/lit/ - Literature

>>6752613

because it's easier to hide behind memes and bowl cuts than to overcome cultural relativism

>>6752613
"/lit/" is a messageboard, and as such can't actuall yread anything

the individual people who post here, however, are free to choose whatever books they want

even if they are whiny crap like your pic related
or even worse, philosophy

>>6752620

i suppose you like many others cheat and call anything greek European?

anyways, lit likes Japanese and Chinese work a good bit. and Spanish lit as well.

Anything actually good.

>>6752620
>because it's easier to hide behind memes and bowl cuts than to overcome cultural relativism
What?

>>6752613
I DONT SPEAK CLICKLTY CLACK.

WHITEPOWER

>>6752673

I think he meant that people on this website (I would say maybe less so on this board) prefer to resort to meme racism rather than keep an open mind about other cultures and the relative differences between their own culture and others.

>>6752687
>meme racism

kyk

>>6752693

those 9 black people in charleston died because of meme racism, dont deny it

>>6752687
Okay, but what if moral relativism is an incoherent, self-contradictory position that only an idiot would embrace?

Being only intolerant of intolerance is a contradiction. And I know here you will say, "le deeper than that, you're too simple", but I've read quite a bit on moral relativism and always it's basic precepts can be reduced to either moral nihilism or moral universalism

>>6752654
fyi greece is in europe

>>6752613
There isn't much african literature pre-colonization. A consequence of not having a written language I suppose.

>>6752708
A consequence of there only being "urban markets" and "enrichment"

>>6752715
>A consequence of there only being "urban markets" and "enrichment"
Wat?

>>6752724
euphemisms for niggers

>>6752703

I never said moral relativism. The point of cultural relativism is finding the similarities between people from different ends of the Earth who were raised in completely different ways with different traditions and, often, many different values and still finding and understanding a common ground. In fact, isolating yourself from the context of a work with some kind of aesop or moral message can often make the message clearer because you're not clouded by biases or feelings of association with elements of the setting. It's why Brecht set The Good Person of Szechwan in China rather than Germany.

And I don't quite understand what you mean about moral relativism. It's obvious that moral relativism is the case because there's massive dissonance in the belief of what is 'right' between people in the same culture, let alone in disparate cultures. I would say the point of reading beyond your own cultural sphere is not to overcome moral relativism but to identify with a more holistic form of the human experience, rather than limiting yourself.

>>6752748
Why should I do any of that? What if I want to embrace a culture of dominance and intolerance?

I don't understand why I should be like you want me to be. If you want to be understanding, why not understand my bigotry and accept it?

>>6752748

god, i can literally hear you choking on a black man's penis as i read

>>6752732
Oh.

Yeah I pretty much agree.

>>6752707

Yea, but when people say "eurocentric" they mean white.
People aren't complaining about too much Portuguese literature when they say eurocentric right?

Maybe I'm totally wrong, that's just the impression I get.

>>6752613
European books are vastly better; why read garbage when I can read the best?

>>6752613
The big conflict of this book comes from African native's collision with westerners. Isn't that a form of Eurocentrisim?

>>6752613
Marechera shames DFW
down with meme lit

>>6752754
>If you want to be understanding, why not understand my bigotry and accept it?

I mean, if that is you culture than how can he reject it?

>>6752763
yes antiwhite racism is growing

>>6752777
exactly; what if oppression of blacks just is southern culture? understand me too!

>>6752613
>complains about eurocentrism
>writes book in english
kek

because half the people here are closet racists/open chauvinists who hide behind the shallow defense of "ironic humor" and the other half are still in their Bloom canon phase.

>>6752754

>Why should I do any of that? What if I want to embrace a culture of dominance and intolerance?

Well that's your freedom. Am I denying you that right? I'm simply advising you to keep an open mind, because there's obviously a reason that I have my opinion and it's because I think it's right. Thus, while I accept the validity of what you think, however dominant and intolerant you want to be, I still don't agree with you because I have a different opinion.

