Sonic Youth Gossip - What exactly IS the avant-garde?

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- - What exactly IS the avant-garde? (http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=12992)

Yeah, him. Me too, except when I get paid. Then it's " '80s Hits".

Quesadillas are only avant-garde if you put hummus in them. And even then they run the risk of only being "nuevo".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dead-Air

Yeah, him. Me too, except when I get paid. Then it's " '80s Hits".

Quesadillas are only avant-garde if you put hummus in them. And even then they run the risk of only being "nuevo".

with hummus? then it's nuevo-pedo

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

MILLE PLATEAUX, YOU TARZAN: A MUSICOLOGY OF
(AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF (AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF A THOUSAND PLATEAUS))
John Rahn
University of Washington
First we critique the philosophy and practice of and around the book A Thousand Plateaus (TP)
by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. We show how its program of dissed organization, nonhierarchy,
transformation, and escape from boundaries at every moment resonates in harmony with some of its
modes of presentation and mentation, but dissonates with others. The Anthropological Gaze which
forms in the name of observation, and re-forms Us as it forms Them, is one of the nodes of TP’s
thought: the erotic, climax-free plateaus of some Batesonesque Balinese orgy. Even the structuralism of
Claude Levi-Strauss permeates TP in the form of a paradigmatic procedure of polar opposites (e.g. raw
vs. cooked in Levi-Strauss, territorialization vs deterritorialization etc. in TP). Is such a Gaze performed
by TP on us, or merely referred to by it? What is the nature of TP’s practice upon us?
Taking off from a series of articles by John Rahn and others, we will then further explore the
nature of this Platonically anti-Platonic practice by TP upon us as it affects the practice of music and
thinking about music.

-----------

^^ see how he refers to himself in the 3rd person? wankery, wankery, wankery

This the kind of wankery that many literary critics (ie my lecturers) are fooled by.

I haven't read through the whole thread but having looked a bit I heartily recommend you have a look at this book:

^ that sounds like too much of an affair

Quote:

Originally Posted by demonrail666

It's a word that gets thrown around a lot here (as much by me as anyone, I admit) but one that rarely receives any attention as to what it actually IS. I'm not so bothered about what sites like Wikipedia say as much as what you think.

Here's hoping that this turns into something interesting.

Arty-farty crap.

"musique"
+
"concrete"

^ avant-garde because it's in French

Quote:

Originally Posted by pbradley

^ that sounds like too much of an affair

Are you referring to the Sokal affair?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Yes, I was, because it was a total lolpwn.

I don't know what a lolpwn is but I think I share your sentiments...ie Sokal did a good thing.

lol = laugh out loud
pwn = victory

Personally, I'm pretty critical of the idea that postmodernism is a unified school of philosophy so I do agree with Sokal in criticizing those who treat it as such but I'm also wary that he commits the error as well to some extent. However, that's just speculation since I haven't bothered to read his publications.

I was with the sonics this summer and I called a lamp avant-garde in a snooty voice as a joke and Thurston and Kim laughed and Lee was like "no, it's not quite avant-garde."

i have this shampoo and the french part of the label says avante-garde on it