Just wanna say I found J. Moufawad-Paul to completely embody the stereotype of theory being inscrutable and obtuse. I tried getting into Continuity & Rupture and it was unreadable.
I'm going to return to it and try again, but first impression was pretty bad.
I also mostly feel the same way about Mark Fischer. Capitalist Realism had some amazing ideas, but you had to sift through a whole bunch of name-dropping of philosophers and random tangents to get to them.
We need like a fucking pop science-style writer to do leftist theory, these grandiose philosophical tomes are off-putting to even the people that are invested and want to learn.
That's...fine, but definitely not really equivalent to what I'm looking for or talking about. Zizek isn't exactly the most relatable or digestible figure, and while I like the idea, it doesn't really tell you anything other than "ideology is all-encompassing and hard to escape" - I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that or how that helps me understand leftist theory better.
Zizek is actually bad for new people. You have to know your German philosophers and communist theoreticians of 150 years ago to actually follow his points (and a bit basic Lacan), who aren't that curious but a bit boring reading of Marx (and then he stretches the boring reading a bit to entertain, which is problematic and leads to situations that are actually not communist anymore - at least if read as Gen Z would).
See, I literally didn't get any of that from the video, so I don't think it was very successful at communicating those ideas, and I'm familiar with the concept of base/superstructure.
Your post here is 10x better than the video, maybe you should write the theory I'm looking for :thonk:
Just wanna say I found J. Moufawad-Paul to completely embody the stereotype of theory being inscrutable and obtuse. I tried getting into Continuity & Rupture and it was unreadable.
I'm going to return to it and try again, but first impression was pretty bad.
I also mostly feel the same way about Mark Fischer. Capitalist Realism had some amazing ideas, but you had to sift through a whole bunch of name-dropping of philosophers and random tangents to get to them.
We need like a fucking pop science-style writer to do leftist theory, these grandiose philosophical tomes are off-putting to even the people that are invested and want to learn.
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That's...fine, but definitely not really equivalent to what I'm looking for or talking about. Zizek isn't exactly the most relatable or digestible figure, and while I like the idea, it doesn't really tell you anything other than "ideology is all-encompassing and hard to escape" - I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that or how that helps me understand leftist theory better.
Zizek is actually bad for new people. You have to know your German philosophers and communist theoreticians of 150 years ago to actually follow his points (and a bit basic Lacan), who aren't that curious but a bit boring reading of Marx (and then he stretches the boring reading a bit to entertain, which is problematic and leads to situations that are actually not communist anymore - at least if read as Gen Z would).
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See, I literally didn't get any of that from the video, so I don't think it was very successful at communicating those ideas, and I'm familiar with the concept of base/superstructure.
Your post here is 10x better than the video, maybe you should write the theory I'm looking for :thonk:
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