Erisology

[padraig (u.s.)]

that's still to very much to do with cultural capital but probably more in the realm of idk historically ethnocentric views of artistic legitimacy

I don't know the best way to say things most of the time, I don't have any formal training like you or @constant escape or some other people here, just what I read on my own here and there

anyway to do with how artistic legitimacy or worth is tied to European conceptions of it, given how world history shook out ca. 1500-present

this isn't really on-topic for erisology probably

tho I guess you would have to think about how dominant paradigms influence or control the signal

 

[luka]

Dominant paradigms do but working in the other direction the subordinate paradigm gnawing and nibbling

 

[luka]

This is a large part of finnegans wake. Master says but in answer a whole panoply of ways for the subordinate to assert themselves

 

[luka]

You get this in Dickens. Female characters as bosses despite the status of females

 

[luka]

Very interesting area of study

 

[sus]

for the record, I haven't anymore education than an undergrad in American history, I just happen to be a big fucking nerd, haha

 

[luka]

for the record, I haven't anymore education than an undergrad in American history, I just happen to be a big fucking nerd, haha

people with education get eliminated from the forum, you're safe, for now

 

[sus]

a lot of education seems to be just training and instilling a specific framework into somebody, with a brute Pavlovian grade system

I think I'm team autodidact for sure—I may only be a fellow traveler, at the end of the day, but my spirit is with them

 

[sus]

I took one philosophy class in university and I remember it was always my worst, dumbest, conventional papers that did well, and whenever I put any interesting thought into the project, it was a gonner

 

[luka]

I shrivel in a class format as a rule.

 

[luka]

My magical powers wither and everyone points and laughs

 

[sus]

that's still to very much to do with cultural capital but probably more in the realm of idk historically ethnocentric views of artistic legitimacy

I don't know the best way to say things most of the time, I don't have any formal training like you or @constant escape or some other people here, just what I read on my own here and there

anyway to do with how artistic legitimacy or worth is tied to European conceptions of it, given how world history shook out ca. 1500-present

this isn't really on-topic for erisology probably

tho I guess you would have to think about how dominant paradigms influence or control the signal

cultural capital is exactly what I'd call it though

I think a lot of legitimation is a kind of "surrogation" or "cargocult." I should write up these terms for the forums next, because I think there's a lot of interest there, but I just mean that there are certain surface qualities of a thing, like the avant-garde or high art, that "go with" or "instantiate" somehow the more abstract qualities that are valued, like innovation or whatever. And people do this mimetic shortcut of just imitating those obvious surface qualities, hoping that it'll invoke the spirit of the abstract, less obviously but more important qualities. So you get people well into the 80s in experimental film scenes doing slash and cut-up techniques that the filma avant-garde pioneered in the 1920s... it's no longer experimental! but it looks it. Or the way that some folk seem to see xeroxed zines to be the "authentic" medium today, and sneer at online and blogs... It's just that the avant of the 90s (riotgrrrl etc) are finally legitimated, and that cultural capital and legitimacy has "rubbed off" on stuff like shitty xerox zines as a form. But the form was just a vehicle, and in 20 years people will be nostalgically appropriate the blogger form that was treated as illegitimate in its own time

 

[luka]

That's true but I wonder what it's hiding

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

this mimetic shortcut of just imitating those obvious surface qualities

this is a key way I understand artistic innovation and influence in general

the creators of a new style or form are always drawing on a diversity of influences and synthesizing them into some new whole - there is a "wot do u call it" phase when it's most febrile, most elastic and has the greatest number of potential paths forward - as choices are made, some of those paths are closed off and hardens into a codified style with marked boundaries. then imitators come along and try to recreate the original, but because they're drawing only on that rather than that actual diversity of influences, they can only be pale reflections of the original. meanwhile, someone somewhere is drawing it on as one among a diversity of influences to synthesize a new whole, and thus the cycle begins anew.

this is possibly just how culture works generally, functional energy/elasticity -> ossification -> replacement -> repeat

