If we take the comments section of a blog to be an indicator of its overall health, the previous post might give us pause. Of the 44 comments a majority seem to be upset and/or defensive.
I feel like I should clarify my role on this blog as a critic, so that I can be held accountable to my goals and purposes.
I believe the critic's role is to expose existing biases and institutions for what they are, to give a sense of time and place to ideas and paradigms which seem timeless and universal. Foucault says, "It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent to criticize and attack them in such a manner that [they] will be unmasked[...]"
Although this language sounds negative (criticize, attack), I think as long as this language is aimed at institutions (critical, academic, and cultural institutions), and not at people, people can avoid being hurt.
But people still end up being hurt. Some of the blame rests with me. I will try harder to be more opaque, concrete, and to contextualize my statements within a more universal framework. In small communities such as alt comics there can be a tendency to assume certain shared viewpoints and common history. While I locate myself within this community, I also, as a critic, remove myself as far as possible, resulting in a lack of emotional attachment and hopefully a greater clarity of observation. Until now my position has been somewhat vague and I've even had fun with this vagueness (see my post on covert advertising), but ultimately I think this has led to some confusion, some assumption that in attacking certain institutions I am aligning myself with others.
I think one of the tasks I would ask of the commenters here is to separate the personal from the institutional. This blog exists as an institution, and it demands that it is attacked and exposed itself. Although this blog is made up of people, I think it is possible to attack it without attacking the people involved. My problem with attacking people is two-fold: it is the esoteric nature of the attack, involving information which is only known to several parties (often not known to the attackers themselves), and it is the emotional nature of the attack, which again is a language that is less accessible to those who are coming from an outside perspective.
I will also, when attacking institutions, be aware that I do not attack individuals, openly or discretely. I trust commenters will hold me accountable if I do attack anyone.
I hope that we can agree on some parameters of language, so we can communicate better with one another, and keep the discussion open to others. Although I may play the role of "destroyer" on this blog I am doing so in order to clear the ground for new growth. Ultimately I am interested in cultivating creativity.
images by danny espinoza, paul bonnet, and john kearns
see the rest of the chomsky/foucault debate here
30 comments:
"My Critique of This Blog"
This blog is too inconsistent to be an "institution." Most of the posts seem haphazard, unclear, and apologetic at times (for knowing that they are uncertain).
certain posts are informative and nice, but there is no overall agenda.
I simply don't understand (this blog).
Make an argument and back it up. Learn how to write a thesis. Be clear. Know what you are talking about.
For example, the last post. Instead of criticizing critics for not attempting English's work, do what hasn't been done and tackle English's work since you think it deserves attention. You say you are a critic, No? Be the change that you want to see. The net is too full of whining/complaining for such shit. I'm trying to be constructive here. But i feel that the "arguments" on this blog are as thin as tissue paper (or at least that is how they are presented).
-somebody
'I simply don't understand (this blog).'
perhaps you are not the best person to offer a critique then?
dont want to be rude. but i see that a lot here: 'i dont get this! and this is terrible!'
i don't think anything on this blog is as controversial as the comments make it out to be. it's simply discussion. it seems that many people commenting are irritated by the mere idea of discussion.
This blog seems to be the only comics blog (that I know of) that explores this particular niche of comics on a regular basis. If for nothing else it's valuable to me for that, because these are the comics I'm most interested in.
I would like to see more reviews/discussions of current work (like the discussions on Slime Freak and Dongery.) The wild philosophical goose chases are fun, but the same 2 or 3 people are going to piss all over them anyway so it all turns out somewhat predictable.
"Make an argument and back it up. Learn how to write a thesis. Be clear. Know what you are talking about."
Speaking only for myself, I feel uncomfortable taking an authoritative position. For me this blog is about trying out ideas, testing them against people who are often ready to attack. I'm not so interested in creating coherent arguments. I don't care if my opinion is valid. I want to be open.
I feel like I've made too many posts/comments about the lameness of certain areas of comics, but in reality, I'm really excited about almost everything. A lot of what I'm trying to explore is how to deal with the unavoidable binary nature of comics, the unavoidable questions of high/low art, the unavoidable bias in this culture (and myself, definitely) toward the conceptual or linguistic and against the visual or aesthetic. It's difficult to understand how to even talk about these things clearly for me sometimes. It's hard to define the terms.
@somebody "Instead of criticizing critics for not attempting English's work, do what hasn't been done and tackle English's work since you think it deserves attention."
