<p>Is it ironic that I couldn't read through that article?</p>
<p>pretty cool article. =)</p>
<p>I enjoyed it.</p>
<p>I could be a literary critic. Maybe.</p>
<p>As a student of comparative literature, I believe science is the narrative all literary people should be skeptical about.
It's so sad that science today has became our state religion, and like medieval theocracies, we too, demand the blessing from holy science! lol
What's more insidious is that we are no longer capable of thinking alternatives beside transforming all narratives into scientific discourses.</p>
<p>^Agreed. Literature should remain subjective to its own interpretation. Thats what makes it great! It's like scientifically intrepreting art or music using the scientific method-just don't do it.</p>
<p>granted, it has given us some pretty nice miracles in the past hundred years :p</p>
<p>The real problem with literary criticism is not its methods, but the fact that the average consumer values an ipod or an electric toothbrush more than a college-level analysis of Hamlet.</p>
<p>Too long, did not read.</p>
<p>pharmakeus01, I agree, it's a shame that people now choose to believe in facts!</p>
<p>@Titan124</p>
<p>I think pharmakeus meant to say that literary elements should not be put to tests of objectivity. Everything is subject to laws of empiricism and logic at all times.</p>
<p>@ Titan124
Instead of presenting or proving the "facts," we should question the social/political/economic implications of those so called facts, and even the facts themselves need to be examined.
For instance, what will the dominance of science and technology affect literature and other liberal art disciplines?
Let me give an example. Evolution! Evolution as a scientific concept has been used to legitimize the colonization of foreign races, the torture of animals, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of Nazi expansion. All these negative aspects of science and technology today have been declared irrational,unethical,and unscientific; very similar to how pope declared that the burning of scientists during the middle age anti-Christian,heretic,and wrong.
Another instance where scientific discourse becomes the weapons of the oppressor is the psychiatric institutions our state have established today to exclude those who have mental disabilities. </p>
<p>I believe science, like literature, is subject to personal will and varies across culture, time, and space. Like philosophy and religion, science can also been used as an instrument to oppress. By hiding the negative effects of the science, we are promoting a hegemony of one discourse over all the other, an act quite contrary to our believe in the equality of all forms of narratives! </p>
<p>Literature today has became schizophrenic fragments where the lost fantasies of the masses have been recycled through people's expenditure on meaningless literary utopias such as Harry Potter, the post-apocalyptic world, star trek, star wars, worlds where our history is repeated as the only irreversible, unchangeable, crystallized history of the universe. Simply put, we lack imagination those days, and we are just recycling ourselves like the garbage can filled with magazines and journals I thrown out this morning.</p>