Good faith vs Bad faith

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?

Can you read?

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?

there are food deserts in nyc fyi

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.

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.

just reacting to the idea that schulman is blinkered about food deserts because she's a lifelong new yorker

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

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

I mean -- I kinda did a similar thing in terms of changing the subject to the chain store/classism -- so idk

I don't think it's bad faith to change the subject of a discussion ?

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.

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.

But I'm not actually interested in local politics of SF, so I'll bow out and you can carry on with your derail.

Your willful misreading of my follow-up posts is laughable.

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>

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.

Yeah -- San Pablo & 34th! ... awww don't leave, let's just try to have better arguments.

Rhonda????

*sigh* ... where?

The real bad faith move was that bollox djp starting this thread during my hiatus imo

Thought this was a deems revive at first.

The great revivals of 2022 are in motion dont worry, rhonda has the green paper