I am not really interested in actual comics.
I think actual comics can be seen as manifestations of larger forces, and these larger forces are more interesting to me.
Part of my "agenda" might be to decentralize comics, to remove them from these larger forces.
@ian I agree, Sam Gaskin posts are refreshingly concrete.
"the unavoidable bias in this culture (and myself, definitely) toward the conceptual or linguistic and against the visual or aesthetic."
I liked what you said yesterday, that the real bias of this culture is toward a binary of conceptual/visual, that we see these terms so separately.
Do you like being a critic? Seems like a terrible thing to spend your time doing. I don't mean that as an attack. I'm just curious, because i think that you draw also. Art critic and artist? Never met anyone like that.
@anonymous
"dont want to be rude. but i see that a lot here: 'i dont get this! and this is terrible!'
i don't think anything on this blog is as controversial as the comments make it out to be. it's simply discussion. it seems that many people commenting are irritated by the mere idea of discussion."
No. I didn't say "this is terrible." I like the idea of this blog, that is why i gave a critique. If i didn't care, i would've just senselessly bashed it. Don't confuse my post with foolery.
I would change your words and say that this blog isn't as controversial as it could be, because the arguments aren't fully fleshed out. Some of the ideas are interesting, but they are full of holes, seem incoherent/incomplete. I like discussions that are worth my time, many of the "discussions" on this blog aren't fully developed.
@Blaise and anonymous
"I am not really interested in actual comics.
I think actual comics can be seen as manifestations of larger forces, and these larger forces are more interesting to me.
Part of my "agenda" might be to decentralize comics, to remove them from these larger forces."
This statement is confusing. I do not understand it. why is this blog called "cometscomets" (referencing comicsccomics) If the agenda isn't comics? Blaise why do you make comics? Why does everyone on this blog make comics? What are these larger forces? When i read this blog i don't think about anything, but comics. In your statement above, when you use the phrase "larger forces" i feel you are being vague in order to not take an actual stance. You should tell me (without me having to ask you specifically) what the "larger forces" are that this institution is about.
@Jason
Isn't the act of posting on this blog authoritative? You are an "author" on this blog, are you not? I'm not asking you to be a dictator about your ideas. I just want to be convinced. You can be open and intelligent at the same time. That is where i become confused, i read "I'm not so interested in creating coherent arguments." as: i don't know how to/ or don't care to create a fleshed out argument. An "incoherent argument." Sounds like a surrealist game to me.
-somebody
@somebody
don't you like surrealist games? i think they're fun. i think this blog gets a lot of mileage out of them. it seems like you might be using the term in a pejorative sense.
-everybody
@everybody
leave the surrealist games to Dali and art school party goers!!! JK JK
not completely pejorative, i'm trying to be moderately funny to lighten the blow.
if this blog is an institution of games, it should present itself as such.
-somebody
'if this blog is an institution of games, it should present itself as such.'
id say just the opposite!
the surrealists were part games/part deadly serious at the same time all the time.
I think ULAND is the most consistently negative and personal commenter on this blog, but he also makes good points (unlike the first poster on the previous article). If not to dismiss Blase personally (not nice) then to dismiss the questions being asked. Guess it's hard to separate the two when the author brings up the same kinds of questions again and again. The criticism of Top Shelf's video by pointing out its use of old memes was childish and irrelevant. The superficial classification of art comics is irrelevant, too. Words like "art comics" and "artist" aren't institutions, they're words. As others have said, if you want to challenge the way they're used, then just use them differently.
Just saying, when the posts are as vapid as they have been, the most concrete thing to attack is the author who continually makes the posts.
Count this anon as skeptical about the meaning of that promise to be "more opaque, concrete, and to contextualize..." We'll see. But for a blogger to be open about self-criticism and self-improvement is a good thing.
-someone else
Jason said: "Speaking only for myself, I feel uncomfortable taking an authoritative position. For me this blog is about trying out ideas, testing them against people who are often ready to attack. I'm not so interested in creating coherent arguments. I don't care if my opinion is valid. I want to be open."
I totally get that. I value informal discussion quite a bit. It's actually one of the best experiences in life. Sitting around a bar, or a diner, or a comic shop and shooting the shit about something you're in to.
It seems like the internet should be informal in this way by nature, but nobody every seems to take it that way. I got myself into a lot of hot water with people in the past by just spewing off the top of my head and taking discussions both seriously and completely informal at the same time.
