Bonus nonsense:
Glittering Images by Camille Paglia
I stopped reading after this horrendous introduction. I would describe the prose as Redditor adjacent. The author identifies as a civil rights era liberal and atheist, while condemning black art and Piss Christ. There were some pretty pictures in the book tho. I don’t know who this author lady is/was but she sucks. 2/10
E: if you look this lady up, as many in the comments have done already, turns out she’s a racist, transphobic pedophile. classic anticommunist
Marxism lacks [thing Marx wrote about and which Soviet academics wrote innumerable articles and books expounding upon]
A classic
Famously Marx was like “to each and from each so that industry can proceed optimally until the entire planet is nothing but one great machine and humans are themselves reduced to mere gears”
The idea that materialist dialectics lacks a metaphysical component is an idea that only someone who has never even read one chapter of Marx would have.
Material conditions are the foundation of metaphysical identity. The base reality informs the metaphysical superstructure and vice versa. Anyone who attempts to ignore material reality is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
Humans cannot have an elevated sense of identity outside of a material society since their identity is derived from the conditions of that society
It is kind of weird and technically incorrect, but consistent with layperson usage that materialism is anti-metaphysical because metaphysics is idealism and theology and so on. It’s incorrect because accepting an objective material reality as the substrate of the phenomenal world is a metaphysical stance.
I do think it’s a profoundly backward attitude that we see all the time from these romantic critics to cling to mystification as though the world can only be worth living in so long as we fight to prevent people from learning about how it functions, as though ignorance is even required for sublimation, the only thing these people seem to care about.
No you see, before davinci painters were dum dums and advances in pigments composition bear no relation to renaissance, they just liked monochrome fills
It’s not like half the 19th century chemistry can be described “how the fuck do we make indigo?” Or ultramarine for painters in 13th, by other means ^or how to crush the venezian cartels^
Or whatever was going on with paintbrushes and canvases, they didn’t fall out of coconut tree as well
society (invisible hand of the market) says blue color is impossible to make cheaply, well, good luck to your artistic soul drawing a sky, mate. same for early white pigments ageing (or bright greens, if i remember correctly)
In Plato’s Cave - The chains, darkness and shadow puppets are the base and the shadow pictures on the wall are the metaphysical. If you’re only looking at the metaphysical then you are being deluded.
In Plato’s Cave, the shadows on the wall are allegorically very much the physical world and the outside world under the light of the sun is the world of Forms, because Plato was the arch-idealist.
You get what I mean though right? They are a show created to delude the people within the cave. The metaphysical superstructure is created in the minds of the individuals based on seeing the shadows, built upon the physical base that’s trapping them and showing them the shadows to keep them there.
Taken to it’s ultimate conclusion this is the problem:
- The mind is the body is the mind.
- The Body creates the Mind, which is limited by the Body, but they’re two separate things.
From the point of Dialectical materialism you are the complex result of your body’s processes. From the point of metaphysics there’s something like a “soul” in you, only limited by material conditions.
These are completely incompatible world views.
But also I honestly don’t really like the word “Materialism” maybe it’s because I had interest in physics, but in Physics Matter is something that has weights, volume and takes up space. Not everything takes up space and not everything has weight. But maybe that’s the point, you’re gonna have to have this conversation every single time you explain materialism to a layperson. They’ll ask you: “So you don’t believe in sound? You don’t think heat exists? Maybe that’s what a “soul” is - a non-material thing. What do you say to that Materialist?”
Materialism != Dialectical Materialism
That’s kinda the whole point. The body and the mind (base/superstructure, cause/effect, whatever it is you want to call it) are linked through a dialectical relationship. What those things are doesn’t matter, because it’s their conflict that creates the Real.
The grounding factor of Dialectical Materialism is that the movement of the dialectic is observable in material reality and you can therefore infer things about the relationship between those concepts from that movement.
From the point of metaphysics there’s something like a “soul” in you, only limited by material conditions.
That’s a metaphysical stance but not at all synonymous with metaphysics. What you’re describing is dualism.
They’ll ask you: "So you don’t believe in sound? You don’t think heat exists?
These are bad examples because they are just types of moving particles.
The other two are incorrect about diamat not being materialist though, it’s just a version of materialism
that’s usual materialism. dialectical materialism operates on society development level, and individual as an atom of that society. laws customs rituals appear out of development of material forces of production and exchange, the mind typical materialists accept quite readily, not for nothing they were imagining it as a series of gears or whatever. the materialists may think (and quite often do) that all that society structure is purely mind exercise, the gheist of the people or institutions or whatever, thus marxists call them idealists.
you may think quite easily disconnected from material reality (say, writing fantasy book), but you may not act in discordance with reality or, by extension, society (thus if you are reborn in slave holding society, unless you have readily made cavalry and cannons and good ideas about crops and crops themselves you are unlikely to progress anywhere from that)
That’s a rather depressing way to look at it. If I was Isekai’d I’d still have all my accumulated knowledge. I could at least try to organize something.
