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Mina Herz

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Mina’s currently-reading shelf

The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

The Crooked Timber of Humanity by Isaiah Berlin

Seven Who Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev

The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist

The Snake at the Mouth of the Cave by Moshe Z. Sokol

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Mina is Currently Reading

Mina Herz is currently reading

The Varieties of Religious Experience

by William James

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Jan 01, 2026 09:02AM

Mina Herz is currently reading

No Longer Human

by Osamu Dazai

bookshelves: 2-3-fiction, x1f590-next-five5-x1f64c, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

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Dec 31, 2025 03:22PM

Mina Herz is currently reading

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

by Roland Barthes

bookshelves: currently-reading, 6-philosophy-psychology, physicalown

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Mina Herz said: " To be honest I am finding this book enjoyable but annoying because it is not clear what parts are actually attributed to the author, and which aren't. And I'm pre-empting this stupid argument of "oh its inherently a porous boundary - he's collapsing To be honest I am finding this book enjoyable but annoying because it is not clear what parts are actually attributed to the author, and which aren't. And I'm pre-empting this stupid argument of "oh its inherently a porous boundary - he's collapsing authority and subjectivity" "the form mimics the phenomenon - the fragmentation mimics the anxious and repetitive nature of love itself " - I can't figure out if you guys sound more like pretentious French twats, or an A Level English Literature examiner's report (or which is worse)

This is now entirely unrelated to the book but its my page, but my God, the only thing I hate more than the word "poststructuralism" is when it is accompanied with "French".
First, why the fucking allergy to defining anything? I get that vocabulary is never exhaustive - but they always take it too far - they deliberately obscure and decentre things that can quite easily be communicated. So, what we're reading is someone acting as if it is impossible to communicate something (that is quite possible to be communicated).
Lest I'm accused of doing the same, here are some of the worst offenders in refusing to state points clearly, and who think ambiguity is a virtue:
* Derrida. He claims that meaning is always deferred. I'd probably do the same if I wrote a book (Glas) that was literally split into two columns, with one side consisting of random (uncited) scribbles on Hegel, and the other on Genet, with no connecting argument. "Ooo it challenges both form and subject matter" we didn't need the form of a book fucking challenged. This is not insight. (Also, his actual thesis is just utterly banal and unoriginal - its literally 'metaphysics contains contradictions'. No wonder he hid this shit behind textual stunt work that forces the poor reader to do hermeneutic acrobatics.
* Blanchot. Your fragmentary lines don't demonstrate metaphysical insight, they're frustrating. Also, define your terms.
There's a core formula: take a basic concept, that can be articulated in a sentence -> inflate it with as much metaphysical fog as possible -> treat this fog as itself sophisticated, and treat anyone who demands actual substance as 'not really getting it'.

Obscurity (particularly when its deliberate) is not a method, and it doesn't make you smart. (Many in academia should recognize this, too). Joyce, TS Eliot etc genuinely struggled with representing fractured consciousness - because its a difficult thing to represent. The French, however, like to take the simplest fucking thing and contort it - and not in a cool, quantum physics way, but in a pretentious and frustrating way. There is nothing intelligent about taking something lucid and choosing to luxuriate in ambiguation, and confusing this indulgence as profundity.
Second, this postmodern fixation of """"dissolving hierarchies"""" - ooo look at me, the gap between author and reader is blurred, the gap between the author and the narrator is blurred!!! Again - cute party trick, mildly entertaining the first time. But now we're just left with shit where half the time you don't even know who is speaking, because we somehow decided that... have a stable attribution of prose to a specific speaker is.... hierarchal?

Third, this entire shitshow became like a competition among theorists - opacity became some sort of currency in their gay prestige economy. It's like the idea was if your work is cogent and understandable, you're naïve and stupid. And of course, Derrida started it.

.. Okay, sorry, my ADHD meds kicked in. I'm enjoying this book so far. ...more "

Dec 06, 2025 12:18AM · see review

See all 9 books that Mina is reading…

Mina’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for Nietzsche on Love (Warbler Press Contemplations Book 2)

Nietzsche on Love (Warbler Press Contemplations Book 2) by Friedrich Nietzsche

9 notes & 66 highlights

Wanting to be loved. The demand to be loved is the greatest presumption of all.

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Mina’s Quotes

“I am truly horrified by modern man. Such absence of feeling, such narrowness of outlook, such lack of passion and information, such feebleness of thought.”
― Alexander Herzen, From the Other Shore & The Russian People and Socialism

tags: modern-man, modernism, outlook, passion

1 likes

“I should not wish ever to have it repeated; but I should consider myself unhappy if I had never experienced it.”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love

tags: first-love

5 likes

“Nothing is easier than to sit, like Father Matthew,[17] in the seat of judgement and condemn drunkenness, while you are yourself intoxicated with sobriety;”
― Aleksandr Herzen, The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, Parts I and II: Enriched edition. Revolutionary Insight: A Memoir of 19th-Century Russia

1 likes

“Why, you may ask, am I telling you all these abominations? So that you should know, my dear sirs, these are not things of the past — far from it! I know that you prefer beautifully told, fictitious horrors: the fantastic and the terrifying give you an agreeable thrill! But I know what is really terrifying, the horrors of everyday life, and I claim the indisputable right to shock you with stories about it, to make you take stock of your own lives and the world in which you live. We all live vile dirty lives — that's the point of these stories! I love people and I would not wish to horrify them. But I will not be sentimental nor conceal the terrible truth with the tinsel words of a beautiful lie. We must go forward with life! We must take from it into our hearts and heads everything that is good and humane so that it becomes a living part of us.”
― Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship

1 likes

“All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

50 likes

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