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Namechecking

  
 
Cat Chant
16:30 / 20.09.02
I hate lazy thinking. There’s a tendency here to namecheck as a sort of shorthand of evidence. “Chomsky says…” Fuck Chomsky. What do you say? LLBimG

Angry response:

Yeah. Fuck those lazy bastards who read Chomsky. When I come to barbelith & open up a thread, God forbid that it should contain all sorts of information and resources for thinking about the thread topic. I don't want to know - about the topic - what it entails, how it has been thought through, what sorts of histories and schools of thought have engaged with it, what the underlying assumptions that operate it might be - God no. I just want a forum for all the individuals behind fictionsuits to express their authentic, innermost, individual thoughts about the topic. Because that's much more interesting. My thinking about the nation state or reality might not be advanced one whit - but I know what [Your Name Here] thinks about it, and that's what it's all about!

Sorry. I was going to do a less angry response but I've got myself all riled now... but I have been thinking for a while that I'd like to start a thread about this, about ways to present resources & contexts for thinking about topics without coming across as "name-dropping" or a heavy "intellectual". See, for me, if you don't situate yourself in terms of the kinds of thinking, the language games, and the history of the issues that you're using, then the only co-ordinates other posters have for participating in the argument are "common sense" - in other words a rag-bag of status-quo-supporting prejudices and nonsense. It's a question of defining the territory, supplying resources for thought, and making the contours & affiliations of one's own thinking clear, rather than an attempt to hijack the "authority" of a previous thinker.

Strategies? Thoughts? Useful quotes ?

Move to Headshop if all goes well, please.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:25 / 20.09.02
I'm worried about causing offence here, as I am still recovering from the discovery that LLBimG is, in fact, exactly twice as old as I thought he was...

I think we can probably trace this to "authenticity". Statements from others whose books you may have read are inauthentic, but they have not been empirically developed. They are "learned", rather than "felt", and as such are untrustworthy. It's a backwoodsy view, and one which is by no means exclusively American, but does seem to have a lot of American adherents.

A very good example of the basic process here could be seen in pretty much any discussion, on or indeed off Barbelith, about any aspect whatsoever concerning paedophilia (except possibly "was Blake actually a nonce?"). The last time it was tried on Barbelith, the camps quickly shook out to those with in interest in jurisprudence, legality, legal protections and, those who often read, quoted and discussed the words of others in the case, and those who are *mothers*, and as such have a perspective that is more valid than any of that stuff because heartfelt and personal.

Whether quotation can be separated from statements of hierarchical authority...I woudl say yes, but probably not on Barbelith, because there is unlikely to be a situation where nobody involved in the debate does not feel threatened by an absence of knowledge or undermined by unfamiliarity with a text. Conversely, I would be a little surprised if SCRs across the country rang to cries of "who gives a fuck what Barthes thinks?", for example.

Whether this means the citation is doomed I don't know. I tend not to quote people directly, or cite them if it is not necessary or useful to do so, because a) I have not read as many books as some of the boffins around here and b) it frequently sidetracks the conversation. If somebody isn't up for or to discussing a point just attributed to Uncel Friedrich, a nice, chatty discussion of whether he was gay/mad/a Nazi will do far better.
 
 
Sax
17:44 / 20.09.02
I would much rather see ideas and discussions attributed where possible, pretty much for the reasons that Deva has already pointed out; it makes it that much easier to follow-up ideas and comments with some wider reading. Simple as that.

I admit to sometimes feeling a little over-awed and under-intellectual if people just throw reams and reams of quotes into a thread without any of their own analysis or opinions, though. Perhaps we haven't all read Chomsky, after all, and expansion on the thoughts or opinions on what is being quoted is going to be useful.

Perhaps each thread could be accompanied by a bibliography side-thread. Not really, though.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
17:50 / 20.09.02
. My thinking about the nation state or reality might not be advanced one whit - but I know what [Your Name Here] thinks about it, and that's what it's all about!

I know it's not what you meant, but actually, I would like to know what [Your Name Here] has to say about a lot of things. I really miss having that guy around.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
18:32 / 20.09.02
I'm one of those people who can't stand over-quoting... one aspect of this is slightly patronisingly put over by Tann's post above, in that I tend to feel threatened by a discussion veering into analysis of 'what Barthes had to say about this', largely because (for example) I'm only aware of Barthes' writing concerning reader-response theory, and the nexus he made with Foucault regarding 'the death of the author', and I don't like feeling unable to contribute to a thread on a subject that I care about (don't have a great deal of time to invest in theory these days, although I reread a dissertation I wrote on 'Kristeva and the mirror phase in movies' recently and got all goose-pimply for the old days when I could relate psychoanalytic theory to anything, given enough whisky).

I recognise that the above is not exactly a well-rounded mature attitude, and that I'll never be a fisher of men - it's something I'd like to change, and intend to devote more time to. My main problem with the above is that there is a fair amount of 'relying on names for authority' in some of these threads, and some of the posts I've seen that (for example) quote scads of Foucault don't analyse the quote itself, or break it down into how that jibes with the poster's own views on the subject... there's also the occasional post quoting a past master that relies upon an assumption that the reader knows the context from which the quote is taken, where the critic/theorist is coming from, an assumption that works in a seminar but not in the wider arena of a message board, where we didn't get a reading list prior to the thread being started.

