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[@chrishu-zc1fj]

Notes for this episode: Cultural Criticism: Whenever we have intense feelings for something, how do we make sense of that feeling? We categorize and interpret that experience using one of any number of different psychological terms that have been taught to us by experts. For example, people say things like, “I'm feeling anxious right now and that must be because subconsciously I have a repressed fear of Abandonment from my childhood.” People might say they are sad right now because work is rough, and generally the rule is to dig into our past to explain our present. Modernity is characterized by domination of theory-we come up with theories about how things all fit together. We project these theories out onto the world in an attempt to understand it. This is how psychoanalysis works, the psychoanalyst would listen to patients telling their experience and give them concepts and vocab to demystify those experiences. Psychoanalysts create a set of normative theoretical terms that allow patients to take their own unique individual experience and frame it in a way that corresponds with some standard of human experience. This process alienates yourself from your experiences. This is the same as the concept of latent and manifest. Manifest meaning your immediate behavior and feeling while latent means my friend you need a psychoanalyst to figure out the true feeling you are having. The modern assumption is that the real meaning of your experience is hidden from you and that the analyst is the only one that can tell you who you truly are. “People treat their experience as alienated from themselves, experience thus depreciated in value, is viewed as observing the laws of fashion such as built-in obsolescence the self is regarded as a commodity its decisions as sociological predictable behavior”-Sontag People often live their lives in this place of alienation, constantly keeping their experience at arm's length and never really feeling it with immediacy. Whenever you have a visceral experiences, you instantly go into diffusal as if your experience is a bomb and you have a set of tools to cut the blue wire so it becomes inert. Should we have a process of moderation that filters our joy, sadness, and sorrow through a standardized normative word economy? What if we are missing out on the most valuable experience with the terms prescribed to us by the so-called “experts”? This process puts so much power in the hands of psychoanalysts who really only have a 4 year degree. Consultation session usually has power disparity and people just believing the panacea they offer. Notably, Susan Sontag isn’t against therapy. They are great! But she is worried how people overly steer in that direction. Impact: 1)It creates a normative model for what a human experience is that everything has to conform to 2)It puts a scary power in the hands of experts to prescribe the terminology 3)It makes people easier to dismiss and alienate their experience This critique parallels to the world of aesthetics: The idea is that emphasis on interpretation and art theory is going to prevent us from being able to experience a work of art in its true form. If you ask a friend, “What do you think is the meaning of this art piece”. The most common answer is that, “Well, let’s think about what is the meaning and get the true meaning of the painting under the surface disguise”. If we're talking about a novel, the characters and plot are really just things that need to be interpreted and sifted through by a critic so that we can use their expertise to get to the bottom of the more important more true meaning of the artwork. Notice the parallel, like the patient and the psychoanalyst, art critic is trying to seek superiority over the work they consume. Think of how that over emphasis on interpreting the work of art creates distance between the person critiquing it and what may otherwise have been a visceral powerful experience with the artwork. The problem is that art theory creates a similar kind of distance between you and the art that prevents you from being able to feel truly affected by the art to have one of those moments that you've no doubt felt before when your guard was down and you weren't interpreting things all the time-A moment where a song or a movie hits you and it changes something about you which is what great art is supposed to be doing. This puts a great lot of power in the hands of art critics whose opinions of the art gets perpetuated in society because they are the priests who deliver the true meaning of art to people. This deters growth bc critics are usually privileged people. “Just as we reaffirm the self through our obsession with the analysis of our individual experience we reaffirmed the status quo through our obsession with the interpretation of hidden meanings within art. To interpret is to impoverish to deplete the world in order to set up a shadow world of meanings” The solution is to instead of asking epistemological questions of an artwork, ask ontological questions. Instead of asking what this song is about, ask how is this song what it is. Focus on the form instead of the content of the work. This looks like whenever you see Van Gogh Sunflower, look at its texture and tone difference between the light and dark, these are all experiences we leave out in modernity. This more immediate experience of art will make people more open to the art the way that it is, embracing the complexity of the art, the possibility for multiple meanings, embracing the confusion they may feel when listening to it, the intensity of fully contending with the art. Audiences do all this instead of projecting themselves in a theory onto the art in some desperate attempt to have a totalizing understanding of the art.

[@tohigherhighs]

The irony 😂😂

[@_chinmoku]

New episodes are like a breath of fresh air! 3-4 weeks seems like forever. Thank you West!

