He seems to have really polarised people in the UK. You might find this review interesting if you've not already read it. I'll definitely pick up the book next time I'm in Borders or something.

hmm...


what does it matter? isn't that question completely besides the point?

mang, interesting read anyway, though a bit lengthy for my morning.

a question for you though-- when the fuck did terry "literature does not exist" eagleton become a religious man?

Yeah, not a good breakfast read. Regarding Eagleton's religious beliefs. He's been a Catholic all of his life, something he's never seen as any kind of compromise regarding his other passion, Marxism.

And a question back to you ... where does the 'literature does not exist' thing come from?

catholic & marxist-- he must be jesuit. i didnt know.

like many lit students, i had to read this crap (in 2 different classes)





is it there, in "what is literature" that he argues oh, how do i remember this, that literature is nothing but a social construct that privileges certain texts over others through a series of institutions bla bla blah? im a bit rusty but my recollection mechanisms are still functioning.

--

ps- found link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/94570/Terr...is-literature1

Yeah, but I don't think he argues that literature doesn't exist so much as that it's, as you suggest, a socially constructed by-word for 'quality writing in a certain style' - an idea he ultimately borrows from poststructuralism and which I think he's probably quite right about. He then unnecessarily 'Marxifies' the whole thing with his rather less persuasive 'privileging' (in terms of class) argument.

I never studied literature but his impact in British academia is pretty wide, to the extent that I wouldn't be surprised if physics students here aren't expected to wade through him at least once during their degree.

I read a bit of that review, have a feeling I've read it before or something very much like it. It seemed to be filled with flaws, irrelevancies and from what I read no actual criticisms of Dawkins argument.

I read Eagleton's 'How to Read a Poem'. Overall it was pretty good but there were loads of things he said in it that were complete crap and very easy to disagree with and argue against. I think he has a lot of hidden prejudices and he seems to be part of that whole pathetic, relativist, Postmodern, 'there's no true answer but mine sounds clever' group.

"Privileges" is the key word there, with it's negative connotations of elitism. He's basically saying there are no good and bad books. I suppose that ties in with his Marxism with it's depressing levelling or society.

For all of his faults, and while he is often associated with postmodernism, he's one of its staunchest critics. As an out-and-out Marxist any argument against Eagleton is ultimately an argument against Marxism. a s such, he definitely believes there is a 'true' answer (namely a class revolution leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat). The validity of his answer is of course another matter.


I think you're right in a sense, although he definitely seems to distinguish between a bourgeois (self-serving and bad) and a progressive (and therefore good) strand within, for want of a better word, 'literature'. Although ultimately I think he finds all books 'useful' in terms of the way in which they serve either to highlight or conceal class conditions - hence his 'reading against the grain' argument.

Yeah, well maybe I going overboard. I've only read that one book, and it was pretty good just had some awful faults.

Shit, now I'm going to look up the epistemological differences between Aquinas and the dunce.

I'm going to write a book called The Dawkins Delusion, all about how people will believe that aliens planted crystals to seed life in our universe BEFORE they would believe that there is a creator.

no he didnt use that word exactly-- i'm just condensing my understanding of it which might do a great disservice.

"what is literature" is the corollary of his whole book on literary theory; the book begins with "the rise of english" which is a sociological look at the appearance of "english literature" courses at university level replacing classical (greek & latin) literature-- this had to to with educating the workers and blah blah blah. which is fine, and interesting, and so forth.

what irks me is when he takes the extreme narrow conclusions of formalism (literature as an "estranged" language) and refutes the whole argument because their extrapolations ("content is irrelevant") were wrong. so he suffers from the same kind of reductionism, but from the opposite end.

basically he's saying that what we call literature does not exist for itself but is based on value judgments that stem from ideology, and we often fail to see that. he says that literature does not exist in the same way as insects do--- it exists only insofar as a certain group of people decide it's literature.

i'd argue against that bullshit. i do believe that literature exists as insects do, but that it's value judgments that determine if we look at them as "pests" or we say "whoa, look at that cool shit!" or if we cook them in a nice meal, or if we adopt them as pets.

so yes, there is value judgment, there is ideology, there is shit that one day is "trash" and another day is "sublime", but there is shit and the brain can tell but just because it's culturally modified it's not a social fiction. sort of like food-- we all eat, we cook, but it varies from culture to culture, it's influenced by social class, by ideology, etc.

so my position is actuall that literature is biological-- as is language. all cultures tell stories, all have music and poetry, all have myth and legend, and no it's not cuz we learned it from another, it's cuz our brains make them with or without outside influence.

And I'll right The Delusion Delusion: An Afterthefact Epic Poem.

It will be the capital letter D printed largely in the center of every page.

Yeah? And I'll write a blog called The Delusion of D: A Haiku.

It will read:
DDDDD
DDDDDDD
DDDDD

Most humans are ATHIESTS about nearly eery single "god" that humans have ever worshipped, Now, if we could only get them to get rid of that final one...

...what would happen then??

But do you mean God as in someone to be worshiped, or God as simply a creator? Because to accept the first, you have to find a system of beliefs that you agree with, but for the latter, you only need to accept the possibility that someone did create us, without having to settle on any agreement on what, if any, responsibility that means for humans.

When you talk about the origin of the universe and everything in it, you always have to start with something. Whether it be a god, gas clouds, crystals, whatever, you have to start somewhere. To me, believing that the product of any cause would be greater than the cause itself doesn't make as much sense to me, while the reversal of that does.

