thus do I privilege the constant speed of syrup from a spoon, inaginary though it is. There is no reason why light HAS to be the constant used in this equation.

The point being made abt privileging c is STRANGELY SIMILAR to yr argt abt "hiding knowledge": it's abt the expression of important fact in a way that excludes. Is Maths evil for being difficult to understand?

(ps Nietzsche = king pomo, the ruling god of justification for all the foax you are roundly dissing. Which also made me smile a bit, like the zen thing.)

My prob with all this stuff — and to me it's connected to but actually much intellectually serious than than the S&B thing, which has had zero aftermath effect because all the illegally borrowed misunderstood science stuff was illustrative metaphor not meat and teeth of central argument — is that so many of them are WICKED BAD WRITERS. The journal was unrefereed — so v.easy to slip something thru the gates — but apparently also UNEDITED!? My job = subeditor = instant pedant-to-hand. I have to pick up argt in essays abt THAT WHICH I KNOW NUFFINK, and say, well, look, this doesn't make sense. How do we now this? Is that true? I do not understand why so much academic writing is so fearfully dreadful, stylistically. (Well, I've got loads of theories...). Nietzsche can write: he made writing well the heart of his philosophy. But the demand for clarity may just turn out to be a demand that people only tell you things you already knew.

>> E= m(1,000,000k)2. Thus do I privilege the constant speed of syrup from a spoon, inaginary though it is. There is no reason why light HAS to be the constant used in this equation.

>> The point being made abt privileging c is STRANGELY SIMILAR to yr argt abt "hiding knowledge": it's abt the expression of important fact in a way that excludes. Is Maths evil for being difficult to understand?

'c' is used as a constant because of simplistic beauty. It is the measurable physical quantity that is the speed of light and is part of a very simple equation. That is all.

E=mc2 is vaunted for its neat, concise summation of physical phenomena. In the same way that someone may appreciate symmetry, metre or whatever in a line of poetry the same aesthetic can be ascribed to a maths or physics problem.

'Hiding knowledge' doesn't really apply here because it's like saying there are 54,000 odd symbols in the Chinese character set. It is simply a qestion of notation. Your appreciation, therefore, is entirely down to whether you understand the notation.

grrrr pardon me grammar again - half a thought there... 'It's like saying there's 54,000 blah blah.. with no way of deciphering it' .. um I'm going to bed.

Have we gone as far as we can? I think I have. I'd turned my BRANE off for the last couple of months as soon as I walked out of my last exam... Wasn't expecting ILM to also kind of be I Love Social/Cultural Theory...

ehehehehehehehe...

I'll return to being Zen now...

Frank:

I understand you a bit better now, but the example of the fifteen-year-old doesn't make much sense to me. A huge part of learning is inductive reasoning -- the ability to derive general principles from specific data. Obviously, life is lived in concretes, but a huge part of understanding, indeed of intelligence, is the ability to generalize from those concretes. Neither in my academic work nor in my non-academic writing have I ever had the problem you describe; I had always thought good critical writing was a mixture of concrete examples, abstract principles, and analyses of the relationship between the two.

I also find myself troubled by the notion that Smash Hits-style social relations are evidence of use of the intellect in any way worthy of merit. I understand that you're fighting against what I think you see as an insidious and fragmenting compartmentalization, but I think you're a bit off the mark. The second passage you quoted shows some evidence of self-reflection, I suppose, but what's your point, exactly? When it comes to teaching "how to think", schools necessarily focus on imparting generalities (abstract principles) because those generalities are extensible, and can be applied to a variety of things in life. One of the reasons a division between education and the rest of one's life so often exists is because the rest of one's life often offers one precious few opportunities to appreciate general principles in any sort of guided way. The majority of employment out there (for instance) focuses on their employees' ability to accomplish specific tasks, not on their ability to reason and to understand the whys and hows of things. In the end, you get paid to fix a car, maintain a webpage, build a brick wall. Academia is one of the only places where the process (how you think) is deemed as important as its output (what you come up with). I certainly don't see a problem with encouraging students to come up with more connections between the principles they learn and their daily lives, and I don't see any reason to bar their lives from their academic studies, but if the specific details of their lives become the meat of their study, won't they just be "learning" what they already know?