[@steakovercake3986]

This alienation from analysis sounds similar to observation through cameras 📱. You're there but not

[@serhad9589]

I usually only listen to you on spotify, i just wanted to come here to tell you how much i love your show. I always listen to it when i want to relax before going to bed when I'm done with all my work of the day and just want to be distracted from whatever is going on in life. Your podcast is like home to me, your voice is like the soothing voice of a parent, just familiar, trustworthy and comforting. And the themes are always interesting, I've been listening for about two years now and I'm hoping to support you on patreon soon!

[@johnzicari]

Helloooo Stephen West. I have been a fan and supporter for years. I just want to say THANK YOU! You are a truly gifted teacher. You have brought such great insight to concepts, movements and historical philosophical figures to layfolk and pseudo-intellectuals like me. I love that fact that after running the gamut on traditional philosophy, you began the Creation of Meaning series and have since introduced essayists and others like Simone Weil, Emil Cioran, and Susan Sontag. People I knew nothing about or had little interest in, but have become much needed inspiration to my life. Looking forward to the book!

[@joao-im5en]

No, i criticize myself more.

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

_On Photography_ --Susan Sontag I had a professor, once. That was on his reading list. I never forgot that man or his influence. I followed him around campus for three semesters. He was a moving speaker. Grad students from major universities used to come back and meet with him. West is writing a book. That is great news. Cheers.

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

I have a first edition of _Women Who Runs with the Wolves._ A gift from my childhood. The giver was a therapist who lived very near to where the Getty Museum was built. No lie, I plan to bring flowers. She is back in California these days. Ask Anoushka, Philosophize This are real af. These days I am hung up on Apollo. Mêntis. God of poetry. Language is rad. Bravo West. Again. Hope remained in the vessel Pandora open and shut. Žižek on _The Crying Game._ Up to my neck when I am gonna drown Been here so long I had to double down. --Hippie Sabotage, _Enough_ Trump was all into domestic violence in Portland. --Crispus Attucks _Let's Roll_ Forward Ops.

[@gstlb]

Thank you for bringing us this during women’s history month. I once had a philosophy professor who, with a straight face, told our class that women are incapable of thinking philosophically. I didn’t dare tell him that I was reading Susanne Langer’s works on aesthetics. Yeah probably cowardly not to tell him but I needed a good grade.

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

...can't think philosophically? We don't fly many flags around here, at least most of us don't But I got BDE for that professor/adjunct and so do you; آزادی زندگی زنان⁩ Femme Vie Liberté Woman Life Freedom ___________💐_______💮__________________________🌱

[@randystephens913]

Thank you so much!!

[@tegleh]

Thanks so nuch, this was great 🤍🫂

[@gionunez3598]

"It is what it is" - Susan Sontag

[@tortera]

Thank you so much.

[@LemiDzi]

Byee in the end was so wholesome 😂❤

[@theo287]

Appreciate you 💜

[@whiskeyfriends7188]

Can't wait to buy your book 📖

[@michaeljohn6030]

Many of your episodes and the work you discuss leaves an impression on me, but this one got me. Figured i'd type up a little something. Every experience is unique. Two people could even experience the exact same phenomenon but walk away with two different feelings. In addition, each person's feelings about something have their own unique flavor. I can be angry about one thing, and angry about another, but the experiences of that word 'anger' will be different from one another. Analysis, though it has many uses, reduces the uniqueness of experience to a sort of bland, black and white text. There is some degree to which we have lost the ability to experience something for what it is and keep that experience AS it is. Things are turned into something they're not for the sake of expediency or 'understanding'. "How was *blank*?" It was fun, enlightening, terrible. These descriptions will only serve to hint at what you truly felt, and perhaps in the process of description, change how you feel about the past. Again, this description and analysis may have its uses, but I never thought about the pitfalls that come with it. Perhaps (now I'm just spitballing) the key is to treat life more like you are chasing a feeling. An experience. Instead of trying to 'be happy', be that thing you want to be; that you're driven to be, that you are, that thing whatever it is, that thing you may not ever feel. Maybe life is a chase; a confusion never to be straightened out, a struggle never to be overcome, an adventure with no real meaning beyond the experience itself.

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

I don't think your observation is far off from what Mallarmé journaled; _A rose is not a rose._ Wittgenstein has been sitting on my shelf for a decade or longer. I haven't learned him at all. Boutique type thinker. He sounds cool. A ton of heavy lifting goes on around here. I like what you wrote.