The length to which I would want to you be anything would just to not reject everything based on assumptions. Of course I understand your bigotry, of course I accept it because it's part of the world around me and all I do is try to understand and accept that world. By my understanding of the world, which I am open to being wrong about but as of the current moment I think I am right about (otherwise I would not have opinions), you are wrong in your bigotry and your embracement of a culture of dominance and intolerance. In the same you, your understanding of the world leads you to the conclusion that I am wrong. The only difference is that you are making the assumption that I am intolerant of your views, when actually I do try to understand and accept them by reading into the subjects of European traditionalism, the notion of cultural dominance/superiority, the notion of scientific racism etc. etc.. I would just say that, from what I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong) you have failed to read into the world beyond that, or even if you have you have failed to try and understand and accept that. No matter how much you dislike post-colonial African authors like Chinua Achebe, you can't deny that he exists, and in much the same what as I might dislike authors like Julius Evola (not really an equivalent but the first person who came to my head) I can't deny that he exists. I just try to understand and accept him, whereas you don't seem to try and understand and accept Achebe.

It's more about balanced thought processes than telling you what to think.

>>6752793

>>6752806

Nah I'm just trying to be as careful as possible with my language because i like civility tbh

There's just not a lot of high tier stuff coming out of Africa yet, if that's what you mean. The Americas, East Asia, and the Middle East have plenty of widely read literature. A Eurocentric tendency might suggest a tendency toward Eurocentric heritage among the poeople who post here. Nothing wrong with that.

In practice, the prevailing cultural relativism simply means "don't be European," but we don't guilt trip the Middle East or Japan for predominately reading their own culture's literature. Having a distinct heritage doesn't make anyone racist or anything.

>>6752793
>I still don't agree with you because I have a different opinion.
stop being intolerant. i'm advising you to keep an open mind

>The length to which I would want to you be anything would just to not reject everything based on assumptions.
Isn't the necessity of not making assumptions fundamentally an assumption?

>Of course I understand your bigotry, of course I accept it because it's part of the world around me and all I do is try to understand and accept that world.
You just advised me to be open-minded: that's blatantly not observational. If all you wanted to do was observation, you could never voice an opinion or act against any perceived wrongdoing.

>By my understanding of the world, which I am open to being wrong about but as of the current moment I think I am right about (otherwise I would not have opinions), you are wrong in your bigotry and your embracement of a culture of dominance and intolerance.
By my understanding of the world, I am right in it. Why aren't you being open-minded to me? Maybe you just haven't heard my full story yet. Stop being so bigoted.

>The only difference is that you are making the assumption that I am intolerant of your views, when actually I do try to understand and accept them by reading into the subjects of European traditionalism, the notion of cultural dominance/superiority, the notion of scientific racism etc. etc.. I would just say that, from what I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong) you have failed to read into the world beyond that, or even if you have you have failed to try and understand and accept that.
Maybe I have read into the world beyond that, and I came to the conclusions I did anyway. How would you know? You presuppose a causality that you're already right: surely if one is open-minded, then one will realize being perpetually open-minded is right; people like you forever ignore the fact that to make any judgment at all about what anyone ought to do in any circumstance is exactly the same mechanism as the most vile bigotry. You just haven't realized the inherent contradiction to applying force to other people with a message of pure unforce.

>It's more about balanced thought processes than telling you what to think.
Maybe I've already thought about your balancing of thought processes and realized they are imbalanced.

Your entire worldview is predicated upon your obfuscated and hidden notions that you're already right about your cultural perception, and use a type of circular justification (open-minded views of culture are correct, because being open-minded will show you being open-minded views of culture are correct)

To be purely open minded means to take seriously and doubt yourself, even your open-mindedness, because to believe open-mindedness is the superior stance as bigoted close-mindedness.

>>6752793
Even if I hadn't read widely: who are you to say that there is value, good things or anything at all good in other cultures? "You can't know until you explore", but you don't even know after you explore.