As for "my" assumptions:

I was being sarcastic about (4). It was a reference to Nick's earlier comments.

I don't believe (3), myself.

(1) and (2) -- what do you mean by "compel" agreement, exactly? My point is that, if we accept the notion that some opinions have more critical value than others, than we are tacitly accepting the idea that there is information contained within in a work that is of importance to any attempt to understand it, and that the diligence and intelligence with which we approach and digest that information will have a direct relationship to the merit of our critical opinion (as will our own intelligence, sensitivity, informedness, etc.). All opinions, I think, are a combination of observation and response -- "X exists in the work", and "this is my reaction to X". The latter is where one's own feelings, preferences, and so forth come into the matter, and where informed people can legitimately differ without one of them necessarily being wrong.

And as for your/my "zeroth" (unnumbered) assumption, I'm again not sure what you're getting at. My take on it would be that the combination of the act and reflection upon it is "an articulate attempt to understand how and why [you] think and feel the way [you] do", but that the act itself is not inherently reflective. In other words, the act of wearing a Metallica T-shirt is not the same as reflecting upon why you're wearing the shirt, what it means, and so on. The two can be simultaneous, but are not, by definition, synonymous.

I think, again, that your concern seems to be that one would lead a life that consisted solely of abstract reflection, without concrete action. I don't think anyone, myself included, would advocate that. But I do think that abstract reflection has been deprecated (inasmuch as it represents an impediment to consumerism, for instance), and that while some semi-mythical group of "academics" may indeed overindulge in the abstract, most of the world needs to spend more, not less, energy on self-reflection and the endeavor to understand the principles that govern human behavior and the like.

Phil, the meaning of the phrase "information contained within the work" is another one of those things that seems self-evident to you but not to me. "Contained" is like "relevant": it needs a specific world to live in, or it flaps emptily in the air, one hand trying to clap. And "containment" hardly seems an issue anyway. For instance, you can convince me that "Blue Moon" and "Duke of Earl" have the same chord pattern without either of us even having an opinion on whether the works "contain" the similarity. And I strongly suggest that you not have an opinion on such matters, ever. But I've just "met" you, so that's your business. One of my concerns, though, is about a particular kind of philosophical "abstract reflection" that only raises false issues, and that clogs up the works, and that thousands of people like you fall into and fight over. So I'll say flatly that the question of the value of an opinion (and for sure some opinions have more value than others) has nothing to do whatsoever with the abstract question of what is or is not contained within a work. And I think that the kid with the Bon Jovi badge and the black eye is closer to reflecting on critical value than you are in this conversation - not because black eyes are more real than intellectual discussions, but because he's living where disagreements in value lead to social conflict, and he's looking that issue straight in the face, whether or not he's reflecting on it. Which is why I want him in the intellectual discourse.

Frank:

For instance, you can convince me that "Blue Moon" and "Duke of Earl" have the same chord pattern without either of us even having an opinion on whether the works "contain" the similarity. And I strongly suggest that you not have an opinion on such matters, ever.

Why? What should I not have an opinion of why the chord progression of a song is part of the song ("contained" in it)? As a musician, it's a question that has direct and concrete relevance to my craft -- ask Mark Kozelek, who takes AC-DC songs, writes new chords, and turns them into slow acoustic numbers: the question of whether it's still "Highway to Hell" (for instance) after such a treatment is a very worthwhile one.

Or are you referring to the relationship between the two songs -- the shared chord progression? (I don't know much more than the opening line of "Duke of Earl", as sampled by Cypress Hill, though I think I do vaguely recall that they share the I / vi / ii / V prom-night aka I Got Rhythm chords, except that I think "Duke of Earl" is actually IV / V at the end there.)

So I'll say flatly that the question of the value of an opinion (and for sure some opinions have more value than others) has nothing to do whatsoever with the abstract question of what is or is not contained within a work.

So on what grounds do you determine the following critical opinion as having no value:

"My dog vomited because he ate too much yogurt. Also my aunt is getting old and thus needs help down the stairs. Therefore, David Bowie's Low album is OK, but could have been better."

If you say it's composed of irrelevant details that have nothing to do with the work, then you're automatically accepting the assumption that there are things that have nothing to do with the work, right? And doesn't that raise the question of what is, or isn't relevant to -- or part of -- a given work?