The internet is just a completely unstable context. The ease in which people decide to be downright vile towards one another is just one example.
I feel like there should be a place for serious academic/critical discussion of avant-garde comics, but I also feel like there should be a place for completely half-baked informal discussion of the same topic. Can something be both at the same time?
Ahem.
please re-title this blog "institution of games" and focus more on jacks, marbles, etc. also: pogs, stick-ball.
op-art is an optional way to opt out also, a loophole for a Loplop, if you will, if i may.............
more video game reviews would be cool guys, hey.
also, "kick the can"
"tiddleywinks"
"daring each other to eat worms"
"You are an "author" on this blog, are you not?"
I'm an instigator. A good blog post shouldn't have one author. The life is in the comments. That's why this isn't a magazine.
It's tricky breaking part of the world off and making it work on its own. Sometimes I'm not sure where to draw my lines. I do my best thinking out loud. Writing helps make the vague notions floating around in my head into ideational artifacts. They don't fully exist before that. But Socratic discussion polishes them even further, rounds them out.
"Words like "art comics" and "artist" aren't institutions, they're words"
I think that words shape the way we contruct out worlds. Blaise's idea, I think, is to explode words. Busting apart the word "comics" is why I wanted to make this blog in the first place. In a Foucaultian sense, it's not about offering an alternative yet, it's trying to detach from comics authoritative constructs of identity. Is "comics" a collection of vernacular surfaces (emoticons, panel borders, capes, inking styles, pulpy stories, crank logic), a formalist vitrine to fill with content, words + pictures, etc? I don't know the answer, but I want to divorce the idea of comics from ad-hoc prescriptions of form, like our forbears wanted to do in the eighties with content. So much of comics is the culture of comics - what amazing work could exist outside of that? The Hairy Who? Lichtenstein? Tons of other stuff. What made comicscomics so inspiring was that it (and the Ganzfeld) was about openness and inclusion. "Comics" is a word that could hold a much broader variety of stuff than it currently does...
@Blaise- yeah, that's a better way to put it.
"I feel like there should be a place for serious academic/critical discussion of avant-garde comics, but I also feel like there should be a place for completely half-baked informal discussion of the same topic. Can something be both at the same time? "
Hopefully some day (we're not so good at this yet).
hanging out is so, so, so fun
but its much more fun while playing games
such as games involving rotation, paper and free will
Jason answered: "Hopefully some day (we're not so good at this yet)."
This is why I think the personal context is still so important. I feel completely different when I'm talking to comics people in person than when I'm talking to them on the internet. Brings it back to the old theme of fetish objects and analog v. digital. Real things just work better for so many reasons.
The internet needs to open up a bar.
to me blogging beckons to the knee-jerk and the bladder but also weirdly feels like a cheap/fancy form of mail-art or something, more than any real kind of roundtable style discourse. what with the delays in response, the inevitable voids and floods that follow a post. it is far from a chat program or a telephone or an actual wink of the eye.
this makes comments sections funny and crazy and awesome, cause they cater to the casual and the extreme at once. following this logic, it is great when things get stupid or overblown, they should. you can also ignore them. we got a mild pack of wild cards here, blah blah.
less than potent posts can feel like having small-talk with a distant friend, but about art-damaged philosophy and aesthetic taste, instead of weather and personal memories, such as the death of cherished pet animals.
i am glad i got this chance to describe a lonely online game quietly to myself, only to have my ramble thrust before seven chatty dudes. or seventeen moody brooders. or seventy-seven ghostly boasters. when are we gonna start selling cafepress mugs, guys. this site needs a redesign. just kidding.
wait was i just defending noise and bullshit on this crisp thread? cogent posts, you mackerels. a clean slate. a window wiper cleanse for the online soul.
consider my mouth entirely filled with soap. this is an improvement over the cotton, hair and shirt sleeves, soaked in drool.
I feel like this also bears saying, to all the haters:
Where the fuck's your blog?
I think that there is a disconnect evident in this post. I don't think what most people get upset about, or at least what I get upset about reading this blog is your status as a critic Blaise.
It seems an old case of not what you say but how you say it.
From what I've seen, the majority of your posts are constructed to "get a rise" out of people and often times say very little otherwise.