>>6752833

>Maybe I have read into the world beyond that, and I came to the conclusions I did anyway. How would you know?

Have you tho. Because that's crux of what I'm saying here.

>Your entire worldview is predicated upon your obfuscated and hidden notions that you're already right about your cultural perception

So is yours ;)

>>6752843

>who are you to say that there is value

nothing has value tbh fam

>"You can't know until you explore", but you don't even know after you explore.

Painful laziness.

>>6752843
how do you know theres anything good in your own culture?

>>6752862

Because it's HIS! And they went to the MOON!

>>6752708
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_systems_of_Africa

>>6752833
>Your entire worldview is predicated upon your obfuscated and hidden notions that you're already right about your cultural perception

No, that would be you.

4chan - experts on everything without having to worry about doing any actual research.

>>6752613

>implying there is a homogeneous cultural "Europe" that can encompass and unite all the works that make up even just the English language canon enough to make it monolithic.
>Implying the differences between historical periods, class levels, gender differences, and geographical locations don't provide you with a broad spectrum of perspectives.
>Implying we don't gain a much better intellectual foothold by studying those works and movements which ARE influential, paradigm shaping, so we can understand their origins, their limits, etc, and how they exist in contemporary thought and life, than if we studied some obscure Chinese literature.

>>6752785
>writes and publishes book in Gikuyu
>later translates it into English

Based Ngugi.

>>6752708

Oh no, there is. It's just difficult to access, and that, along with your lack of desire to read it, is why you think it doesn't exist.

Look, those funny little Africans even have epics about heroes and kings, just like those funny little Middle Easterns with their Gilgumesh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Sundiata

>>6752854
>So is yours ;)
Close-minded bigot, gtfo.

>>6752860
If nothing has value, then you admit defeat in the discussion, because you admit your own opinion has no value.

>>6752862
I don't value Platonic good, ergo I don't have to care about such a triviality.

>>6752899
Except I don't value other cultural perceptions or having the "right" one, and I even find that notion absurd in itself. You're the one with fundamentally contradictory values, because your values contradict, my value set is much different than yours.

It's typical, though, for "open-minded" people to presume other people should have their values, and then use that presumption to judge other people as "bad". Totally nothing eurocentrist about that.

>>6752613
Reality has a well-known Eurocentric bias.

>>6752942
TL;DR nobody in this thread has yet deeply considered their liberal values vs. human nature, or realized yet that everybody is bigoted.

>>6752613
Had to read this in high school
The "message" was delivered through:
>whites don't like weird rituals like killing twins
>whites give igbo education and writing
>igbo objectively improved
>book ends with a missionary writing a report titles "colonization of the negro"

The book is benign from any angle and I don't see how it was imagined, in any form, to be groundbreaking.

>>6752909

You've actually come up with the only good point for staying Eurocentric, which is that the majority of traffic on this board is from European or European-language speaking folk, and thus European literature (which does vary massively from place to place within Europe and from time to time) will appear influential and paradigm shaping. And in the modern, post-colonial, globalising, West-dominated world, that'll also be kind of true on a global scale.

Doesn't stop me from being Nigerian and wanting to read both world literature (including your lovely continent) and the literature of my country and my continent. Brainwave - maybe they're not actually as polarised and isolated as you think.

For example, Adichie's Americanah is a great post-modern examination of the interplay between traditional Nigerian values and the values of the modern West, namely the United States. It also has some more universal themes, of course.

Because not much of value came elsewhere.

If /lit/ only likes straight white male authors why do we love Mishima so much? Guess we'll have to stop talking about him, bros.

>>6752931

>Close-minded bigot, gtfo.

you a hypocrite son

>If nothing has value, then you admit defeat in the discussion, because you admit your own opinion has no value.

Yeah but therefore neither does yours. How did you fall into that?

>>6752942
What does that even mean?

