Theory of a Young Girl
 

"the Young-Girl is crazy about the authentic because it's a lie."



Kim was tweeting quotes from this recently.

This is the theory de jeune fille, written by someone from the milleu of french anarcho communist collective Tiqqun, who went on to become international artists/trainline disruptors.

Watch a documentary based on it here.

Or d/l an extract here.

Or read a version of it here.

As one amazon.co.uk commentator memorably surmises:
" Finally I realize why even old hairy men smell like temple prostitutes these days.
Everyone must have a sexual relationship with capital. etc."

(its called "jeune fille" but it applies to men as well.

Some quotes:

the Young-Girl knows the value of things ever so well.

Often, before decomposing too visibly, the Young-Girl gets married.

The Young-Girl is good for nothing but consuming; leisure or work, it makes no difference.

because of its having been put on a level of equivalence with all intimacy in general, the Young-Girl's intimacy has become something anonymous, exterior, and objectlike.

The Young-Girl never creates anything; she re-creates herself.

__________________

The Young-Girl is a reality as massive and brittle as the Spectacle.

Like all transitional forms, the Young-Girl is an oxymoron. She is also the first case of an asceticism without an ideal, of materialist penitence.

Cowardly devoted to the caprices of the Young-Girl, we've learned to detest her while obeying her.

The present sexual misery in no way resembles that of the past, because these are now bodies without desire, burning up inside because they can't satisfy these desires they don't have.

Over the course of its metastatic development, seduction has lost intensity while increasing its extension. Amorous discourse has never been so poor as it is now when everyone feels the duty to sing its praises and comment on it.

The Young-Girl doesn't look like a dead body, as one might presume from reading women's magazines; she looks like death itself.

Everyone looks to sell themselves and no one can manage to do it convincingly.

___________________

PS. The anti intellectual contingent of syg, with their oh so witty sneer based humour and reduction of things to a short list of references they can quickly reel off while showing a truly devastating cynical indifference, could just fuck off in advance.

alright, your presentation style remains that of a snarling dog who doesn't know if he should approach a stranger or bite him, but regardless, good shit linked here, thanks. i've been reading this on/off since yesterday and it's pretty good, very "french" in style, which is always a pleasure (vs. the angloamerican analytical approach), and the characterization of the "type" is spot-on. at the same time when i read the loose quotes i get the sense that this was written by people who remained involuntarily celibate way into their 20s and slightly resentful towards their unattainable lolitas. however, things come better into context when it's read from the start. and it's good stuff, and i haven't read anything like this in a long time, by which i mean-- it makes one thinks of new things and it's not just recycled stuff and while it repeats a lot of things already said it also adds something (e.g., although i can't help to be reminded of scenes from masculin/féminin when i read it, it's not the same thing at all). tl;dr- people who read this won't be disappointed, but start from the beginning, i.e.


anyway, i'm rambling, so i'd better get back to reading.

Thanks, my sister has a kind of beef with these Young-Girls types, not that she's read this or named them, kind of just gets irritated by girls who fit this description

thing is though, it's not just "girls"-- it can be a (and often is) a bro, it can be an old man, etc. read up, read up, it's pretty great.

Women are the origin of human civilization and societies. Women domesticated animals, women domesticated plants, and women domesticated men. There is a raw power emminating from womanhood, some women know how to abuse it, others are oblivious or naive even to its existence. However, it is a force of nature, almost Divine power.



That women are the focal point of a modern, post-hegemonic age is not surprising, they were the focal point of every human society since our most primitive roots. Its what truly separates us from other primates, a unique matriarchy where the brute strength of males is countered by the finesse, charm, and intelligence of the female. In that regard, whether 100,000 years ago or in 1999 pre-Millenial France, that ontological truth hasn't changed, though it has morphed.

The modern world economy flows through women, and an epic stage of life for women is this "Young-girl" teenage through twenties years where such women seem to be invincible while also being completely vulnerable. Then again, aren't we all?

Maybe I'm not dating the right women in their 20s here, but I think of 20-something women as the OPPOSITE of predictable or neutralized ;)

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to SuchFriendsAreDangerous again.

high five bro! we sure are dumb huh

They are predictable in the inpredictability.

haha, you crack me up.

French version:
http://www.bloom0101.org/jeunefille.pdf

The young-girl is the bloom figure.

Anyway, fuck this bullshit. You can suck muh dick dead_battery. Fuck you.

i haven't had this much pleasure reading anything in a long time.

????

This thread is confusing.