And before anyone asks - no, I'm not going to point to examples of the above, largely because it's something that seems to have improved immeasurably in the last few months, and I'm reasonably happy that this is the case.

I also think that it's somewhat reductive to position the kind of attitude that annoyed Deva as necessarily an anti-intellectualism, redneck stance... almost as reductive as the archetypal anti-intellectualism stance itself. The best example of this I can think of is the classic thread 'Are Lesbians Women?', which I mentioned to a couple of meatmates once in a disparaging manner... They instantly went into sneering 'WTF' mode, thinking they were agreeing with me, which pissed me off, because I only mentioned it because I'd disagreed with the consensus on the thread and wanted to discuss it further with two bisexual women in real life, not because I thought the whole idea of the discussion was 'wanky'...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:42 / 20.09.02
I didn't *say* it was anti-intellectual. I said it was backwoodsy. Like C.S. Pierce is a backwoodsy philosopher. Not connected to urban teaching orthodoxies, often autodidactic, not necessarily anti-intellectual per se, although anti-intellectualism may be a concept behind certain examples of the type.
 
 
Cat Chant
20:46 / 20.09.02
Tann/Jack, it was probably I who probably - reductively - implied this attitude was anti-intellectual, hopefully in the "angry" part of my post rather than the second part. The thing is that I get defensive & feel like a minority under attack when people slag people (me! Me! ME! ) off for quoting Barthes (God, I love Barthes), so I should have more sympathy for "the other side" (as 'twere) feeling defensive when I (or whoever) do it in the first place.

I guess that when I just post a quote I feel like it would be redundant and/or reductive to explain how it relates to the topic at hand. I consider myself to be "channeling" the author & that each poster/reader/Barbecitizen should make their own mind up as to how (and indeed whether) it addresses the topic, just as ze would if the reply wasn't a quote - if Barthes really was posting. But I take the point about such quotes sometimes being illegible without some sort of specialist knowledge. Also, since Barthes isn't posting under his own name, it's an interesting question how much I need to contextualise quotes in order to make them respondable-to... is that part of the problem? That it's impossible to fight with a non-present dead author who is only being quoted, so the quoter has to take some sort of responsibility - or demonstrate where ze stands in relation to the quote quoted - so that argument can continue? Aha! The lightbulb above my head goes on!

(And Flux - you're right, I *would* like to know what [Your Name Here] thinks about stuff. Let's pretend it was kind of a pun...)
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
21:14 / 20.09.02
Fuck Chomsky. What do you say?

I say 'Read Chomsky'. I say 'Read Pilger.' I say 'Seek information, seek opinion, seek alternative understandings which challenge your own. Pass them on. Learn. Think. Then act.'

I say 'Less bullshit from you, haircut boy.'
 
 
Tryphena Absent
22:15 / 20.09.02
What the hell is wrong with quoting anyway? Yeah you need to back it up a bit big deal. Damn we're on a board where there's a section on 'barbequotes!' Every thing you write can't be a quote because that would make no type of sense but I'm getting the sense that some of you are disparaging quoting from the top of your rather high pillars.

Jack - you seem to like explanation - define over-quoting.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
08:25 / 21.09.02
I don't have a problem with quotes/links/whatever. Yes, explanation and personal interpretation is kind of important. What I do find slightly irksome (only slightly, mind) is when names are dropped without quotes or links on the assumption that everyone will already know what you're talking about, as this implies that anyone who doesn't is out of their depth. I know I've been guilty of this myself, as has pretty much everyone, but it's something that I try not to do if possible.
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:13 / 21.09.02
I get the feeling that LLBimG really objects to Appeal to Authority (argumentum ad verecundiam) as a rhetorical trick. Also there is a laziness involved in saying that Chomsky (or whoever) has thought hard about a subject and their opinion is then substituted for argument.

However, there is a useful role for quotation that involves neither of these and instead points to further possible information as well as supplying launching points for a post.

To fail to distinguish these different sorts of approach does tend toward the anti-intellectual, in my view.
 
 
Cat Chant
13:09 / 21.09.02
there is a laziness involved in saying that Chomsky (or whoever) has thought hard about a subject and their opinion is then substituted for argument.

Do you think? I agree that there's a "shorthand" going on, a substitution for argument, but then if I'm piggybacking off an argument that's taken Chomsky* (or whoever) an entire book to work through, there's something to be said for not cluttering the board up with (reductive summaries of) said argument.

But then that can look like an appeal to authority, I spose - "it must be right because Chomsky* said it", or "you're not allowed to argue about this topic until you've read all the same books as me, you ignoramus". Hmmm.

*I feel compelled at this point to make it clear that I don't think I've ever read a single word by Chomsky, btw.
 
 
Lurid Archive
13:58 / 21.09.02
I think that that analysis is about right, Deva. Personally, although it does depend a little on the specific medium, I think that quotation is intellectually dishonest unless it is backed up by understanding. So I think that one should be prepared to provide a summary of the relavant arguments to a high level of detail if requested or required. One can do this in stages, so as not to swamp a thread, but I think the point is that it won't be redundant if the people in question haven't heard the arguments before. This is probably influenced by the way I am used to arguing.

One thing that gets my goat is when one argues a point and the response is something of the form, "I can't answer that, but you must be wrong because so and so disagrees with you." It may be arrogance to dismiss experts, but it invites ignorance to unthinkingly concede points to them. I dislike both extremes and again this says something of my background.
 
  
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