The SW&D Intellectual Masturbation Station

I like that a lot—who is it?

Also, it took me fucking forever to get my head around this graph (it's been a while since I've looked at it, so it's making me scratch my head again).

I love this thread already.

Here's a thing- lately I've been thinking about body image as an inherently objectifying concept / practice. Constructing a body image of myself is necessarily reflexive, and requires a stepping-out of my own being, so to speak. Me, outside of myself, seeing myself as object/other. I feel like this mode of engagement is only exacerbated by the way we tend to focus on appearance, to the point of disregarding anything else. Can we have a fashunz phenomenology? *** The Official Lived Experience of What I'm Wearing Today Thread ***

also I am sleep deprived.

we off to a great start

So I sort of intuitively grasp the post-structuralist kind of discourse, and while i've read foucault, most of my intellectual development has been sort of focused towards international economics and politics and that kind of stuff, with a smattering of more modernist social theory. + Rawls

is there any easily-digestible stuff like that? I don't need to read the original sources. Just something to kindle while I'm on the subway that will expand my mind.

Whoever was asking for philosophy to read for kicks earlier should look at Dennett. He does some fun thought experiment stuff that doesn't require much background knowledge.

Dennett's great. Gives terrific lectures, and he has an incredible beard to boot. I wouldn't exactly place him in the same sort of discussion as the archetypical post-structuralists like Derrida, Foucault, Butler, Johnson, Zizek, etc.—but you're right to point out that he is a nice introduction to that sort of thinking.

Edit: To be honest, I myself don't really know how to recommend a good "beginner" text that comes from the loose assemblage of works that one might hesitantly, ironically, call a post-structuralist canon. If you do want a great introduction to lit crit—and by extension, lit crit history—then check out Terry Eagleton's Introduction to Literary Theory. It won't make you grapple with the discursive writing style of any of the thinkers he discusses, but he gives a terrific treating of the shit dating all the way back to the Russian formalists to contemporary literary theory.

I suggest you read up on the "Sokal Hoax" before bothering to read what is called post-structuralist theory.

I heard about that. I guess more phenomeonology? I've always been interested in Heidegger but i have like 0 desire to actually read Heidegger.

the talk about Tom Ford and the love Hemingway's getting got me thinking about the debate over Hemingway's potential misogyny. I haven't read enough (I think) to see any consistency to this, but it would stray me I think, especially after a semester of Woolf.