Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Continental/Archive

message: I thought we should probably start with introductions, to get a sense of what people's areas of focus are, since that'll probably help clarify a plan of attack. So, I'll begin. I'm Snowspinner, obviously. I'm finishing up an MA at the University of Chicago this June, and will be beginning a PhD at the University of Illinois at Chicago. My interests are in media theory, and in the formation of identities through media. This involves a lot of work with psychoanalytic theory. I also have an inexplicable fascination with Kant. Snowspinner 04:43, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: That is fantastic, about the German -> English translation.  On a side note, have you ever wondered about psychoanalytic theory (or whatever its called when you're not doing psychoanalysis on an actual person) and how it seems to put the psychoanalyst in a privileged position of authority with respect to (musical cue: eerie) mysterious knowledge that he can't actually justify (that is, "can't justify the position of authority", not necessarily "can't justify the knowledge")?  That is, I guess, to say that right now at least I'm favorable to the criticisms of psychoanalysis that compare it to a priesthood, or at least that I'm favorable to the comparison and don't always think it a criticism.  -Seth Mahoney 06:06, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Introductions

message: Currently, Marxist Theory is a redirect to Karl Marx. It seems to me like there's enough to say about post-Marx Marxist theory between the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, Althusser, and Jameson to write a spin-off article. Do people agree that this article would be a good idea? Snowspinner 04:43, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Marxist Theory?

message: Hello all, would all "new musicology" be considered part of critical theory? Regardless, I've written the article on Susan McClary and her article Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert's Music. I'll let the critical theory experts place msg's and links in appropriate places, but while I'm no expert on musicology I am here for questions. Hyacinth 00:47, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: New Musicology?

message: Hey all, I'm out of town and thus afk all weekend. Just wanted to let you know that I haven't abandoned the project at its birth or anything. =) Snowspinner 06:08, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Out of Town

message: Sorry, but could you please change that back to "This article is listed on" or whatever you had before. You can NOT go around and claim articles to be "part of" your project, especially since of the articles already written were not written by members of the project, nor with the project in mind. The articles are probably relevant to a number of fields, and it is hijacking the article for your particular field if you claim it to belong to this project so prominently. -- AlexR 21:00, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No one is saying that this or any other article is *exclusively* part of any one project.  The purpose of the box is to say, "this is a way of looking at the contents of this article - here's a few links if you want to explore this".  There's no hijacking going on here.  It can still be edited and read by anyone, project member or not.  It can be a member of multiple projects.  I'm also involved in the Philosophy WikiProject, and many of the articles included in the project were not written by project members, nor were they written expressely with the project in mind.  This does not mean, however, that it is inappropriate to say that these articles are a part of the project, a status they received based on their topics. -Seth Mahoney 21:30, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is part of 

message: I love that this WikiProject exists, and I think it's pointing things in the right direction in an area of Wikipedia that's caused me some frustration in the past.  Thanks for all your efforts.  However, I strongly suggest that critical theory is the wrong name for this.  "Critical theory" has strong connotations of, and a specific meaning within, the Frankfurt School.  The broader meaning captured by this project is roughly synonymous with literary theory and/or Continental philosophy and/or culture theory.  Why not pick a more neutral name for the project, like WikiProject Cultural Theory?  Then the article on critical theory can go back to representing the specific meaning for Frankfurt-school sociological thought, and we can save much confusion.  -- Rbellin 15:33, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for the replies. I disagree with Pteron's assertion that "Critical Theory is the name most commonly used to describe all different types of approaches."  Even granting this, though (which I believe is factually incorrect), the naming conventions suggest not to use the most common name, but to use the most common unambiguous name.  I'd suggest, rather than disambiguating to two pages like critical theory (cultural studies) and critical theory (Frankfurt School), that an unambiguous name -- like cultural theory, or hell, even critical cultural theory, be used instead.  Or, and here's a crazy thought, what about "WikiProject Theory"?  (As an aside, as the article describes, continental philosophy does not usually exclude work done by U.S. continentalists et al.) -- Rbellin 03:44, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think "theory" is an overly broad term. As has been pointed out several times, there are plenty of other equally good places to list the Frankfurt school information, and the Frankfurt school is the first thing mentioned in the article. I think the matter is handled more than generously towards those interested in the Frankfurt School. But in its current usage, the term doesn't usually refer to the Frankfurt school. And that should be reflected in the article. Snowspinner 06:09, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

text: Cultural studies is a relatively recent development, and one that is still in many ways associated with popular culture studies (i.e. the Birmingham school). Snowspinner 22:56, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