And while I have my own religious beliefs, I can fully understand somebody not. But to believe that we were not created confounds me. Not saying that you can't or shouldn't, only that I don't understand it.

no more superstition running 90% of human's lives.

athiesm is not about creation. it is about the inherent fallibility of a blelief in something for which there is no evidence, and which, by virtue of no evidence, is treated as "faith" by those who seek to control others.

"sure there is no evidence of anything supernatural at all, or of a human soul, or of a creator deity, but you gotta have blind "faith!" "

i have to say though, superstition is a good coping mechanism in the face of adversity. without it, many of us would be "driven to despair" rathern than wait for a miracle/a change of "luck"/divine intervention/the holy goat.

the nervous system didn't create religion out of the blue-- there's a function for it and it's one of beign an escape valve for all the pressures of being mortal & knowing it.

it doesn't make it "true", but it makes it psychologically useful.

i myself believe in the tooth fairy. well no-- i do have my superstitions & propitiatory incantations though.

You do understand that Dawkins does not actually believe that, but uses it as a much more plausible (given what we know of the universe around us) version of a "creation" than that a tiny insignificant god of the hebrew people (one among thousands at the time) is the actual sole god and created everything with his magick?

the nervous system did not create religion. humans created religion.
the human nervous system, because it is eelf-aware, had no explanation for thw rodl around it, and thereby created supernatural beings who were responsible for the unexplained. all this got codified into one creator being. The old testament talks about how YHVH was one god among many (for at the time mono-theism was not practiced most anywhere. It was in egypt when they worshipped the sun for about 70 years but that shit fell off. people like their personal deities.) sometime betwene that and the new testament the hebrew nation codified their beliefs into there being just one god, Jehovah, and none other.

and sure religion helps people sometimes. nothing is truly all bad or all good, but much of humanity's suffering over the last 2000 years has been cuased in the name of religion and gods, or suffered because of differences in religion or gods. abolish the whole shit I say.

with their livers?



that's a historical/humanistic explanation, not an evolutionary explanation. symbolic thinking predates modern humans, and ritual behavior is found in other mammals.


we'd find other excuses without it i'm sure

i agree, and i rub my rabbit's foot in expression of my good wishes for the cause, and in hope of bringing about its end sooner.

what I meant was that religion is a collective creation, not an individual creation.

I think so too.

In France, and maybe in whole Europe, religion has been removed from the political field: it's clearly politically incorrect.
Yet it didn't prevent politicians to do whatever they want, like invading other countries, in the name of "Human Rights", or freedom, some jolly atheists beliefs.

right-- my approach is that most common traits of human culture are a product of our genes rather than a conscious, purposeful choice-- i'm referring to the basic impulse, not the particular cultural/social/historical manifestations of it. we don't "decide" to eat, acquire language, mate, make war, pray when in need, etc-- our genes decide for us most of these things. consciousness is a very thin thin layer painted on the surface, and it has the delusion that it has control over the writhing mess of the flesh and millions of years of acquired atavisms, instincts and automatic behaviors. we don't make religion-- it's made with us.

of course, there are mutants, albinos, and such.

but i do you yell at the tv when you favorite team is playing football? ehhhh? do you put send them "energy" to help them win? do you cheer even though they are 1000 miles away? yeah... fess up.

i know that's not "religion" but it's the same principle in my eyes. propitiatory prayers, rituals, etc. and it's deeply ingrained in the human nervous system. some people have a mild case of it and some people go wackadoodle with it, yeah.

when did France invade people in the last 45 years?

good point, but yelling at the TV when yr team sucks is not the same as deciding that a being we have no proof of and no response from is a supreme being and that everyone who does not believe so will be eternally damned. that is at least 8 levels up on preposterous.

that's the exploitation of a human instinct by those who know how it works.

imagine if by some scam the tv announcer told you that the outcome of the football game is not decided by the players but by your prayers. suppose that you're not allowed to ever go in the stadium. only "the priests" can visit the inner sanctum. everyone else must watch via tv and pray. meanwhile, the games are being arranged. players are raised as monks and told that their streigth comes from the prayers of the fans out there. oh yeah. sounds like a bad science fiction novel, but that's kinda like it works. organized religion is a huuuuuge scam to control people by appealing to a weakness of their nervous system-- the need to compensate uncertainty with symbolic answers, actions and beings. it's the origin of poetry as well if you think about it. ok ive rambled too much and i leave myself exposed to jinxes.

I was refering to the napoleonian ( 1,2,3 ) wars, mostly n°1.

dont' forget colonizing various brown peoples in the name of "civilization"

those colonial wars were fought until-- what ended first, algeria or vietnam?

Back to school. As far as I know, I should be reading Gilgamesh, Brothers Karamazov, Andre Dubus, and Freud.

Hmm, I don't remember..
maybe you do?
You're 102 years old, maybe you were personnally involved? (Vietnam war..)

But don't forget the (sub) topic: is it religion *only* who creates violence and hatred.

was no napoleon fully supported by the Roman Catholic vatican?

I think not.
I've read that the pope was reluctant to crown N1 as an emperor, so N1 did use political pressure on him.

fucking pope.

Ok, I am done with Section 1 of Crimes and Punishment. I know it goes without saying, but so far, this is GREAT. I have to say though, I feel like I'm watching a Woody Allen movie...

In which case it'd be Whine and Punishment.

Or Crimes and Misdemeanors...

I finished Franny and Zooey today. I liked it, although the dialogue did wear a little thin toward the end. I will be starting Good Omens tomorrow.