u/FancySpeed4711

Pretty much the title, I do history and French and every essay I do I get a 68 on pretty much everything aside from the rare time I get like a 62 (if it’s a really strict professor) or a 65. I always put in a decent amount of effort, I’ve got long reading lists, balanced arguments and I only get two types of criticism. One is easy and pretty consistent for a few professors, which is that I need to signpost my arguments more which is fair. The other type of advice is really specific to the essay itself on of just things I need to include, but then when I do them I still get a 68 alongside a bunch of new criticisms keeping it at a 68.

It’s making me think there’s something wrong with my essay methodology, am I putting in too much effort into counter arguments? Am I getting the wrong information from my sources or what. I think I also don’t include primary sources as much but idk.

I’m aiming for a first overall so I can do a good masters course (hopefully at a different uni icl) but I got a 64 for this year overall ffs, and it’s because I bottled 4 essays and didn’t have any firsts to make up for them, only 68s.

Please help.

I’m reading a bit about David Foster Wallace and some mainstream popomo thinkers on Wikipedia and to be honest it just seems like a movement that is what hippies were to communist revolution.

Reading about the urban planner Tom Turner and it claims he argued against the “anything goes” nature of post modernism and instead toward “timeless” elements of beauty. To me that just sounds like someone whose idea of critical theory is to not criticise their biases and wide societal influences and a return to absolute truth simply because it feels right and is easier. That part of it feels incredibly easy to I guess “debunk” within a post-structuralist framework so what’s the point?

Also the idea of engaging with the world non-ironically on a personal level within capitalism again just seems to be just hedonistic playtime rather than any sort of philosophy.

I don’t want to brush it off and I’m sure I’m misreading stuff so I’d like to be corrected if so but it just feels like such a weak movement. Like “I don’t like how this critique makes me feel! Just let me consume in peace and authentically!!” Also, how authentic can one’s engagement be if they’re forcing themselves to do it?

Thinking about his essay on the holocaust, I think I understand how it enters the fourth stage: like if you had to picture what the holocaust would be like you think of Schindler’s list, or any other depictions of the holocaust rather than the event itself (I think). I also get what stage 1 is as that’s just regular signs, but what are 2 and 3? People on Reddit send in the fish image example and that makes it even more confusing for me and I keep reading parts of the precession of simulacra and don’t get it but I get what he’s referring to with specific examples just not the theory of how they come to be.

Would an accurate description with the holocaust example be like: stage 1: imagery of the holocaust itself. stage 2: imagery of Auschwitz which is used as a kind of synecdoche for the whole holocaust, stressing the scale of the camp and it being a place for both death and work repressing the whole thing but also masking specifics and other camps and other stages of the holocaust like ghettos in a sense. Stage 3: not even a clue what would go here (unless this is where cinema is made of the holocaust, using the iconography of stage 2/Auschwitz for the whole thing). And stage 4: films being made by Hollywood that comprise our knowledge of the event (again, unless this is stage 3 then I have no clue what goes in stage 4)

Just a word of advice for responses, when people use examples to explain it what always ends up happening is that I understand the example but still get confused by how the theory works. If someone could explain to me why my understanding is wrong it’d probsbly help me much more, thanks.

Pretty much summed up by the title, but to any people who study philosophy or are doing a masters or PhD I guess, I am a history and French student at a pretty good English university, about to go on a year abroad at a pretty good French university. I did a French literature module and got really into reading Barthes and then from that a bunch of post-structuralists and hope to take a philosophy module at the Sorbonne next year and, if I can, do a dissertation on French literary criticism with a post-structuralist spin if possible. My question is: is it difficult to pivot toward a focus on critical theory from a degree unrelated to philosophy? How realistic is it if anyone has a similar experience?

I’ve always enjoyed philosophy and art history. Since seeing more and reading more about artists like Giacometti and Rothko I’ve loved how they can embody a philosophy so well and really explore what it means. In this vein, I’m trying to paint how the analysis of Roland Barthes and structuralist views of tragedy but it’s hard to tell if what I’m painting is actually interpretable as that or if I’m just delusional-ly slapping paint around. Obviously I’m not thinking there’s even a chance I could be on the level of Rothko, but I’d like to able to express something to myself and it’s not like either artist I mentioned was a philosopher or studied philosophy themselves.

Notably, I am being purposeful with how I approach the paint, I’m not literally throwing paint around at random and there is definitely structure (no pun intended) and form going on but I can’t tell if that’s just cope.

How do I know if I’m properly getting it or not???