>>6752931

>You're the one with fundamentally contradictory values

This is always funny to hear coming from one of these 4chan racists who constantly insist they have the backing of facts, reasoning, history when, oh you know, they do not

>>6752702
fukin wot

>>6752973
>you a hypocrite son
No no no no no - I don't care about close-minded bigots, but you do, and if you value open-mindedness but are a bigot, then I'm going to mock you for that. I don't have to believe either way to point out your intellectual mess.

>Yeah but therefore neither does yours. How did you fall into that?
Well, I'm presuming we're having this discussion to convince each other, because it's patently absurd for you to talk to me for no reason whatsoever.

>>6752942

yeah im sure pluto really gives a shit blud, or the ants. i bet the ants care about europe.

what kind of arrogance what kind of self-importance smh

>>6752875
Going to the moon is a pretty cool, and the cultures that encourage technological advancement will be those that both prosper and allow for humanity to continue living

With nearly absolute certainty we can say that Earth will someday run out of a necessary resource or become uninhabitable, because of this cultures that allow for high levels of technological development are objectively valuable to the species

>>6752981
>This is always funny to hear coming from one of these 4chan racists who constantly insist they have the backing of facts, reasoning, history when, oh you know, they do not
When did I say I'm racist? When did I say I have the backing of facts, reasoning or history?

I didn't.

>>6752925
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Sundiata
Son Jara was a bro

I actually read (and surprisingly enjoyed) that a few weeks ago. Are the sequels any good?

>>6752971
Cuz it wouldn't be 4chan without a bit of the weeaboos around.

>>6752613
I loved things fall apart. Okonkwo's story about the destruction of a culture was very moving. Despite the fact that he was kind of an asshole.>>6752613

>>6752984

>I don't care about close-minded bigots, but you do

When did I say I cared about them? I just think they're wrong, like you. I think ya wrong boy! But I tried to explain that I'm open to why you might not be wrong, and I have been for year on year on year. Your rejection of even the most basic modern non-European literature shows that you aint open to why you might be wrong.


>because it's patently absurd for you to talk to me for no reason whatsoever.

do i gotta have a reason. maybe i just like you anon :3

>>6752992

Ya but ya still think ya do ;)

>>6753019
;) ;)

>>6753013
>I think ya wrong boy!
Okay but I'm still going to do my stuff anyway.

>>6752613
I've found that most African books revolve around
>muh colonialism
>muh heritage
>feel sorry for me
I used to enjoy things like that before I actually studied colonial history and the history of Africa in depth, now I feel that people are using literature to re-write their own histories and project the idea of a utopian pre-colonial Africa, while selling it to guilt-wanking westerners

>>6752918
I've had Devil on the Cross on my shelf for months, I've heard its decent.

>>6753033

this, its like people don't want to acknowledge that african groups were constantly at war with and enslaving each other

>>6753027
oh damn
bears have long tongues

google bear tongues, that's #dank

>>6753031

I know, that's the point. I just think you should check out like one non-Eurocentric book.

Maybe you already have! But I don't think so! Because when I asked if you had you didn't answer!

>>6753059
>one non-Eurocentric book.
I recommend Iceberg Slim tbh. Honerable black pimp with keen psychological insight and little political correctness to hold him back.

>>6752613
Because they're better.

>>6752971
>Mishima
Him, Evola, de Benoist, Nasr and Guenon were my favourites during my "MUH TRADISHUN" phase.

>>6753033

>project the idea of a utopian pre-colonial Africa

I never get that feeling, I get more of a feeling that there's kind of a continent-wide remorse that they were deprived of cultural, political, social self-determinism for a couple of centuries and a couple of generations, and they were forced to occupy an identity that they had not organically constructed themselves but had been forced upon them by others.

I mean it happens all the time in history, but the issue is we're living directly in the post-colonial era, and there's still massive amounts of megacorporation-led neocolonialism in Africa, not ignoring all the Cold War dictatorships set up the USA and USSR, and there's a sense of, even now, their lacking in freedom and self-determination.