And I think that the kid with the Bon Jovi badge and the black eye is closer to reflecting on critical value than you are in this conversation - not because black eyes are more real than intellectual discussions, but because he's living where disagreements in value lead to social conflict, and he's looking that issue straight in the face, whether or not he's reflecting on it. Which is why I want him in the intellectual discourse.

That's fine, and let's have him. But I still don't feel like you've really shown me in what way this discussion is a "trap". You've criticized our choice of topics, but with what would you replace them? You still seem to be implying that an abstract discussion is without merit unless it constantly invokes concretes, which is something with which I cannot agree.

And how do you know, by the way, that I haven't lived "where disagreements in value lead to social conflict"? I know you're strictly talking about my behavior in this conversation, but the implication would be that, if I were once that Bon Jovi kid and were now engaged in the kind of discussion that I am now, in order to gain greater insight on what happened to me and why, I would no longer be of merit in your eyes, since I wasn't constantly tying black eyes and the like into my argumentation.

""My dog vomited because he ate too much yogurt. Also my aunt is getting old and thus needs help down the stairs. Therefore, David Bowie's Low album is OK, but could have been better."

My current assumption is that personal-life listening context affects our response in ways that are not only important but inextricable from 'the work'. You either acknowledge and include them or you don't write about music at all. So I wouldn't call this an 'invalid' listening response - just a poorly written one because it doesn't detail its component parts with much flair or link them with much insight.

Exactly.

The stuff that gets me, in terms of writing about msuic, is the oblique and obtuse bits, weird comparisons and analogies, that convey a sense of the spirit of what's being written about, rather than (what I consider to be) a rather stultifying and dry intellectualisation, which I don't generally find useful in terms of developing my appreciation of a good tune.

I think it's always a good idea to thrash ideas around, even if they're bad ones.

Phil, I think we're at the end of the line here, for the time being, and we won't work anything out this week, and it won't do you any good for me to keep probing you (I say as I prepare one final probe). I agree with Tom: the dog vomit might be relevant, but the passage doesn't make a compelling case for it. And Phil, I think you already have the tools to make good judgments about what's relevant or not, and if you want better tools all you need to do is extend the range of the ones you've got, or learn those of the writers you admire. You think you need principles to bolster you, whereas I think you're fine without them. And you think that your principles need a connection to what is irrefutably contained within the work, and I don't see how you make this jump.

I think we've all been the kid with the black eye in one way or another. And I know I'm being presumptuous, but I think the black eye has more to do with what's driving you in this discussion than anything having to do with the words "contain" or "objective." Isn't there the fear that if we don't have "objective" criteria then we're just throwing opinions at each other - or throwing fists - with no hope of resolution?

>>> I think you already have the tools to make good judgments about what's relevant or not, and if you want better tools all you need to do is extend the range of the ones you've got, or learn those of the writers you admire. You think you need principles to bolster you, whereas I think you're fine without them. And you think that your principles need a connection to what is irrefutably contained within the work, and I don't see how you make this jump.

Hey! - it's Frank Rorty!!

Are principles tools?

DQ, perhaps I mistyped, and meant to put "toes." I really can't tell anymore. Perhaps I'm being presumptuous again, since I don't really know the guy, but Phil probably has all the toes he needs. I'm no longer convinced, however, that it would be a good idea for Phil to learn the toes of people he admires. In fact, such a process might prove uncomfortable, not to mention embarrassing.

But anyway, "tools" is what I wrote, and maybe that means tools is what we're stuck with. So I checked the ultimate authority on the subject - the Microsoft Internet Explorer toolbar - to see what was comprised in "tool," and what I found were: "mail and news," "synchronize," "windows update," "show related links," and "internet options." No "principles," I'm sad to say; perhaps we can write Bill and petition for their inclusion.

Pinefox: You've pointed out another flaw in Mark S's claim that he'd "far rather discuss eg Nitsuh's or Phil's or Josh's or pinefox's or Frank K's theory than Derrida's." This assumes that there's such a thing as Frank K's theory.

Principles are tools and only tools but not all tools are prinicples

I was immensely pleased to discover Boston supermarkets still house HO JO fried clams. BUt they dont make shrimp.

I tend to think that analogies are better than generalizations, both aesthetically and intellectually, but here I've just made a generalization.

