GENIUS DOESN’T STEAL, ASSHOLE STEALS
i’m totally fed up of discovering sneaky theft in literature of other literature, you always hear that refrain about how geniuses steal but if you ask me its tons and tons of bullshit - geniuses don’t steal, ASSHOLES STEAL. jacques rancière, you ASSHOLE, you nonchalantly chiefed a crucial passage in Plato’s Phaedrus for your stupid pointless tree-wasting masterpiece Politics and Aesthetics or whatever and passed it off as your own, i am so glad i uncovered this BLATANT THIEVERY before using the quotation as an epigraph to my book, more fool me for not having whiffed the now blatant stench of appropriation that shall colour our dealings forthwith.
Rancière is talking about Plato explicitly, but does not use quotation marks to enclose the comment that writing, ‘en s’en allant rouler à droite et à gauche, sans savoir à qui il faut ou il ne faut pas parler, l’écriture détruit toute assise légitime de la circulation de la parole, du rapport entre les effets de la parole et des positions des corps dans l’espace commun.’ What effectively happens is that he makes Plato’s idea way less interesting by occluding it with the typically critical-theoretical nonsense that makes me want to throw books against walls - it isn’t just about writing anymore, but about how the stage ‘disturbs the clear partition of identities, activities, and spaces’. did you ever hear anything less interesting in your entire life?
here is Plato’s originating idea, as God and the Winged Horses and the Painful Buds of the Sprouting Tendons and Muscles of Wings intended it.
PLATO (writing as Socrates in the Phaedrus): Writing, you know, Phaedrus, has this strange quality about it, which makes it really like painting: the painter’s products stand before us quite as though they were alive; but if you question them, they maintain a solemn silence. So, too, with written words: you might think they spoke as though they made sense, but if you ask them anything about what they are saying, if you wish an explanation, they go on telling you the same thing, over and over forever. Once a thing is put in writing, it rolls about all over the place, falling into the hands of those who have no concern with it just as easily as under the notice of those who comprehend; it has no notion of whom to address or whom to avoid. And when it is ill-treated or abused as illegitimate, it always needs its father to help it, being quite unable to protect or help itself.
Maybe that’s what’s going on here with Rancière, he needs his daddy to hold his hand and pet his hair. I AM SICK OF FRENCH MALE THEORISTS! THEY SHOULD GO EAT A STACK OF CHEESE AND COMB THEIR SIDE PARTINGS THE OTHER WAY!