???

don't sweat the thread. read the pdf, which is great.

jesus christ. 56 pages. gonna have to print it out and read it at lunch, although I am now in the middle of Rudy Rucker's Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension

hey, you read "illuminatus!" which is like 555,000 pages long!

anyway, i think this is more mind-blowing than rudy rucker.

also, i know you despise e-readers and shit, but a pdf opens up nicely on a kindle.

the translated version has better typography than the french one. does anyone know how to change fonts on a pdf? on a mac? i mean, without adobe acrobat. i was able to change background colors for night reading but fonts no. they use print fonts and stingy spacing (trying to save paper?).

fuck those photon producing e-readers! I want my photons reflected off of the fibrous pulp of deciduous trees.

agreed. it was like Octavio Paz The Pyramid only about french chicks. Actually quite good, some of it a bit meh redundant but the golden parts were just that, solid gold insights.

If only they'd stop trying to rethink 1968.

i know.

from page 2 (preliminaries, section iii)

read more slowly mang

well, they did have their may 68. don't be jealous!

i've seen mentions of it here but i haven't finished yet so i don't know exactly what you mean (if you mean it about this particular text)

Oh, I got that it was a bigger, existential/economic text, but the lens from which the economic structures was analyzed was that of a 20-something girl, and since it was French, I inferred a 20-something French girl, particularly because many of the descriptions and insights resembled NOTHING of any American 20-something girls ;)

really? to me the description resembles that tv nincompoop phil dunphy, or the banality or so many people right on this board. just look the fuck around you.

some of my favorite quotes from the first part:

The most extreme banality of the Young-Girl is still to have herself taken as something "original."

Why must the Young-Girl always feign some activity or other? In order to remain impregnable in her passivity

The Young-Girl resembles her photo.

--

and have you been on facebook/twitter lately?

The Young-Girl only exists in proportion to the desire that "people" have for her, and is only known by what they say about her.

that is true, but again, the lens from which this caricature of banal post-modern life was examined is a 20-something woman. After all, the word "Young-girl" is repeated about 25,000 times ;)

yesbut yesbut yesbut.

EVERYONE WHO LIVES FOR THEIR APPEARANCE IS A FUCKING YOUNG-GIRL.

EVERYONE WHO IS OBSESSED WITH "YOUTHINESS" IS A FUCKING YOUNG-GIRL

in other words, MORE AND MORE PEOPLE EVERY DAY.

oy! i get that the label is misdirecting but you're reading without tact (tact: a polite attempt to understand). e.g., looking for jungian essentialisms-- does not apply. that's not what they meant at all. it's something else. try making your eyes blurry and see if you can see. like those 3D pictures? *make your eyes blurry*

!@#$%!, that is fine, that is how you read it, I disagree, I think that while everyone can insert themselves as a 20-something woman, that in particular, 20-something women fit the best in that author's economic and cultural analysis. You don't have to be scoffing and say "You're reading without tact" simply because YOU can't just read words literally enough sometimes. And please, enough with your whole "more academic than thou" attitude yo, its lame. Everything's lame. ;)

Why would anyone be jealous of a defeat?

yeah it was a brutal defeat, but come on, for a moment, they thought they had a chance. "if only", etc.

of course they will be marked by it.


i "see" her/it as more of a teenager (13+ up?) but this is about the creatures of capitalism rather than "women".

It seemed clear from the empowered context that such women were in their 20s rather than teens. Teenage girls don't assert half as much power and influence as 20-something women, and yet 20-something women always have that same appeal as teenage girls, if not more so. How are women NOT creatures of capitalism?

Again. Stop bogarting the interpretations. That is what literature is for. You can read it your way, and your insights are cool, valid, and important. HOWEVER, they don't negate anyone else opinions simply because they only half-agree with yours. I've conceded that the book was about macro-economics, but the microscopic analysis was again through the lens of the young woman, who are also the driving force of most economies as they have been for 100,000 years or so ;)

say whatever you want, but i insist that i think you read it too fast, and rather than let it fuck with your brain you've subordinated it to your preexisting interpretations. maybe i'm overreacting but this shit is like nothing i've read in a loooong time. maybe i just haven't read anything in a long time. ha! but i think it can be mind-altering if you let it (unlike most shit which is just repetitions of repetitions and i'm tired of them)

The 'young girl' isn't gendered (or aged) in any literal sense, but 'her' use as a symbol clearly is, which is why some feminist critics are having such a problem with it.

ha ha ha. thanks for the links! i mentioned in my initial comment something about high chances of protracted celibacy and old resentments on the part of the (likely male) writer(s). will read the rest of the review in a minute.

meanwhile, professore, and if not you someone else who read and understood the text and won't obfuscate their lack of comprehension with obscurities-- can you(s) clarify some of the words i'm running into here?

namely:

Empire - who's?
Spectacle - i remember this from vaguely post structuralist readings on late capitalism. whose coinage is it and what is it exactly (or approximately)?
Bloom - lost me there. mrkgnao!

dense shit, needs translation footnotes, and it's making me wanna read stendhal and proust, which i've previously attempted with only failure as a result, but i have a nice lazyish summer ahead of me and so why not (huayno).

okay, society of the spectacle is guy debord

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soc..._the_Spectacle

more shit to read!