#theory problems

[the-sassy-soprano]

Me @ Neapolitan chords: WHAT'RE THOSE

[gtablues]

When a colleague talks about something vague and theoretical for 15 minutes, then asks me for my opinion

And I'm like

[jessa-mae-orluk]

"Necropolitics can be conceptualized as a contemporary apparatus of biopower, instead of in opposition to biopolitics and biopower. As such, it is extremely useful to theorists who can use this framework to identify the technical, necropolitical apparatuses of knowledge production. This happens through a complex relationship where necropolitical actions expose the innate contradiction in biopolitics: while biopower has the tendency to make favored populations live and let unfavored populations die, it can also prolong the physical life of unfavored populations based on previous knowledge of a biopolitical right through necropolitics. These actions then reinforce the knowledge used to make the decision that evoked the use of necropower"

  Every time I sit down to write a paper, I'm astounded by how much and how little these sentences actually mean. 

[whishart]

Bach, I don't think you need a short summary on your life that still manages to be 2 PAGES LONG. 

[flarechaser]

Why is theory so inaccessable?

I just want to be able to talk about Marxist theory with people without them telling me "but you know that doesn't work."

Actually, it probably does work, you're playing into it, and "I kind of think you mean the other thing."

Communism is an economic system, Marxism is a social theory.  Talking about it doesn't mean I'm trying to convert you.  It just means that I'm talking about it.  The only thing I want out of the exchange is for you to talk back.

It's just Marxism.  It isn't that scary.  It talks about society naturally existing in a state of chaos, not so dissimilar from Hobbs' nasty, brutish, and short description, and we all know how you loved him.  It talks about how ideology is used to plaster over hypocrisy inherent in systems of social organization to keep them stable.  That's it.  That's Marxism.

I mean, that's not it, but that's all I'm going to talk about today.  There's a lot more written much more elegantly than anything I can come up with, especially anything I can come up with on an empty stomach.  Just look it up, it's literally everywhere.  Give it a chance.  It's all cool.