It's also freedom of identity that they seek. They want to be able to stand up and say 'I'm Yoruba' or 'I'm Nigerian' without having to state first that they are black, an identity which they have been made to occupy.

>>6752780
back to /pol/ please, /lit/ isn't a place for whiny white supremacists

>>6753079

That's still under the umbrage of Western culture. Go far out, read something that really pushes it. Like, something from a country where people descended from European are a minority.

>>6752892
I meant subsaharan africa obviously.

Egypt doesn't count. And no, the ancient egyptians were not black.

Anyone read the based Mahabharatha?

>>6752925
A single epic? And not even in written form to boot.

That's literally all the indigenous african literature there is?

Top kek.

>>6752613

hahaha you got me there. The only African authors I like are white South Africans or a certain Pied-Noir. I've read more African American books than African-African books. I've read books from lots of other areas though.

I find Africa a depressing place to think about. I was reading some clickbait article about atrocities and it was talking about Hutu vs Tutsi genocide in Burundi, and I thought it was a typo, I thought it meant Rwanda. But no, there was a horrific massacre in both countries. Darfur, The Derg, Liberia, Sierra Leone. What a mess.

>>6753135
Do you not understand what an example is? did you expect to see all African literature from the dawn of time posted there or what? I swear /lit/ has more idiots than /b/ sometimes.

>>6753079
>pimp
>honorable
*lures a 12-year-old into prostitution by pretending I love her*

>>6753129

>And no, the ancient egyptians were not black.

You're right, because the concept of 'black' and 'white' people has only existed since around the time of the Middle Ages. Before then, you were Castillian or Burgundian or Arab or Kievan or Igbo or Mongol. By modern racial standards, the people of Kemet would be difficult to classify, but they'd probably have looked like modern day Egyptians, just with a few physical characteristics that you might not expect. Many of these Nile Valley Egyptians mixed with Proto-Amazigh Libyans, people from the Levant, or Meroitic Nubians from the Upper Kingdom, the last of which I would imagine probably looked something like Anwar Sadat, whose father was an Upper Egyptian and whose mother was Sudanese.

Also, I do not know good your geography is, but Ethiopia and Eritrea (Ge'ez script, created 5th century BC), and Nigeria (Nsibidi, created pre 15th century AD) are all in Sub-Saharan Africa.

>tfw you run out of yams

Why does every movie about Africans end up feeling like the White Man's burden?

>>6752613
because it's our culture and we understand it. But this is african literture. Maybe it's easy, i mean they have no written culture.

>>6753105
damn, this actually made sense to me.

>>6753105
>they were deprived of cultural, political, social self-determinism for a couple of centuries and a couple of generations
You imply the tribal warlords and slavers gave them any in the first place. Almost all the "anti-colonial powers" that are venerated today were slavers and violent imperialists. There was still crippling poverty, still ethnic hated and cleansing, still famine etc. The difference is, in many areas, we left behind some semblance on infrastructure in order to construct rights-based structures for their societies. I do agree with your point on post-colonial intervention though, but there are just as many regimes that were started by Africans themselves that fed off the occidentalist anti-colonial rhetoric in order to seize power and do away with "Western values" such as democracy, human rights and secularism.

>>6753201
What's the yams?

>>6753201
>tfw your yamfufu will never love you back.

>>6753208
Kek

Realistically though, the white man's burden debate is crazy. Here you have people saying "how dare you think you have an obligation to help Africans, do you think you are better than them? fucking imperialist white supremacist" and then when shit goes down in Africa, for example the Rwandan genocide, the same people will rear their heads and exclaim "why aren't you helping these poor oppressed Africans? do you think you are better than them? fucking isolationist white supremacist"

>>6753223
THE YAM IS THE POWER THAT BE

ayyy

>>6752925
Congratulations, they've reached the level of civilization consistent roughly with Homer. Farther than I thought they'd gotten. Call me in 2000 years, when they're modern humans.