The way I see it Idealists is rather simple, they lack just one thing: Direct experience. It’s more or less what you’ve said, if I understand it correctly. I do find experience rather interesting, when I was a child I used to disconnect form my body quite a lot during stressful events or hunger, sometimes another voice would take over, sometimes I’d take a puppet and use that to serve as a vessel for the other voice, it’d be helpful to discuss things over, but over time as I grew older and accumulated more knowledge I had no more need for my childish ways and now it’s just me experiencing the world as one. You think I’m the scared child or the puppet that took over? Perhaps neither.
This Camille Paglia? who calls other feminist contemporaries Stalinists?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia#Child_sexuality yikes, that is not a subheader you ever want to see on a wikipedia page
lmao holy christ. usually you only see this kind of blatant support for CSA on 4chan.
“I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In Sexual Personae, I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization.”
“actually child abuse is the lynchpin of western civilization!”
but imagine thinking that’s a good thing, my godPaglia jokingly commented in an interview in 1992: “In the case of Sinéad O’Connor, child abuse was justified”. This was her response to the singer’s action on Saturday Night Live, where she tore up a picture of the pope in protest of the unfolding child sexual abuse scandal surrounding the Catholic Church
In 1993, Paglia signed a manifesto supporting NAMBLA, a pederasty and pedophilia advocacy organization.
In 1994, Paglia supported lowering the legal age of consent to 14. She noted in a 1995 interview with pro-pedophile activist Bill Andriette, “I fail to see what is wrong with erotic fondling with any age.”
In 1993, Paglia signed a manifesto supporting NAMBLA
Lmfao how did anyone let this person near a pen. Let alone actually be published or listened to at all…
cw pedo shit
In 1994, Paglia supported lowering the legal age of consent to 14. She noted in a 1995 interview with pro-pedophile activist Bill Andriette, “I fail to see what is wrong with erotic fondling with any age.”
Transphobia, justifying SA, general shittiness
Paglia has long rejected the scientific consensus on global warming
She said that the “cold biological truth is that sex changes are impossible” and that she rejects "state-sponsored coercion to call someone a ‘woman’ or a ‘man’ simply on the basis of his or her subjective feeling about it.
Paglia is critical of the influence many postwar French writers have had on the humanities, claiming that universities are in the “thrall” of French post-structuralists; that in the works of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault, she never once found a sentence that interested her
Paglia criticized Bill Clinton for not resigning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which she says “paralyzed the government for two years, leading directly to our blindsiding by 9/11.”
“In the case of Sinéad O’Connor, child abuse was justified”. This was her response to the singer’s action on Saturday Night Live, where she tore up a picture of the pope in protest of the unfolding child sexual abuse scandal surrounding the Catholic Church.Lotta bangers in here, but my favorite has to be “Bill Clinton did 9/11”
This Camille Paglia?
even skimming that was a wild ride holy molySomeone should show her piefed
It’s always funny when liberals insist that Marxists are the ones who belive that humans are just homo economicus when it’s literally liberal theorists who came up with that and think that.
Also, thinking revenge of the sith is the peak of human art might be the hottest take I’ve ever heard
Looked up this Camilie Paglia, lmao literally just a racist pedophile, can’t say I’m shocked a pedo would traffic in amathiaic anti-communism
most coherent idealist
I love how every argument against Marxism in every fucking field just turns into what is essentially psuedo-scientific drivel.
There is a disturbing amount of liberalism in the arts
Source: Went to art school
They don’t call it liberal arts for nothin.
My liberal arts classes always emphasized that it was neoliberalism that was bad because “Walmart”, but liberalism was great because “freedom”.
“Marxism is unconcerned with magic”
Magic is totally compatible with Marxism and dialectical materialism because the second it has a real impact on material reality, it forms a relationship with reality.
If magic was real, the only thing that changes for Marxists is the nature of the contradictions.
I read a story set in a magical world, written by a commie, with essentially this viewpoint, and it was the best story in that setting I’ve ever read. Which is a low bar considering what the setting is, but still.
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It works the same for sci-fi stuff too, since sci-fi is just magic in denial. If you want to build an interesting world, you can do it pretty easily by creating the base reality, then setting up your poles/classes/conflicts, and just kinda playing them forwards.
World has no magic/sci-fi thing. Then magic/sci-fi thing is introduced. Contradiction is formed between the powers of new thing and the old state of affairs. The capabilities of new thing make old way obsolete, but existing power structures use their momentum to resist/suppress new thing so they can maintain control.
Of course you can just pretend new thing is industrial labor and old thing is the way of kings. Then your world maps 1:1 to what we know.
Of course you can just pretend new thing is industrial labor and old thing is the way of kings. Then your world maps 1:1 to what we know.
Well, you can do this, and a lot of sci fi does, but it’s not the best possible analysis you can make. If you treat the magic or sufficiently advanced technology as its own thing, you can approach it with a somewhat unique analysis, which I tend to appreciate a lot more. But honestly, mapping it 1:1 at least allows some form of Marxist analysis, which is better than what you’ll actually find in the vast majority of fantasy and sci-fi writing.
