i think her ideas about interpersonal conflict and how people's tendencies toward conflict avoidance are really interesting -- however, just because someone is otm in one area, doesn't mean they are universally otm. I have similar issues with David Graeber -- where there are certain things he's written that I think are great, and others where I am skeptical and people who are better versed in those areas are like, "he doesn't know what he's talking about."
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:14 (three years ago) link
still though -- the Graeber story and his analysis about the effects of someone donating a car to an anarchist collective is one of my favorite things and super insightful writing.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:16 (three years ago) link
Re sarahell, yeah, you're right about the Bottoms, but this discussion was focused on SF. Took place in the old Luggage Store Gallery in 2012, I think.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:16 (three years ago) link
Like many of these people were essentially saying that poor people shopping at Safeway or 7-11 instead of one of the local delis or Bi-Rite or the Co-op were wrongheaded.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:18 (three years ago) link
hahahahahah -- so telling that a discussion focused on SF would not even consider the vast urban civilizations right outside its borders where the overwhelming majority of people that make San Francisco function actually live ... but the solipsism and arrogance of San Francisco is another topic ...
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:19 (three years ago) link
xp - didn't San Francisco only start getting a significant number of 7-11s only around 2012? Maybe a few years prior? ... Like, San Francisco's planning code is potentially one of the strictest in terms of banning chain stores in the country?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:20 (three years ago) link
So Schulman’s work “sucks” because ... her *audience* disagreed with you?
Like, this is so far from a good faith engagement with Schulman or her work, it couldn’t even find one on a map?
― Specific and Limited Interests (Branwell with an N), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:31 (three years ago) link
Can you read?
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:34 (three years ago) link
Let's try and avoid a hundred-post pile-up, shall we?
It seems to me that table is going out of his way to separate his critique of Schulman from his critique of the hostile audience at a panel discussion where she was one of the panelists. His dislike for her work is detached from his anecdote about the event in question.
Am I right or wrong about that, table?
― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:36 (three years ago) link
there are food deserts in nyc fyi
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:37 (three years ago) link
Over the course of several posts, I said I liked her fiction, which is actually quite provocative at times-- she wrote a novel about a precocious queer youth in a relationship with an older person that got her into a lot of trouble-- but that her theoretical writing seems mean-spirited and hyper-specific in its contextual framing. And that I don't feel the need to engage with it as a result.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:38 (three years ago) link
And unperson, yes, that is what I was attempting
And re: BradNelson, I know that there are food deserts in the five boroughs, don't know who you were addressing.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:40 (three years ago) link
just reacting to the idea that schulman is blinkered about food deserts because she's a lifelong new yorker
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:41 (three years ago) link
idk if it's a food desert issue and more about the prominence of mom-and-pop stores in NYC vs. in other parts of the country where there tend to be fewer of these, partly due to culture and partly due to population density
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:51 (three years ago) link
yeah lol i'm making a selective argument bc i'm annoyed. doing a really good job of living up to this thread, gonna bounce
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:53 (three years ago) link
I mean -- I kinda did a similar thing in terms of changing the subject to the chain store/classism -- so idk
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:56 (three years ago) link
I don't think it's bad faith to change the subject of a discussion ?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:57 (three years ago) link
Right. Like the nearest place to get affordable food for many of the people living in the largest homeless encampment in Oakland is Target, not the small cooperative grocery only a few blocks further.
What I object to is the idea that these are moral or ethical failings on the part of a beleaguered mass of mostly poor people rather than the hegemonic prowess of capital and its logistical frameworks.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:57 (three years ago) link
One of the reasons that I am reacting the way that I am, is that there is a long history of judging authors who are considered ot be women by how *likeable* they, or their work are - whether they are agreeable, whether their work makes people feel good after they have read it. (And writers who are considered to be male are not expected to meet this 'likeable' criteria, not in anything like the same kind of way.)
And one of the reasons I like Schulman, and the reason I keep persisting with her, even though such a mixed bag as this book, is because she makes absolutely no pretense as to being likeable, or agreeable - which is an unbelievably freeing thing to read in a female writer, someone who doesn't GAF if they come across as likeable or not. There is no wink, no sugar-coating, there is no handholding or making you feel OK about challenging stuff. She *IS* disagreeable. I often come out of reading her theory books feeling like I have been challenged, maybe even called out - perhaps sometimes attacked.
And working through that feeling of 'why do I feel so attacked by this disagreement' is part of what *I* get out of it, puzzling through difficult and complicated phenomena, in which I feel I may be complicit. She's a really good author, for me, for learning to sit with discomfort, and winkling out discomfort from mere difficulty. And she works for me, because of those things.
Her arguments do not scale. They are not universal, and she falls down where she tries to make them universal. But that doesn't mean that she "sucks". And Table, your post really did seem to boil down to your finding her - or, it turns out, her audience - disagreeable. Which to me, is the point.
― Specific and Limited Interests (Branwell with an N), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 18:06 (three years ago) link
But I'm not actually interested in local politics of SF, so I'll bow out and you can carry on with your derail.
― Specific and Limited Interests (Branwell with an N), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 18:07 (three years ago) link
Your willful misreading of my follow-up posts is laughable.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 18:13 (three years ago) link
Like the nearest place to get affordable food for many of the people living in the largest homeless encampment in Oakland is Target, not the small cooperative grocery only a few blocks further.
<pedantic> actually one of the food banks has a massive site a few blocks past the co-op grocery as well and there tend to be long lines there. </pedantic>
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 18:14 (three years ago) link
Yeah, there's also the bank on San Pab at 34th or so, if that's still around...
Anyway, enough derail. After being accused of being a sexist because I don't like a famous author's theoretical frameworks, I'm going to leave this thread.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 18:22 (three years ago) link
Yeah -- San Pablo & 34th! ... awww don't leave, let's just try to have better arguments.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 18:23 (three years ago) link
Rhonda????
― Canon in Deez (silby), Friday, 19 February 2021 20:20 (three years ago) link
*sigh* ... where?
― sarahell, Friday, 19 February 2021 20:21 (three years ago) link
The real bad faith move was that bollox djp starting this thread during my hiatus imo
― scampsite (darraghmac), Friday, 19 February 2021 20:32 (three years ago) link
Thought this was a deems revive at first.
― pomenitul, Friday, 19 February 2021 20:33 (three years ago) link
The great revivals of 2022 are in motion dont worry, rhonda has the green paper
― scampsite (darraghmac), Friday, 19 February 2021 20:37 (three years ago) link