>>6753243
people who do that shit don't even care about the shit they get outraged about. They just like to get outraged because it makes them look superior, and anyone who calls their bullshit is automatically labelled a racist scumbag.

hate

>>6753243
Sorry for deleting it, I thought that maybe it wasn't appropriate for this board being film and all, but honestly, in every movie that selfless white Samaritan helps the poor black person who can't help themselves. Am I the only one who notices this trend? Look at that picture, look at that sniveling African child, don't worry, Gerald Butler will save him.

>>6753201
hang yourself, it's the only answer

>>6753216

>You imply the tribal warlords and slavers gave them any in the first place.

That's because the tribal warlords and slavers were far from dominant inland around the time of the start of the Atlantic slave trade. Instead, what were dominant were the big western empires like the Mali, the Songhai, the Akan, the Wolof and Kanem, as well as smaller rich western states like Benin and Ife, and further south the Bantu states of Kongo, Lunda, Luba, Bachwezi, Ndongo, Matamba and Great Zimbabwe, as well as Christian Ethiopia in the East, and the Swahili coastal states.
When kingdoms and states in Western Africa began trading prisoners of war and indentured servants who originated from other states, opposing states or tributary states they had absorbed (in the same way as the Romans would take slaves and servants from conquered nations) for guns with Europeans, they took themselves down a path where they became reliant on the Atlantic slave trade and a vicious cycle of trading more slaves to have more guns to declare more wars to capture more slaves to sell and have more guns came to be. Eventually, the Europeans simply began demanding slaves (they needed them to work on plantations in the new world - cotton, sugar cane) and threatening the states they had been trading with. By the 18th century, much of the coast of Western Africa had been forced into dependence upon the Atlantic slave trade

>There was still crippling poverty, still ethnic hated and cleansing, still famine etc

Oh no, please educate yourself on African history.

Africans spent thousands of years killing and enslaving each other, then some white men join in on the fun and suddenly everyone's up in arms about muh oppression.

Pathetic.

>>6753304
cultural appropriation

>>6753261

No, that was a long time ago, and fairly sophisticated a set of values and shared history for a group of cultures isolated from the Eurasian cultural interchange web by the Sahara desert, as opposed to Classical Greece, which developed right at the heart of it (in the overflow of the Fertile Crescent, trade and cultural interchange and renewal already occurring thanks to Phoenicia).

Their history was eventually interrupted by the spread of European power, but that's the way of the world.

>>6753304

please read this post >>6753288 and educated and love yourself <3

>>6753304
Dumbass.

>>6753318
That post just confirms what he said though

>>6753243
It's because shit like Kony 2012 achieves nothing.
Also France completely cucked the UN mission in Rwanda.

>>6752613
this is one of my favorite books OP and I actually post Achebe and Tutuola books often on this board. Just pay attention.

Any good pre-colonial stuff? Mythological texts, oral folktales, historical fiction set in pre-colonial times, etc

>>6753345

No it didn't because African slavery was mostly war captives, indentured slavery, debt bondage slavery, etc. etc. They were treated in a similar manner to how slaves in the Roman Empire would have, conventionally, been treated.

The slavery they lived in under Europeans was called chattel slavery which is a specific servitude relationship where the slave is treated as the property of the owner, more like livestock than a servant. They were dehumanised and reduced to their skin colour (negros/niggers/Zanj) by the Spanish, French, Portuguese, English and Arabs, and it was an entirely different experience than living in servitude in an African kingdom, where there was no racial element. Not that any white person today should be blamed for this, of course, please don't get me wrong.

>>6752613
nah

>>6753288
>namedropping muh black empires

Plenty of the ones you mention are nowhere near west Africa and sent their slaves east to the Muslim world. Even the huge african states people like to wank about were grim medieval shitholes on the level of pre-renaissance Europe. If you genuinely think they were some sort of prelapsarian paradise... I don't know what to tell you. That's whacked-out on a 'Cleopatra and Beethoven were black' level.