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Coming up with novel conflicts in the new system is what makes things really fresh and unique. I think Asimov did a decent job with this in Foundation where the primary contradictions went necessarily class based, but instead information based.
Still, just ripping off the world historical dialectic conditions creates a relating and compelling story/world. Mainly because it’s easy for the reader to parse and understand, while also making it easy to keep track of.
Indeed.
I know a few people who claim to hate Marxism and couldn’t tell you what dialectical materialism is, and then they turn around and say the stories with a believable dialectical analysis are good worldbuilding and the ones that don’t bother really suck.
I hate dealing with liberals.
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Ripping into marxism while being oblivious to the fact Lucas is obviously either a marxist himself or a deep marxist sympathiser is funny as fuck in the context of calling him the greatest living artist.
Marxism lacks an in-universe canonical backstory about the Whills, instead reducing force-sensitivity to concepts such as “ideology” and “material conditions (e.g., midichlorians)”
I hate the midichlorians but something creates the force.
It would have been better off left untouched in lore though.
Those aren’t strays, those are point-blanks
Camille Paglia sucks
As I understand it the author is an antifeminist cosplaying as a feminist.
antifeminist cosplaying as a fenothing.
https://tabithaarnold.substack.com/p/jeffrey-epsteins-naked-paintings
A chapter dedicated to William Blake made me wonder if Paglia might have been a better fit for Jeffrey Epstein’s art advisor. “trespassing is always subliminally erotic. Piercing a temenos—a sacred space of mind, body, bedchamber or nature—is always a domination and defilement. Blake’s Infant Joy evokes an impulse toward criminal trespass. Reading it, we hover at the edge of a forbidden locus of experience.”
context
spoiler
The oldest art school in the United States, PAFA had emphasized the study of the nude model since 1805, when figure painting and portraiture were in high demand. Thomas Eakins, once a PAFA instructor, was famously fired after he uncovered a male model in front of a class that included female students.
100 years later, the scandal had worn off 18-year-old women painting nudes, and we did it often. It didn’t take long to get desensitized by the daily sight of soft penises and drooping breasts, and I stopped equivocating the naked body with sexuality. When friends and family questioned the classroom emphasis on the nude, I told them something like, ‘skin, flesh, bones, and blood are some of the most complex subjects to paint accurately.’
At some point it felt like everyone in my painting program, students and teachers, was so focused on the challenge of capturing the nudes that we were offended by inquiries to their eroticism, much less the idea that we should think conceptually about figure paintings beyond expressions of craft.
As Clark put it: “Since the earliest times the obsessive, unreasonable nature of physical desire has sought relief in images, and to give these images a form by which Venus may cease to be vulgar and become celestial has been one of the recurring aims of European art.”
Of course, most students would grow out of this academic mode and mature into our own unique voices, painting different subjects or finding new mediums altogether. But there we were, a little art factory hard at work making “cheap nudes,” and many of our professors were excellent teachers because their own bodies of work were cheap nudes.
One day, with a wild hair of confidence, I approached a professor I admired outside of class. He was working on a huge multi-figure painting, and I don’t recall the details of our conversation, but I know I asked him something about the meaning of so many nude figures in the scene. He recommended I seek out Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia, who taught down the street at University of the Arts.
Paglia studied the psychosexual narratives in Western art through the lens of the Marquis de Sade, whose dominating idea of man’s will-to-power she posed to subvert Rosseau’s widely accepted theory of nature as benevolent mother goddess.
“When social controls weaken, man’s innate cruelty bursts forth,” Paglia argued. “Theremoved is created not by bad social influences but by a failure of social conditioning. Feminists, seeking to drive power relations out of sex, have set themselves against nature. Sex is power.”
As a student, I was turned off by Sexual Personae before I got far into the book. Paglia was edgy, and the opening chapters read more like a coke-fueled rant than an academic work. I revisited her for the sake of this essay, hoping to understand my professor with the benefit of hindsight.
“Male fear of woman’s self-containment is written all over mythology and culture,” Paglia wrote. “The fascination of woman’s autonomy is plain in Ingres’ The Turkish Bath…Ingres’ painting is oddly round, a rose window or Madonna rondo turned pagan peephole, through which we spy the plump nude bodies of a dozen women amorously entwined, like lesbian flower petals.”
A chapter dedicated to William Blake made me wonder if Paglia might have been a better fit for Jeffrey Epstein’s art advisor. “trespassing is always subliminally erotic. Piercing a temenos—a sacred space of mind, body, bedchamber or nature—is always a domination and defilement. Blake’s Infant Joy evokes an impulse toward criminal trespass. Reading it, we hover at the edge of a forbidden locus of experience.”
I’m still very glad everyday for being inoculated to ridiculous art mysticism by Ways of Seeing. Thanks John Berger and co.
In Poland half of books are like that, mostly non relevant ritualistic bash at the communism, usually along the lines of popular anticommunist tropes.
