The Reading Room

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12:17 AM

@Tsundoku This really brings back several of our previous unfinished discussions. In putting forth the concept of mimetic desire Rene Girard of course is trying to blaze a trail in literary criticism, but at the same time he borrowed a hell lot from psychoanalysis and anthropology. I feel like you are interpreting "desire" too literally

Eddie Kal

12:48 AM

@b_jonas Visiting that page full of comments, I am at a total loss, and not just because I am not sure how it is relevant. Some of the comments are really troubling. It is way too long and the chance visitor would have no clue those people are.

I have no idea why people are talking about racial supremacy there

slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/19/gupta-on-enlightenment/…

b_jonas

1:10 AM

@EddieKal Yes but there's an anchor.

An anchor to the specific comment that is.

6 hours later…

Knight wants Loong back

7:01 AM

Can someone tell me what’s the meaning of “naked love”? This term occurs quite a number of times and I fail to understand its intended meaning. What you understand by it?

verbose

7:25 AM

@Tsundoku But Girard's claim is that there is no such thing as "original" desire; that all desire is mimetic, and that any novelist who thinks that their work portrays original desire falls short.

So what you seem to be asking is whether Tagore intends to show that desire is mimetic.

I also don't see how one can say "A novel that does not describe desire as mimetic does not illustrate the workings of mimetic desire". If all desire is mimetic, then any depiction of desire as non-mimetic/authentic is mistaken, and there will be "clues that the desire is [actually] mediated/mimetic" despite the author's attempt to present it as unmediated.

To put it another way: if we accept Girard's claim, then an author either has the insight that desire as mimetic and presents it as such (e.g., Cervantes), or lacks that insight, tries to present it as unmediated, and so falls short (e.g., Proust).

And I think that is a pretty reductive approach, because it relies on a preconceived notion ("desire is mimetic") to gauge an author's intentions ("Tagore presents/does not present desire as mimetic") and pass a value judgment ("therefore his novel is good/bad").

@Tsundoku It's just a single paragraph about jealousy as a motivator in the Mahabharata; it doesn't actually discuss this in any detail, only using it to segue into an overview of Girard and the articles in that issue.

Eng Lit Learner

7:47 AM

Q: "Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day. "

Could you please help me understand the two following sentences: Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day. As you can imagine I do understand each word separately, however the phrase "Try as I like" is new to me and I can't find what it means precisely. In addition, "get back ...

verbose

There's a big leap between saying "all human beings are mimetic", or even that "all desire is mimetic", and the universalizing claim that desire operates the same across cultures.

As @EddieKal says, it's not clear what "desire" means here. On the one hand, it could mean sexual desire, but the Mahabharata paragraph links it to political rivalry.

5 hours later…

Bookworm

1:14 PM

Q: Best selling Chinese book?

Which Chinese book is the most sold? I mean a book written in the Chinese language by a Chinese autor

chinese-literature

Q: What is the relationship between Tagore's poems and his song lyrics?

Rabindranath Tagore composed and wrote the lyrics for approximately 2,200 songs, collectively known as Rabindra Sangeet, "Rabindra music". These songs remain immensely popular in India and Bangladesh; each country has a Tagore composition as its national anthem. Outside South Asia, Tagore is best...

poetry song-lyrics bengali-literature rabindranath-tagore

5 hours later…

bobble

6:19 PM

The question-asker came back and accepted my Mind Game answer! I'm so happy.

Prince North Læraðr

Ey!

Nice

Bookworm

7:05 PM

Q: Story/article about the 1969 moon landing's meaning to a black man

Can you help me identify the short story or article set in Florida in the summer of 1969, where the writer asks a black man working at his hotel about what he thinks of the excitement, and gets an answer along the lines of "Do you see any black man on the moon or on TV? Until then it means nothing."