K Punk: classic or dud?

i like k-punk a lot

k-punk is the klaxons of cultstud.

So, good then?

I think it's like anything else. If you understand what the person is saying it at the level intended then there is quite a lot to be gained from it. If you don't, then you might choose to find ways to assail it.

I'm sure there are people who would think that even the most pedestrian ILM thread is overly "intellectual". Even "classic or dud" is too much for some people's brains to handle.

BAN SAXBY D. ELDER

Ban the wisecrackers who think the "ban ———" prank is the height of ROFLness.

I sometimes read K-Punk. He has some interesting things to say, and talks about lots of music/lit/books/film that I like, but, more often than not, I disagree with his general point of view.

His whole political outlook seems to come from a very rarefied academic world that has little connection to what some of us might call "real life". He continually implies that the world right now is about as bad as it ever has been, and he seems to pine for the late 70s.

I find this to be very perverse and nonsensical, but then I live in middle class Austin, TX and everything here is peachy keen, so WTF do I know...

strung out on jargon/perverted by language/doesn't make a lick of sense

saxby's post was retarded, i'm not going to respond to that shit reasonably.

dude, you might have a real problem...

No shock to not get a reasonable response from you. I guess we can all look forward to a caps-riddled rant though.

I was actually keeping it pretty light. I don't really see what the big controversy might be (although some people might not realize that i was just kidding about the klaxons being "good").

I think it's like anything else. If you understand what the person is saying it at the level intended then there is quite a lot to be gained from it. If you don't, then you might choose to find ways to assail it.

is a remarkably lame attempt at pwnj. you could always engage with the arguments. or even say what you gain from it.

http://westvillage.punt.nl/upload/dec2006/a2112064.jpg

This is my reasoned response to this thread.

I like some of the writing he does for Fact Magazine just fine. On his blog though he does succumb to his worst tendencies - too much jargon, referrals to authority, confirmation bias, and ideas cloaked in lit-speak. Also, the Hauntology line he and Reynolds have been pushing is a little too precious for my taste. It's like he and Reynolds are looking for sounds or movements on which to hang their pet ideological baggage. Death of music, well maybe, but often he seems ignorant of the historical antecedents. Hasn't canned muzak performing the same environmental function as the ubiquitous I-pod been around since the fifties? Only difference is the listener can select his own background noise. He definitely needs an editor.

ban "always already" plz

also, what moodles said.

i don't read k-punk much any more because as others have said, once you've 'got' his aesthetic you kind of already know what he's going to say about pretty much anything. plus i can't really be bothered getting to grips with any of his theory.

having said that, i still think lots of his writing about music is fantastically readable, and that when he wants to, he can pull of a great combination of the detailed sonic analysis (FACTS) with breathless enthusiasm. he has often made me want to rush out and listen to whatever he's writing about - which means i've listened to some stuff i don't like, but i guess he's doing something right.

I like some of the writing he does for Fact Magazine just fine.

pwnj = Piscataway, New Jersey?

Also, I was just keeping it light. I wasn't in the mood to get into all the bullshit you got into.

Ban me.

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/

Mentioning a working class background may seem glamorous or cool to some, but what we are talking about here are the very non-glamorous feelings of shame, embarrassment and inadequacy. Tone of voice is sufficient to trigger that feeling of inadequacy: that is partly the reason that the sepulchural tones of Radio 4 drive me into a rage, the plummy, affectless voices sending the implicit message that any excitation is some juvenile deviation from commonsense mundanity. (Owen is just developing a concept of 'mundanism', which does seem absolutely central to Popism and other variants of deflationary hedonic relativism. Notice the way commonsense mundanism is integral to ruling class anti-intellectualism - see for instance Pseud's Corner and ILM - with Oxbridge graduates pretending to be plain, common men who just don't understand Theory but who know, by george, that it's damn silly.)

lol

http://www.shocktees.com/images/film_logo/tshirts/large/tshirt-fl0103.jpg

see for instance Pseud's Corner and ILM - with Oxbridge graduates pretending to be plain, common men who just don't understand Theory but who know, by george, that it's damn silly

Is he right? never got the whiff of Oxbridge around here I must say....

xpost - well maybe...

My pro-bourgie mindset has been allowed to go on unchecked for too long. Kudos for K-Punk for having the balls to say something. Maybe he can then spam the e-mail inboxes for everyone on here again so we can all have our attention drawn to his point?

well, most of the freaky trigger gang went to oxford, is what he means. and um so did i. the idea that pseud's corner and ilm represent the ruling class is probably a bit of a stretch, though. perhaps i've been reading the wrong kind of theory.

it takes a bit of intellectual gymnastics to at once say that these oxbridge guys are clever chaps (ie they're "pretending" not to understand "T"heory), then accuse them of anti-intellectualism. personally, i do understand theory insofar as i can be fucked to. i'm not pretending not to understand it; just that what i understand of it i disagree with. and it's not just me, it's "highly regarded" top-flight marxists who i agree with.

it's not really about commonsense things -- but bigger stuff like its attempt to do away with materialism (timpanaro), with socialist strategy (perry anderson), with the practice of history (e. p. thompson). those names tell you how old the critique of "T"heory is. zizek is some kind of postmodern, CGI version of the old leftist philosopher gods of the '70s, he's a tadpole.

i studied marx for a-level, marx at oxbridge, and marx since then. i don't think rejecting "T"heory can be equated with anti-intellectualism, and i also don't think "T"heory can be identified simply with marxism.

saying that notions of "the commonsense" have been polluted by capitalism makes sense, but it's bad reasoning and worse tactics to say "and therefore all commonsense is wrong."

well, most of the freaky trigger gang went to oxford, is what he means

OK, Thanks

Think k-punk is otm about class in the piece quoted above, whatever about the swipe at ILM

"Simply by pitching a tent on the lawn in front of the library and following a programme of collective auto-didacticism, the event posed questions about access to education and the possibility of anti-capitalist dissidence."

right, only... this wonderfully autonomous event was still held at a university and was organized by students. and presumably used the toilets paid for and kept in soft paper by the neo-liberal administration.

