Khari > Recent Status Updates

The ludicrousness of some of these arguments makes my eyes cross. Like, I truly cannot believe that anyone would say them.

The gem for today is made in the context of a multipage story that consisists of two characters conversing through time: The identity of characters constitutes itself through repetition of different signs. Since each page has its own distinct number, the characters are different, and other.

Second of all, the fact that a language has gendered nouns or not says absolutely nothing about the culture’s internal dynamics.

This is Sapir Whorfism, and even when it is shown that language affects perceptions it does so only at the millisecond level.

Yes. There are some things that are unique to certain languages that reflect cultural differences, but it’scertainly not to be found in noun declensions or gender

“When students learn the basics of a new language, one of the first things they learn are the rudiments of grammar such as declension or the presence of masculine and feminine nouns. It is easy to communicate that these are clearly human constructions, reflecting a culture’s internal dynamics.”

For a book that’s about examining assumptions, that’s a whopper of one.

Even though I disagree with a lot of what this author is saying, I am enjoying the process of reading the book. He's an engaging and clear writer and he's writing to be understood, not to obfuscate, very refreshing from a critical theorist.

This dude just ignores that. He knows that the comics he chose to analyze are not "generally representative" of comics. He says that in the essay itself! Yet he still builds an overarching theory on them that he says applies to all comics!!! Based on 3!!!!

I think it's an inherent misunderstanding of the differences between qualitative and quantitative research. They are both necessary. The first, though, is by its nature non generalizable. It looks deeply at one phenomena and attempts to understand why that phenomena occurs. But that's just the first step, before you can make a theory about the phenomena, you need to see if it occurs elsewhere, if it's quantifiable.

Not only does Dr. Cohn not bother going down esoteric paths of thought that have no connection to reality, but his entire focus is on proving things about comics empirically. If something happens once while someone is reading a comic, that is not enough to build a theory on. It is only the things that repeat, that are worth studying and forming a system or theory about. Not this guy. One comic is enough for him.

Even if I don't understand half of what Dr. Cohn writes about comics, I have to appreciate how thoroughly grounded he is in reality.

He doesn't build his arguments based on how aware a character is of their characterness, like this guy is doing, why would he, it's a character, 2d, created out of the mind of a human. Its not alive, nor is it self aware, therefore it has no consciousness.

Furthermore, if critical theory were truly self critical as it purports to be, then when it fails to bring about the things which it proclaims to be good, then it should re examine itself, to see if the things it thinks are good are actually good, or if the manner in which they are pursuing said goals are good. I don't see much evidence of such re evaluation.

"False consciousness is the state of being duped by dominant ideology so that you think inequality is...normal."

This is what blows my mind. Inequality IS normal. I do not think this because I have been conditioned to by a dominant ideology. I think this because I observe it. There has never been a society on earth that has not been inequal. It's a fact of life living in a world where nothing is equally distributed.

"In this paradigm learning to think critically is a sort of ideological detoxification, in which the ideology of individualism, the belief that we all make our own destiny, are captains of our own souls, is revealed as a tool of false consciousness."

Is our destiny solely in our hands? No. But neither is it solely under the thumb of dominant ideologies.

I like that he is defining things so cogently, I'm just astonished that he accepts them.

Like, finally, a clear definition of structuralism "individual troubles analyzed as political phenomena."

But as he accepts that as true, why doesn't he see how unifactorial it is?

"Critical theory regards dominant ideology as inherently manipulative and duplicitous."

Truer words.

The only problem is that when critical theory becomes the dominant ideology, as it is in education right now, it doesn't see itself as inherently manipulative and duplicitous.

It's like he doesn't notice how critical theory's definition of critical thinking is very limited in scope whereas former, and what I think are commonly understood definitions, are more universally applicable.

That’s a redefinition, an obfuscation. He could have just said a system.

On the other hand, kudos for being the first person to come out and say that Foucault redefined ‘truth’ not to mean what most people think of it being, you know, factual, accurate, correct but instead “as being a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements.” So truth is a system of authority that has parameters for determining what is acceptable.

Also he says the hypothetical deductive method of the scientific method was the gold standard for a long time…uh…it’s no longer the gold standard?

Says who?

I’m getting frustrated with how extreme people are presented that don’t agree with this author.

He talks about the view of critical thinking as an explicit critique of capitalism, that’s a fair representation of some people but their opponents are portrayed as “demonizing union members as corrupt Stalinist obstructionists engaged in a consistent misuse of power.”

Uh. I think there are some intermediary positions.

The canon of literature is not simply arbitrary, it’s what has remained from hundreds of years of sifting. The cream of the crop of what has been produced and read and loved by tens of thousands of people.

Shakespeare and Plato are not great because a professor said so. They’re great because hundreds of thousands of people across time in an unbroken community, thought they were great and were worth preserving.

I wonder if he examines his own assumptions critically, take for example this one. “Content grammar [for example in literature the study of a canon of great works], is the result of three politics of academic inquiry, of let in academic gatekeeper positions deciding that some knowledge is legitimate because of the way it has been established and some is not.”

Not necessarily.

If not semiotically, then you need to explain what the presumed relationship is, not just state that there is one, and then not define it, and then create a countervailing theory to tear it down.

That’s like saying there is a presumed relationship between lemons and obesity, then saying that lemons parody obesity. Nonsensical.

What, for instance, is the presumed relation between signs and objects?

Presumably, semiotically, signs represent objects.

If that is the case, then how do comics parody that relationship? If anything they rely on that relationship, because as we are reading them we accept that their portrayal or picture of a person represents an actual person with motivations and behaviors. I don’t see how that’s a parody.

Why do these people have to write so obtusely?

And why do they have to say things that are so weirdly overthought? It’s like they need someone to drag them back to reality and common sense.

“Comics parody the very notion of an original….on the referentiality of signs. They parody the presumed relation between signs and objects.”

Okay, you have stated many things there, but you haven’t explained them.

One assumption he should notice is that when he does things that are harmful to himself the blame for those actions and beliefs is external. Ie., he believed men don't get depression, that's the patriarchy. He believed that if he wasn't working close to exhaustion, then he wasn't a good teacher, that's capitalism.

Not necessarily, couldn't both of those be chocked up to pride and arrogance?

Uh. Just because most of the world is divided into states doesn't mean that people's are ruled by states...he already knows that because he is talking about New Guienea do much, but the same is true if most of Africa and a great deal of the middle east, where the tribe is still the primary way that people relate to each other.

Okay, maybe the King did personally invent hangul, I wasn't alive back then, and I can't find the source where I read that it was a team of scholars working under him, but regardless, the point that the Koreans could write before the introduction of hangul remains true. They weren't just surround by script using people, they used script themselves.

And, as far as I know, I could be wrong, said king didn't invented anything, he gathered a bunch of scholars and had them invent a simpler system so that he could get his improved literacy. The interesting thing is that there is healthy debate about whether this was a good thing or not, since korean has a larger number than average of homophones, ideographs are arguably better at conveying meaning.