>>6753318
>please read this post >>6753288 and educated and love yourself <3
i liked the post you link but please, don't bring your tumblr-esque smugposting here

>>6753383
There's no line in the sand between chattel slavery and Roman-style slavery, serfdom, etc. - it's all on a spectrum depending on local law and customs, from the Belgian Congo to Ottoman viziers. I'd rather have been a chattel slave in the antebellum South than a war captive type slave of the Zulus, for instance.

>>6753383
>They were treated in a similar manner to how slaves in the Roman Empire would have, conventionally, been treated

Chattel slavery was also present in the Roman empire, yes you could be an educated greek slave working as a teacher on a patrician's household, or you could be a dirty farmhand or miner toiling your life away.

Look, I don't know where you are getting your information from, but to say that it wasn't present in Africa or that slavery there lacked a dehumanizing/racist element is a pretty bold claim

>>6752613
>people consider Africa to be sub-saharan africa and think they are all from the same civilization/culture

Why so ignorant, /lit/?

>>6752620
It seems like to pretend a race's literature is good is a pretty shitty way to take pity on them.

>>6753465
>africa
>one race
good one nigga
The whole "black" or "african" race is a meme just like the "white" race is.

>>6753465
How do you know it isn't good?

>>6753116
Like the Vedas or something? All modern literature is under the influence of Western culture. All modern life is.

>>6752792
Why read irrelevant books when one has not finished the canon?

>>6752654
>and Spanish lit as well
>implying Spain is in Europe
>implying I'm not German

>>6752613
I recently ordered a used copy of Things Fall Apart, but the post service is on strike in my country. There, I'm not eurocentric, now fuck off.

>>6753354
Read Golden Bough.
Legit best compilation of African tales.

But it comes from Frazer, a dangerous White imperialist racist CIS male, so it's ironically banned in Academia. Add to that the fact that Frazer was an evolutionist opposed to Boas and you trigger half the humanities departments.

i read Things Fall Apart and liked the story as the parable it was. But apart from that the writing style and book felt overwhelmingly ooga booga to me
>there will never be anything remotely patrician from the black continent

>>6754026
The Season of Migration to The North is another very good African novel.

Also, if you're going to say nothing patrician has ever come out of Africa, I see you're late to North African or South African lit (based Coetzee).

>>6754089
Fair enough! I will read The Season of Migration to The North and Disgrace. Thanks

>>6753099
>Literary "phases"
Pleb

Also this thread is really spooky.jpg and so forth

>>6752613
>people prefer some books
>it's clearly a question of racism and not quality or relevance

'kay

>>6753973

>every book not on bloom's list is "irrelevant"

Is that so?

>>6754126
who is his semen demon

>>6754126
That's an elephant

>>6752613
I am of European decent ( ._.)
Not "only" either.

>>6754170
Raisin smuggler #2

>>6752613
People tend to read more around their own culture, as familiarity etc.

I'd be interested in reading books from other cultures, however I never know where to start and often the resources aren't as available online

>>6754685
who is this butterface butterfly

>>6754685
Do lesbians find nipples also at seeable like that throughy the shirt hot?

>>6754717

>>6754126
It wouldn't be racist if you didn't automatically assume non-eurocentric to be of low quality.

>>6754748
god dykes are annoying

>>6756011
But you are racist towards whites by claiming black/asian/whatever books are better than european books. Oops.

>>6756011
And even if you were right in your assertion the onus of proof lies on you as european literature is what the mainstream considers "best literature" ATLEAST in europe but also perhaps in asia or africa.

Quite frankly isn't it just natural to assume "best literature" is european as that is the point held by much of the world? Does that neccessarily mean he's racist? Even if he is racist, how is that even an argument. Only stupid people use that word.

Eurocentricity is a social construct.