Frank, aren't analogies dependent on some degree of generalization (or the ability to perceive generalization) for their success? I.e., for something X' to be a good analogy for something X, there has to be something that both X and X' have in common so the analogy will be understood.

why does that involve a generalization? (are you going to take the route that goes like: noticing the similarity between x and x' involves coming up with the idea of a thing which is y, y having the same property that x and x' both have but none of the ones they don't share?)

ah, so this was the infamous 'insufferable cunts' thread!

Comparing aspects possessed by x and x' isn't in itself generalisation but the 'things' whose aspects are compared are more likely to be generalisations than specifics, e.g.: "x is just like riding a bike" as opposed to "x is just like that one time you rode a bike"

Sorry to revive this, looked interesting though - not read it all yet, it's a behemoth. Just wanted to take issue with mark s - where he has been wrong. Well, incorrect, or a shade of incorrect, or just not otm for once. He saidified:

[U]se of the word "pseudo-intellectual" is at root a fascist spasm. It says "You [i.e. 'us', in this case] are absolutely not entitled even to attempt to participate in this activity. It is beyond your reach."

Of course he is right, but that wasn't the way NS was using it (from my reading, based on his "don't think, do" outlook) - he was rather saying that "we [NS, mark s, Nitsuh, Ile, Ilm, Ilx] aren't capable of the dizzy heights to which this thread aspires - shut it, don't think, do!" It wasn't really a self-aggrandizer but rather a show- stopper. Of course this is irrelevant and the discussion moved on (miles on) but I thought I'd mention it. (cue: "self-aggrandizing git!")

Ignore that, I'm a fuckah, mark s said 'us' - he was entirely correct. I think.

haha in the buffy repeat last night giles was haunted by the demon eygoth, that he had raised as a wild teen in company with the evil ethan padgett, i mean ethan rayn: anyway this thread = eygoth and WHERE IS BUFFY?

Not here. Err, there! *Shimmys down the ILFireEscape*

Subjunctive!

josh = willow btw
mark s = cordelia
frank kogan = the first slayer

nevah seen that episode but I'm quite pleased

Is Josh Angry Lesbian Rock?

tho technically impossible for me to be the second at the moment I am more offended at the suggestion that I am the third; willing to assent to the first

Impossible for me to be the first slayer, as I am already the first guns n' roses.

Here is a weasel out of it nonanswer to Clarke (maybe to be followed someday by a potentially actual answer): think of "analogy" and "generalization" as comparative terms rather than super-duper- independent nothing-to-do-with-each-other mutually exclusive categories. So "generalization" means "a lot of things are very much like this" and "analogy" means "some things are somewhat like this," and you can push and pull "a lot" and "somewhat" into whatever shapes you need, depending on the conversation. The difference - Teena Marie once pointed this out - would be that with generalizations you believe that you're following rules ("it is a duck if it has six feathers and swims") whereas with analogies you're noticing similarities that you can never altogether specify ("if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck," which means that a duck is something that is similar enough to something else called a duck so that you call it a duck). Oh yeah, and think of "rule" and "similarity" as comparative terms rather than super-duper- independent nothing-to-do-with-each-other mutually exclusive categories.

Teena's idea, by the way, was aimed out our understanding of science, which she thinks of as an analogical activity rather than a methodical one: she believes that scientists in a particular field model what they do on previous scientific problems and solutions rather than follow a method universal to all of science. For instance, she argues that Aretha Franklin's concept of motion, in which "motion" meant "change in quality" or "change in state," worked via analogy, so a rock falling towards its place in the center of the universe was analogous to fire reaching towards its place at the periphery and to an acorn growing into an oak tree and a person recovering from an illness. That is, it was asymmetric change towards a particular final state. But "assymetric change" is a vague summary of a bunch of analogies rather than a rule that you can follow. Teena argues that revolutions in a science are changes in models/analogies, and that the old models are fundamentally incomensurable with the new. For instance, she argues that Stacey Q's concept of motion ("motion" meaning "change of place") did not preserve Aretha Franklin's but rather replaced it. For Stacey Q, a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. This idea would have been unintelligible to Franklin, since it gives a radically different sense of motion, one that doesn't require change. And what makes the two models incommensurable (but not incomparable) is that there's no third thing - call it "what's really there" or whatever you want - to compare the two different models to. That is, you can either see a rock moving towards its place in the center of the universe, or a rock being pulled by the force of gravity, but there's no third thing (what would it be?) to measure these two models against.