text: Mmh, the article may well be great - but still shouldn't have become a featured article until it met Wikipedia standards. Someone should have taken care of that during or before the nomination process - that's all I'm saying... And that, btw, is one of the reasons this Wikiproject is important. Pteron 06:26, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name of the Project 

message: Hi,
doing some recategorisations (as the result of re-reading my former Anthropology text book), I stumbled across the "Critical theory" category, and thought it was not going to work as a Wikipedia category name. See what I did to the category definition (sorry, before knowing there was a specific wikipedia project with the same name). As WikiProject I think the name perfectly viable (and the exact extent of the contours less a problem), but as a category name I suppose it has too many pitfalls.
Just wanted to mention this here, because I think a lot of effort has gone into this already, and do not want to destroy this, but when attaching categories to articles (and to categories) I recategorise till it starts to make sense in my eyes, which somewhere got stuck on this category.
--Francis Schonken 18:47, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: PS - See also User talk:Walden --Francis Schonken 20:47, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Critical Theory" category 

message: Please see Talk:Myth for anti-critical theory bias. Hyacinth 19:42, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Myth

message: I think the project is rather dead at this time, but anyone who could contribute to an ongoing discussion in Talk:Postmodernity, where a well-known POV-pusher is attempting to single-handedly control the article would be greatly welcome to do so. Taragüí @ 12:02, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Postmodernity]] 

message: Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. The article Critical theory itself looks close to A-class to me, though a few more refs wouldn't hurt, and a picture would brighten it up!  Are there any featured articles in this area? Can you suggest some A or decent B-class articles we might use? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Walkerma 05:15, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Michel Foucault is, I believe, featured. Phil Sandifer 05:21, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Frankfurt School is as well. Jeremy J. Shapiro 05:51, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project 

message: How is adorno's opposition to totalities any different from later postmodernist philosophers' opposition to metanarratives?  Thanks.--Urthogie 21:49, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  totality vs metanarrative 

message: I know this isn't exactly critical theory as such... but it's sort of in the right ballpark.  I reckon a lot of editors here are at least passingly familiar with Zizek.  I'm having a bit of a problem over at the Zizek article; minor as such things go, but I think some intervention from some experienced editors here couldn't hurt.
Basically, a few anonymous editors (and a couple named ones) have written a much-too-long "Critiques" section.  This section lists rather impressionistic criticisms by rather unimportant (or maybe of minor importance) thinkers.  None of the stuff in the "Critique" section is really wrong per se.  Some people really did write a few criticisms.  But it bumps up against a rather strong "undue weight" problem—both in the number of words in that section as a raw fact, and in the general "who-cares"-ness of the critics and criticisms chosen.
In the past, I've found a similar problem in both the Lacan and Freud articles.  A little bit in Adorno too, FWIW.  Way too much of biographies of difficult academics get filled up with facile comments by other thinkers whose comments seem to amount to little more than "I don't understand Lacan (Freud/Adorno/Zizek/etc)."  For a while there was something in the Lacan article where Chomsky made basically that comment... which is actually fine on Chomsky's part, and was not even a badly phrased comment, but it's hardly of encyclopedic interest when reading about Lacan.  Or anti-semite Kevin MacDonald criticizing Adorno as "too Jewish" (which I finally killed from the article).  The Zizek critiques are also at a similarly trite level.  It's one thing if Negri, or Butler, or Laclau want to take serious issue with Zizek: let's definitely report on that in the bio (albeit concisely); but someone padding their resume after skimming a Zizek book isn't notable for the biography (which basically would include a couple articles by me, in full disclosure mode... but I sure don't want "Mertz" cited in the Zizek bio either).
Please help! All the best, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Slavoj Zizek]] article getting unbalanced 

message: The WikiProject template for Critical Theory  is very hard on the eyes, being all italics.
Considering that it is encased in an apricot coloured box and located at the top of the page, I think it is very obvious to the reader already and the italics make me want to NOT read it, which seems to be against the purpose. It would be great if someone could change the template to remove the italics. JenLouise 02:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree and have just removed the italics. Deleuze 02:13, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template for Critical Theory 

message: Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 0.5 and later versions.  Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Philosophy/Religion WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us.  Please feel free to post your suggestions right here.  Thanks! Walkerma 05:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0 

message: Beginning cross-post.
:See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:18, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stablepedia 

message: Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards 

message: Hi, I'm working on  the gender studies article and would appreciate some outside opinion on it.  It's early days yet, I've had to completely rewrite it for NPOV, clarity and accuracy but it still has a long way to go.  Any help would be appreciated.--Cailil 17:58, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Views and Aid for [[Gender Studies]] 

message: I'm considering becoming a member of the project, but I'm at a loss as to where I might fit in.  My interests lie in Literary criticism and theory, mostly New Historicist.  Would I be able to find a niche, here, or is that too specific of an interest? Wrad 03:27, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Future member? 

