Anyone living in Brisbane could do well to venture down to Borders in Chermside in the next couple of days and pick up a hardback copy of Breakdowns - Art Spiegelman's incredible "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" - going for the absurdly cheap price of 10 bucks or thereabouts.
It remains one of the two most coherent explanations of post-modernism I've read (alongside John Berger's Ways Of Seeing).
Showing posts with label Post-structuralism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Post-structuralism. Show all posts
Monday, October 5, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
residual value (pt 2)
I was going to write a post on residual value, then realised that I was plagiarising - badly, and without much thought - from post-structuralists I don't even have names for. All I wanted to know is this: does a work of art have any residual value, beyond that invested in it by the reader/observer. If not, then what's the purpose of the critic. If so, then surely that value is a construct, artificial - no better and no worse than a popularity contest.
One reason I dislike the perfect '10' that Pitchfork gave Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation is the unspoken arrogance implicit in such an action, for - if we can all be agreed upon the fact that the merit of a work of art needs to judged upon both the author and reader's roles - not only does this assume that the work of art is the most 'perfect', flawless ever but also that the judgment passed upon it is from the most 'perfect', flawless critic the world has ever witnessed. The relationship is inter-dependent.
Like most of the western world, I prefer to read an interpretation rather than the 'original' (if it exists). The individual voice becomes all-important in Web 2.0, and how it relates to your paradigm.
It takes a panel of six peers to recognise an expert. Otherwise that expert does not exist. I sometimes feel this can be applied to my own role as music 'critic' and Australia.
One reason I dislike the perfect '10' that Pitchfork gave Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation is the unspoken arrogance implicit in such an action, for - if we can all be agreed upon the fact that the merit of a work of art needs to judged upon both the author and reader's roles - not only does this assume that the work of art is the most 'perfect', flawless ever but also that the judgment passed upon it is from the most 'perfect', flawless critic the world has ever witnessed. The relationship is inter-dependent.
Like most of the western world, I prefer to read an interpretation rather than the 'original' (if it exists). The individual voice becomes all-important in Web 2.0, and how it relates to your paradigm.
It takes a panel of six peers to recognise an expert. Otherwise that expert does not exist. I sometimes feel this can be applied to my own role as music 'critic' and Australia.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
a question
Have there been any famous examples of post-structuralists being reprimanded for plagiarism?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Tuesday am
At first glance, Wikipedia appears to be a post-structuralist construct. Clearly, though, the editors have some very traditional notions of authority and the notion of 'the original'.
Note to self: examine network theory, with regards to the shift in power from a relative handful of empowered individuals ('critics') to a vast, way more levelled, playing field ('bloggers'). The playing field isn't entirely level, however: power still resides with a handful of immensely influential nodes (Pitchfork, Mess And Noise etc). So is it a mistake to assume that critics have been replaced by bloggers? Doesn't the power still reside in the places it's always resided: there's been no fundamental shift, even though the medium has changed. Shouldn't blogs be equated more along the lines of lower-level conversational taste-making down a pub or venue or refectory (etc)?
Note to self: examine network theory, with regards to the shift in power from a relative handful of empowered individuals ('critics') to a vast, way more levelled, playing field ('bloggers'). The playing field isn't entirely level, however: power still resides with a handful of immensely influential nodes (Pitchfork, Mess And Noise etc). So is it a mistake to assume that critics have been replaced by bloggers? Doesn't the power still reside in the places it's always resided: there's been no fundamental shift, even though the medium has changed. Shouldn't blogs be equated more along the lines of lower-level conversational taste-making down a pub or venue or refectory (etc)?
Monday, March 16, 2009
Post-structuralism (strategy)
• no essential meaning
• no solid foundation
• no original (no use in searching for origins)
• reality constructed by discourse
• denotations and connotations – no final meaning
• knowledge is a construct
• IMAGE-MUSIC-TEXT (Barthes) (audience rewrites the meaning of the text as they read it – the death of the author) (no clear divisions between criticism and creation)
• no solid foundation
• no original (no use in searching for origins)
• reality constructed by discourse
• denotations and connotations – no final meaning
• knowledge is a construct
• IMAGE-MUSIC-TEXT (Barthes) (audience rewrites the meaning of the text as they read it – the death of the author) (no clear divisions between criticism and creation)
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