[@pedroh.pereira8292]

You should read Sontag' essay on experience, you sure will like it a lot!

[@miamelone4469]

Graduate clinical psych student here! While it is sometimes critical to recognize the experimental elements of our lives and not impose an interpretation, this approach eschews humans need for meaning. We are in constant effort to make connections and associations, and analyzing our lives and our artworks with interpretation is no different. My general impression is that there are great truths to be found in applying our own interpretations and any attempts to restrict ourselves, even when wrong, would be a detriment.

[@icipher6730]

I don't really believe that most people care for meaning in itself in any real capacity. They simply dislike the feeling of uncertainty that any type of ambiguity brings and crave for "meaning" for *that* reason, which is also can be seen by how a lot of third-rate art critics attempt to give a piece of art a static, fixed "true" meaning and an equally static, unchanging cultural significance.

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

Ms Melone-- If I am following, I think, Freud extends as much encouragement to plumb the depths as well; If all that is left of the past are the incomplete and blurred memories which we call tradition, this offers an artist a peculiar attraction, for in that case (s)he is free to fill in the gaps in memory according to the desires of his/her imagination. ---Freud, _Moses and Monotheism_ Congratulations on your studies. West's work crosses disciplines for sure. Cheers--

[@Latang_]

I love your content ans it s funny to see that by thinking by my self i get in the way that some philosoph

[@baronbullshyster2996]

It’s not what you experience. It’s how you experience. apparently

[@quintessenceSL]

Dunno. While I can appreciate the point, it also leaves me with incomplete knowledge of a thing. Maybe not deferring to some expert, but comparing notes with others. Then you have a compartmentalized experience, of how I experienced a thing initially and how it is mediated through others (and sometimes several others), which has a schizophrenic flavor to it. Probably a better critique of language and double-speak (or more broadly our relationship with symbols).

[@SolWake]

I feel like there's a bit missing to this, but maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the art world. There seems to be a false dichotomy portrayed between what the "Art Critic" does and this "other way" Sontag proposes. But this "other way" sounds like simply how most people interact with art, as an immediate engagement with the form of the artwork. It sounds like how non-art-world critics review movies, videogames, or music, where they address form, literary elements, and meaning and sometimes touch on position within culture. Is it not more of a "yes and"? This doesn't invalidate the critique of "Art Critics" nor their potential outsized role... perhaps they have forgotten how to simply experience art directly and need a Ratatouille check, but "Art Critics" are hardly representative of people. Perhaps their influence (and that of psychology) does perpetuate and promote an institutional bias and encouragement of detachment. At the same time I wouldn't say the evolutionary biologist is steering us away from a complete and nuanced understanding of what animals are, as we have anatomists, physiologists, and microbiologists. Different people fulfill different roles. Am I missing the point?

[@Nestoras_Zogopoulos]

it kinda reminds me of eastern prespectives..

[@joeyk169]

its wild that you left out the genocide and land theft of a continent when you were talking about the history of the usa, especially considering you mention navajo in the episode... but i love the episode, and all the work you do! thank you!

[@darillus1]

the channels called Philosophize this! not Colonize this!

[@baronbullshyster2996]

@@darillus1 😂

[@notaburneraccount]

@@darillus1 Colonization is part of history and as far as I know, philosophy isn't inherently ahistorical. Why are you pressed about this comment? Does it bother you to have to hear about colonization just because it didn't negatively affect you? Maybe your concept of philosophy is narrow.

[@Kryptic712]

@@notaburneraccount I think it was a joke

[@Frauter]

Do you actually read art/literary criticism? There is a dominant theme of the undermining of norms and accepted forms. Where are these critics you're describing?

[@Frauter]

Sontag's critique was far more relevant (in your interpretation in this video) when this essay was published. It has a lot to offer still but this point of critics' unconscious reinforcement of hegemonic forms of discourse .. it's what the critics themselves are always on about.

[@christinemartin63]

But no one is pointing a gun to your head to believe or agree with others' theories, interpretations, pronouncements, etc. This seems like much ado about nothing.

[@ericjackson-nq4hp]

...we're in the midst of one of the most ferocious reading journeys anywhere online. Be humble. Maybe you're right though, right in your particular situation. Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending. --Shakespeare, _Much Ado About Nothing_ Act ii, sc. iii. No (wo)man is an island. That would be absurd.

[@doitlive1279]

This one has “pick me” energy

[@infraherald7449]

this comment has groupthink references

[@godloveszaza]

You a dude saying this....be ashamed.