message: I took the liberty of adding this project's template to a new article on Secondary antisemitism because of the involvement of Adorno and Horkheimer in the elaboration of the concept. Hope this makes sense. Would be pleased to discuss, also the editor who created the article would probably want to be involved in the discussion too. Cheers. Itsmejudith 18:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New article on [[Secondary antisemitism]] 

message: I was trying to clean up paratext, and started looking for an article on "text" in the sense in which it's used in critical theory.  As far as I can tell, Wikipedia doesn't have one.  There are lots of links at the disambiguation page text, but none of them seemed to apply precisely.  Hermeneutics is at least the right subject, but there's a distinction between the study of texts and texts themselves.  I'm not an academic, and have only a passing familiarity with critical theory, but this seemed like a significant omission to me.  I don't know how active this WikiProject is, but if anyone's reading this and wants to take on a project, here's one.  (I'm not even sure what the best name for such an article would be: text (critical theory), text (literary criticism), text (criticism), or something else?)  Anyway: your mission, should you choose to accept it... —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:07, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea (though I'm not volunteering).  I'd vote for a title like text (culture), for breadth's sake, since it's not clear that this meaning of "text" is strictly confined to the aesthetic-critical disciplines.  Whoever takes this on should probably start from John Mowitt's book Text: The Genealogy of an Antidisciplinary Object as well as a few tertiary sources.  I believe I added this as a reference to the main text article a while back, but it was deleted for some reason like "disambig pages can't have references." -- Rbellin|Talk 20:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Text", in the critical theory sense 

message: A lot of re-organization has been done over at WP:PHILO recently. I must admit, I haven't paid any attention to this group Critical theory in that process. The WP:PHILO has designated several task forces for the purpose of covering everything appropriate. The project banner provides the option of tracking articles by fields which correspond to the task forces. The Aesthetics, Ethics, and Phil of science projects have already been subsumed to a sub project or task force of WP:PHILO. Each of the task forces benefit from the assessment resources of the whole project. The data for the project is also broken down by task force. A worklist is also created in this process.
I am wondering what the group would prefer to do... Perhaps just rename Marxism to "Critical theory" outright, expand the scope to include both, and insert those options in the banner? I would also like to make a place for the participants in the philosophy roster as the others are organized, etc.
Would the group prefer to combine-with/subsume the Continental Philosophy task force? Perhaps some combination of Critical theory, Continental philosophy, Marxism, Phenomenology would be appropriate for one or two task forces. How should it be organized? Please take a look at how the "Major traditions" are organized.
In addition, the plan is to have a bot automatically tag all the articles in certain designated categories as part of one or more task forces. You can see those categories on the page of each task force under Scope. We will be able to replace all the  with  during that process. Currently only Aesthetics, Ethics, Epistemology, and Metaphysics are scheduled for this process.
The goal of the reorganization should be to A) be general enough to cover a significant enough number of articles to merit a task force, B) be specific enough to produce a meaningful worklist for each task force, and C) be a convenient way to organize the content for the editor. This proposal is consistent with several discussions at WP:REFORM. 
Some in the group may not fully appreciate this proposal. Please be assured, we have a lot of options and tools for organizing the material. I'm sure we can come up with something. In the case of the Logic project, the Math people were a bit territorial on some issues. They were accommodated by, in some areas, just creating two of everything (math and phil). In other areas there were created united areas joined by transclusions of two separate spaces. Greg Bard 12:13, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subsuming project under Philosophy 

message: I wrote some articles about Heidegger for the german Wikipedia and would like to contribute here as well, because I have seen that the english article needs some corrections and additional material. But I would need someone who could recheck my grammar and who would look for typos. I asked user Mtevfrog, but he does not seem to log in that often, so I wonder if someone here would like to help me? We would also need some english translations of Heideggers work, so that we could match english translations of Heideggers german terminology. As a native german speake we would have access to the Gesamtausgabe (Heidegger) and could even cite from texts that are not yet translatet into english. 
You might want to have a look on the german articles I've written so far:
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sein_und_Zeit  (also check: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Sein-und-Zeit-Hauptbegriffe.pdf maybe we could translate it into English?)
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger_und_der_Nationalsozialismus
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Was_ist_Metaphysik%3F
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger-Rezeption
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_%C3%BCber_den_%C2%BBHumanismus%C2%AB
So is someone here who'd like to do it? The main article (Martin Heidegger) is most important, I think. 
Greetings from Berlin -- Tischbeinahe (talk) φιλο 21:09, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Martin Heidegger]]