To take the previous post as an example, the argument over whether something can be called art despite its having been made under a different name or agenda is an old and extremely tired discussion. I felt you brought little to the table and the comparison you went on to make made little sense. While Austin is an exceedingly interesting comic artist and probably hasn't seen as much attention as he should, he also has not accomplished nearly as much as the artists you were comparing him to (understandably so since they are dead and have their lives behind them whereas he has a whole career pretty much ahead of him).
My frustration with your blog posts is not the fact that you are taking on "large forces" that are dear to me (they are not). My frustration is that you often begin to scratch the surface of an interesting discussion and then treat it with an insulting degree of flippancy and vagueness.
I want to have these discussions but the vague framing of them creates a barrier for me.
i don't read the comments to this blog because i look at it in google reader, so i didn't know any shit was going down.
i will just say:
this is pretty much the only comix blog i bother reading (though i skim comics-comics & certain artists personal blogs), and i don't know, it's mostly because i like what it says the most. i don't think there needs to be a thesis in criticism, especially if you're writing against the institution. post-structuralism & on is basically devoid of a thesis, so if you want a thesis travel back to the 1940s or just pretend that Europe hasn't existed since then. wait, did i just make myself part of the problem?
never mind.
anyway, the one bit of criticism i would like to offer this critical construct is that maybe some help in leading your readers to places where these rad things you're talking about can be attained. i'm pretty good at googling but some of this shit is like impossible to find. i realize that this would possibly make you an advertising outlet, but i promise not to hold it against you.
I've enjoyed this blog because of the sort of jumping platform that a lot of the posts act as for continuing my own stream of thoughts, whether in agreement or not. This is the way I think most of the time. Also, since discovering blogs and message boards, I've found my tendency to post undeveloped thoughts has caused me much embarrassment. It's frustrating to want to write in conversational tone when readers generally want you to cover all your bases, for airtight arguments.
the pwn ranger: "do you like being a critic"
sometimes
tee see yes: "the argument over whether something can be called art despite its having been made under a different name or agenda is an old and extremely tired discussion."
do you feel this issue has a clear, resolved answer?
"art" is a western word, it is necessarily linked to western art narratives and to the "western art narrative" we currently view as "art history". To apply this word to anything else is to get into the subject of translation.
Duchamp said it gets you nowhere to say that everyone is an artist; Beuys said the opposite. Personally, I think this discussion is still open and interesting to me.
I think agency in particular is very interesting, and that is, for me, the weightiest factor in discussing the word "artist".
I think class also becomes drawn into the discussion, and related to class, taste, and related to taste, beauty, and related to beauty, religion. Art seems like a form of religion in the west, and it gets tricky when we try to apply the word "art" to objects that come out of cultures that do not practice this religion. Art seems to be found in an international, mainly urban, "creative class", and is defined by large institutions.
But it's also a word that is fought for, and it's hard to tell what country it belongs to. Does "Artforum" have a larger share in the word than "Juxtapose"? How do we measure this, through GDP, population, resources?
honestly could keep going ... how does language define reality, where does agency lie, in language or in people, is "english" a sovereign language, is "upper middle class urban 1st world" a language, etc.
Here's my two cents: I think the last post generated a really good discussion, though the blades came out of their scabbards a bit. I think a lot of people have genuine difficulty following your arguments blaise, and that though they don't always say it in the best way, you're being given feedback on your writing style as much as anything else. There are differences of opinion too, of course. Also, while its admirable you want to promote the community I think a part of that is recognizing the roles & responsibilities you have as a 'discussion leader' (lame as that term sounds). Clarity does seem to be an issue, and also, like other bloggers (cough momus) sometimes catching heat from commenters is just a sign of a fresh & healthy blog. i dunno, i'm sure i have other thoughts too but i don't want to order them and post them clearly right now!
oh yeah, it does seem like some elementary ground rules of politeness/no personal attacks could be useful, even if this is the internet at all. you did mention this, even though it was a little opaque. peace.
This is not an institution. It is some kind of psychic backwash congratulating itself for stinking in new ways.
By backwash, I mean Blaise Larmee, avatar of the Elmo Generation.
Too harsh, sorry.
I think it's sort of questionable though, trying to depersonalize it under the pretext of wanting to engage in institutional critiques. It seems like it's just kind of hurting your feelings a bit, which probably wouldn't happen if you didn't do things like obsess over status and drape yourself in academic langauge when it suits you. Nobody buys that stuff. What they do buy is your personal dedication, Blaise, and your native talent. If you could bring those things to the fore in earnest, you wouldn't get— you wouldn't deserve to get— heckled.
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