Forum Overview :: System Shlock 2 :: Anyway I read this

[quote name="Bananadine"][quote name="Bananadine"][quote name="Zsenitan"]But Michel Foucault is relentlessly great. His is a superfluously powerful and sensual intellect. I remember the first time I read Foucault. I was shocked to the point of being aroused. Nothing straightens my boner out like a really smart person, and this was hands down the smartest and luxuriously <i>wastefully</i> sexual logic and rhetoric I had ever encountered, ever. I geniunely dislike you, Jerry, so you should fuck right on off out of here posthaste. But everyone else should read <u>Madness And Civilization</u>.[/quote] Hm I have been meaning to read Foucault--I don't know much more about postmodernism than that everybody with opinions about these things seems to think it's important (while also hating it), and that Foucault has a lot to do with it, and that everybody with opinions about these things seems to love him. So his work seems like an interesting place to start. I think I will still be stubborn enough to attempt it, despite my complete failure to follow that quote.[/quote] I read this book... slowly. Many small pieces of it made some sense to me, but on the whole, I didn't understand it or any of its chapters. Then a lot of time passed and I got around to trying to post about it and couldn't think of anything decent to say. I was in this person's boat: [quote name="Amazon customer L. Troy Beals"]I read this book for a philosophy of history class as a student at college. If you do not like philosophy and are easily distracted when reading mind-numbing abstractions then do not pick up this book. The thesis, or point, of the chapters are convoluted and seem to meander everywhere. I could read a chapter twice and still not have a clue what the author was saying. I can't comment on how persuasive his arguements are because I'm still not sure what he is saying. If you like philosophy then this book is for you becuase the author launches off into a universe of abstractions and shades that make one go insane, thus the title of his book.[/quote] So I put that off for a long while, and then finally I read the book again, slowly, and took notes as I read it. And for some reason it made sense that time. And now the part Zseni quotes previously in the thread is pretty easy to read (excepting the mysterious phrase "its very employment of the notion that designates") and I have trouble remembering how it was ever hard to read. I didn't enjoy the book. I think this was partly because I couldn't read it smoothly. Even after I became able to basically follow it, it was still pretty rough going and I could only get through like one page per day. I wasn't qualified to appreciate any luxuriously wastefully sexual aspect of it--I felt like somebody mountainclimbing over what's supposed to be a series of ski slopes, or something. I did not share Zseni's experience of being led gracefully into an inevitable conclusion. To my perception, the book presented some models for how the world has worked, and for how some people have thought it worked. And I seemed to understand most of the models--but I couldn't find any place in my own knowledge to usefully fit them. Every time he made a claim, I could only confirm that, as far as I knew, he might be right. I've never studied the stuff he talks about. As far as I know, most of the times when I couldn't follow him, it was because I wasn't familiar with the pieces of art, scholarship, or history he was referring to. And when I could follow what he was saying, I saw little to be excited about in the way he was saying it. I'm as curious now about postmodernism and Foucault's greatness as I was before. Maybe this question will be useful: What claims in <u>Madness and Civilization</u> would you have disagreed with, Foucault-appreciating Caltrops reader, if Foucault hadn't convinced you to agree with them?[/quote]