"Hence Oxbridge types will happily call themselves novelists even if they have never written a novel, or curators even if they have never curated any events."

really?

"in my experience, so many members of the ruling class resemble Daleks: their smooth, hard exterior contains a slimy invertebrate, seething with inchoate, infantile emotions."

YAAAAOOWWWWW

One of the tensions that came up when I had Cognitive Behaviour Therapy was over precisely the issue: I refused to accept that I (or anyone else) had intrinsic value.

Dude sounds like he needs a visit to a little place called the "Watercooler Thread".

haha.

"But better that hell than the empty certainties of ruling class confidence."

if he wasn't a putz i would sympathize with him here. but to him, me going to poxbridge makes me "one of them" already. the hot news about the ruling class is that their famous confidence is largely a projection tied up in social ritual, same as it probably is in other classes -- certainly in the middle classes. most english people of my acquaintance have, in private, some kind of class anxieties. they also have other kinds of anxieties, believe it or not! some of them suffer illness and bereavement and loneliness, or so i hear. certainties, empty or otherwise, seem pretty thin on the ground.

but not to accept the intrinsic value of people seems far worse a view of humankind, to my mind, than the no doubt sloppy and neo-liberal and human rights-oriented view that everyone has worth and deserves universal rights, etc.

He seems like a very serious fellow. I don't have anything against what he's trying to do, but I often have a hard time following him.

"intrinsic value' and 'worth and (deserving of) universal rights' are a bit different, no?

you could consider it a desirable state of affairs for everyone to have a range of entitlements and duties in exactly the same measure, and this to be a baseline index of 'social worth' and still consider 90% - or even 100%- of people to have no 'intrinsic value'

xpost

why would you want that outcome if you didn't think people had intrinsic value? i said i thought everyone had worth, which is just a synonym for value here. i get that some people are keen on taking the moral imperative out of left-wing politics.

http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-748.png

rofl

y know i'm kinda glad he has control of a blog rather than my local council

why would you want that outcome if you didn't think people had intrinsic value?

Because you might think society would be more peaceful - and therefore more pleasant to live in for you personally - if you treated people *as if* they had worth?

i said i thought everyone had worth, which is just a synonym for value here. i get that some people are keen on taking the moral imperative out of left-wing politics.

Actually I think replacing politics - and justice - with a moral imperative or ethics can be a problem; relying on individual good will, rather than coherent collective action means solving a famine in Africa becomes a case of appealing to the good will of first world citizens, rather than collective action by the people immediately affected

k-punk don't give a fuck

xpost

no, i don't think that follows. why should a moral imperative be linked to individual action (let alone good will, which is another thing)? 'solving' famine is a) in everyone's interests b) a moral imperative.

but it's also a practical problem, and of course acts of individual first-world citizens won't do much on their own. on the other hand, other first-world citizens willing collective action by africans won't achieve anything either.

i have little clue 'what ought to be done', but without the moral imperative, without the idea that the lives of africans have intrinsic value, what else is there? to value collective action *in itself* seems odd.

why should a moral imperative be linked to individual action (let alone good will, which is another thing)?
Fair point. I don't think it should, but was assuming you were connecting the two - bad argumentative strategy

I think he likes the idea of music more than the music itself...

...like that ghostbox haunty thing or kode9

sorta nice concept but the tunes just arent that flash...

Does k-punk seriously think that ILM is representative of "ruling class anti-intellectualism"? Or indeed of anything else?

That'd totally work if not for the fact that a bunch of classless americans wander around here

Results 1 - 10 of about 13,900 for "bored office workers". (0.12 seconds)

It's really not that hard to understand, you know.

That's me, alright!

I think he likes the idea of music more than the music itself

I think that's a truly awful thing to say about someone!

I like k-punk, although, like Enrique, I realise that I'm the kind of person who can never win with him. But he makes me think, and he writes some really good, more-than-readable pieces. He also makes me wish I understood a lot of the stuff he mentions in passing: I don't feel too intimidated and shut-out by what he cites and how he cites it, and that's quite a rare thing to come by, I think. He can be aggressively wrong and annoying with it (though there's others in his general orbit who are genuinely nasty, which he isn't), but in the main I fall on the side of classic.

there's a dissensus thread where they pick apart his aversion to marijuana and analyze it, if you want to see someone get defensive, it's worthwhile

intimidated is an interesting choice of word.

'chav' v 'eton boy as dalek'

why is one generalization akin to a hate-crime and the other is not?

Link to weed thread?

https://twitter.com/kpunk99

Meta

Miss this guy for real.