Teena Marie draws on ideas of Mariah Carey. Mariah, using analogies very well herself, once wrote: "Imagine someone's saying: 'All tools serve to modify something. Thus the hammer modifies the position of the nail, the saw the shape of the board, and so on.' And what is modified by the rule, the glue-pot, the nails? - 'Our knowledge of a thing's length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of the box.' - Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?-"

aimed out = aimed at

models measured against ability to account for phenomina and which they account for surely? this is why even Debbie Deb stands by Stacey Q in special circumstances, no?

"Measured against" may not be the best term, but what Teena was driving at was that the "ability to account for phenomena" doesn't really mean anything - certainly can't provide a common measure - when the phenomena that each model gives are different. Stacey Q's account of motion doesn't account for any of the phenomena that Franklin's does, because motion means different things to the two of them. Stacey can account for a body in motion staying in motion, but for Franklin that's not motion. And Stacey's laws of motion say nothing about how a sick man can return to health and an acorn can grow into a tree. Nonetheless, Stacey's laws triumphed over Franklin's (though were eventually superseded themselves).

So "incommensurable" might not have been the best term for Teena to use. But her basic point is dead on (and I think irrefutable). She's attacking what's called in philosophy "the correspondence theory of truth." I'll make an analogy here. You can say that Stacey Q is more beautiful than Aretha Franklin - so their looks surely can be compared - but they're not being compared to some third thing: we're not asking whose face and body correspond more to a third thing called beauty, as if there were a statue, "Beauty," which we could pull out of the closet and then check Stacey and Aretha against to see which resembles it more closely. And what can't check Aretha's and Stacey's differing ideas of "motion" against some third thing - call it "what motion really is" to see which it resembles more closely. You just have to choose one or the other. (But your choice may have to do with which one is more internally consistent, internally accurate, useful, simple, etc.; e.g., the fact that Stacey's concept can be used to calculate the trajectory of cannon balls, whereas Aretha's can't.)

...and then check Stacey and Aretha against to see who resembles it more closely. And we can't check Aretha's and Stacey's differing ideas of "motion"...

And put a dash after "call it 'what motion really is.'" (And put me to bed.)

Can someone else admit that they're totally stumped by what Frank is talking about, so I don't feel so alone?

I might take a stab at it this weekend.

This has become a thread to be studied, no longer to be just read and enjoyed. Its a DUD.

I like the concept of modification of knowledge because then we can argue that revolutions in understanding (e.g. the concept of techno as punk as one such) are actions as much as items, which is where Teena falls down, no?

that's why emerald city is only at #9

Wow.

There is no such thing is "Objective", which is subjectivity fooling itself into transcendence.

It surprises me to realize how long Nick's been here! For some reason I thought he only joined last year sometime?

It's sad -- I don't often post on threads like this, but not because I don't have anything to say, but because I have too much to say, and it's hard to sort it all out.

I've been here a long time, I just wasn't that regular a contributor until about a year ago (all day net access when i started workign at the university!).

God, I was fucking angry wasn't I?

There is no such thing as "Objective"

Yes there is .

you think

i put it into my computer and then it started to overheat and then there were sparks coming out of it, and as it got confused we were able to make our escape onto the barren surface of the planet

lock up your daughters
http://www.rockcritics.com/popped/frankkogan/accordion.jpg

'objective' is bullshit. It's a tool for control freaks to use.

(no offense meant to anyone, of course)

'objective' is bullshit.

I disagree

^^^ you should listen to this guy nicky. he knows the facts, you have, shall we say...an opinion

Objective has a meaning, which isn't necessarily the meaning that people who use it want to think it has. So it's not bullshit. But people generally use it when they're bullshitting.

the problem is, things that are objective...become subjective the minute they exit the vacuum and are actually used.

hi dere heisenberg

Russian gentleman: So who is to say what is moral?
Sonja: Morality is subjective.
Russian gentleman: Subjectivity is objective.
Sonja: Moral notions imply attributes to substances which exist only in relational duality.
Russian gentleman: Not as an essential extension of ontological existence.
Sonja: Can we not talk about sex so much?