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

an example I think of is knighthood and chivalry - was always based on class solidarity and mutual self-interest of the ruling warrior class, but the more obsolete it became (that is, the more the centralizing state, and the rising power merchants and bankers, ate away at the power of the landed warrior aristocracy) the more ossified and rigid it became, withering away until present-day when knighthood is a purely symbolic honor. Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell books touch on the late stages of that process, the man himself being symbolic of the coming world run by bankers and technocrats but still under control of an obsolete aristocracy, which he literally (and memorably) explains to the Earl of Northumberland at one point.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

anyway, I think the zines thing isn't just about that kind of legitimated safe retroauthenticity, tho it is that

in that case it's also about a desire for actual physical objects having legitimacy, especially formats that can be digitized

see also the resurgence of vinyl - for more casual listeners I mean, not vinyl-only DJ and audiophile types

things like Etsy run on this

it's part of a larger concern with, or desire for, authenticity as end unto itself, in a world of (sometimes literally) indistinguishable simulacra

the huge demand for live sports as one of the only kinds of "authentic" media content

 

[sus]

yes, it's true, tho perhaps it's part of the same

you can kinda choose your pick: there's the costly signaling frame, where only rare or hard-to-attain things can bequeath status on the possessor, and that rarity or difficulty of obtainment is a testimony to the skill or resources of the costly signaler

and then there's the material fetishism, the association of the physical with reality (which is both true and not quite true)

here tho I'll press on the topic: what can all this tell us about erisology?

One takeaway: we have a bias toward attributing complex emergences to a single cause, when in reality nothing's from a single cause alone. I think it'd be less productive to argue about whether it's "really" about material fetishism or "really" about costly signaling when in reality, it varies from person to person, and each is probably motivated a little by each

I wish this "compatibilist" sensibility was widerspread, maybe—it seems like too often false dichotomies are accepted, and people stake out territorial turf for one side or then other, then battle for its right over "the whole" of the explanatory ground

 

[constant escape]

here tho I'll press on the topic: what can all this tell us about erisology?

One takeaway: we have a bias toward attributing complex emergences to a single cause, when in reality nothing's from a single cause alone. I think it'd be less productive to argue about whether it's "really" about material fetishism or "really" about costly signaling when in reality, it varies from person to person, and each is probably motivated a little by each

I wish this "compatibilist" sensibility was widerspread, maybe—it seems like too often false dichotomies are accepted, and people stake out territorial turf for one side or then other, then battle for its right over "the whole" of the explanatory ground

Forgive me if this has already been addressed, but have you or your friend any distinct ends/goals in mind with this pursuit? Personally, answering that has helped me get some direction on such things.

But do you think we should, to an extent, bite the bullet and supply people with a single cause? A heuristic answer that suffices in place of the diffuse and many-headed reality? Because the many-headed and vastly contingent line of reasoning almost necessarily leads one (at least me) to the conclusion that silence is unequivocally the best answer - but the second best answer could be some fantastically elaborate reconciliatory approach that requires some smaller knots be tied in order for the bigger ones to be loosened, and much of it borders on psychosis, depending on how we define things. But again, that comes in at second, after silence.

If we are to argue against silence, which is perfectly realistic, we can opt for a more romantic (and eternally unfalsifiable) route: that there may exist some way to package this "compatibilist" sensibility into something most people would find palatable, rather than headache-inducing. That is, maybe there is a way, be it a set of pithy statements or a more elaborate ideology, to implant/inject a penchant-for-the-plural into an otherwise stubbornly single-answer-oriented mind.

If people want something/someone to blame, is there a manner of quenching that instinct/thirst while minimizing the collateral damage? Like, does something as abstract as a virus really register to people as an antagonist - or must they be handed an enemy that is less alien, but still alien enough to seem far enough from themselves? Don't mean to derail things, but this came to mind as an example of how to cater to a narrow-minded subject.

This post has been a mess, but I'll throw it out there anyway.

 

[sus]

"Silence is unequivocally the best answer" —Have you read Sontag's "Aesthetics of Silence"? It's packaged here in Aspen 5 (1967), an old American avant multimedia pub from the 60s, alongside "Death of the Author." What an issue—Phonograph recordings of Beckett, Burroughs, Robbe-Grillet, Duchamp too boot. Talks about the modernist (Duchamp, Wittgenstein, Cage) etc type move of renouncing one's practice and lapsing into silence.

 

[sus]

I do agree there's an inhospitality in nebulous ("many-headed" you call it); you need structure (scaffolding?) to build on. Something stable and agreed-to for the social order to work.