>>6754170
>>6754695
her name is Ketik Novoselova

she is on VK (russian facebook)

i read jap shit as well

>>6756106
and the whole thread is ridiculous as lit actually read other shit than european stuff. there are constantly threads about buddhism, african books etc here. Not as much as european stuff but that's only natural i would assume seeing as mostly europeans frequent this board.

You seem kinda racist toward whites though. What a horrible being you are. Boo!

>>6756207
weaboos out

From the top of my head (because I can't seem to find the image and the wiki a shit)
>Infintie Jest (and all of DFW's work)
>the Grapes of Wrath
>American Psycho
>Great Gatsby
are all popular books on here and are completely Americocentric.

>>6753261
There are some pretty crazy old ruins in sub-saharan Africa with no solid and accepted explanation.

I think there's probably a lot about the continent that we simply don't(and may never) know.

>>6753393
I study African history at a pretty good university(Call me a cuck idgaf) and this is pretty accurate.

Africa during the European high medieval era was arguably going through similar cultural changes that Europe went through during the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity. That is to say, a rise of a cavalry riding elite and the blending of native paganisms with foreign Abrahamic doctrines.

There was also a fair amount of wealth in them so lets not disregard that. Europe, from what both me and who I quoted described as grim medieval, went on to be a major player in world politics and even be a center of world civilisation for a good several hundred years.

I'm not about to say that African Polities were gonna colonise America(Though there's evidence they tried) and go on to rule the world, but there's definitely scope for speculation that maybe there would have been a more prosperous early modern era for Africa without two massive slave trades relying solely on them for product.

>>6757046
cuck

>>6757046
cuck

>>6752620

Beautifully put. I like you.

>>6752613
>how come an imageboard that is based in America and who's visitors are almost exclusively American, Canadian, or Western European focuses on Eurocentric books?

>>6752763

>Yea, but when people say "eurocentric" they mean white.

>>6752613
But we don't. We also read American-centric books.

>>6752613
i just don't give a fuck

>>6752763
>Portuguese
>not white

This is why we can't discuss race with Americans around.

>>6752770
It's an Afrocentric take on a problem that includes European involvement.

A lot of 4chan stupidity stems from a willingness to overuse terms in a sloppy and excessively vague way.

>>6757046
>I study African history at a pretty good university

whats your tldr real talk conclusions on African history?

>>6757471
they are not. Irish are barely white

>>6753099

>no De Maistre

Ya dun goofed.

>>6757491
>4chan in charge of getting races right

My point exactly. This place sucks even at applying memes.

>>6757525
fuck off retard.

White is not a big inclusive party. Sorry you are some as blasted shit skin who will never be white. Get over it.

The original point still stands that people who complain about "eurocentric" thought are not complaining about shit tier euro countries like poortogayl

>>6757484
Why can blacks never define themselves without bitching about white/European culture? What famous African-American literature isn't built on the premise of big bad whitey?

>>6757550
Post-colonial thinkers are more obcessed with Eurocentrism than those who read European work exclusively

>>6757550

This, it's so boring

It's either

>we wuz scientists and philosophers and kingz until da bad whities blew up our spaceships and stole our technology

Or

>muh African heritage I don't know that much about
>muh legacy of colonialism
>muh peaceful paradise before da evil whites came

It's stupefyingly boring

>>6756106
"Best literature" or even "European literature" are umbrellas terms for people who don't want to bother thinking. There are thousands of books worth reading that were written in Europe, and dozens of thousand more that are trash (and what is good and what is trash will depend on who you ask). The question of wether this whole huge pile of trash books and good books is better than that other pile of books is a comlpete waste of time, and people who dedicate time to those questions are simply pissing their lives away (and no, Bloom isn't included in that groups since he talks about specific books he has read).

Read, comment on what you read, sometimes seek something different from what you read for comparison, that's it.

The "lots of people think it's better" argument is self-defeating, by that account the Hunger Games will soon become the number 1 masterpiece in literature history. The "lots of people who know what they're talking about think it's better" argument is circular since it relies on you deciding who is an expert and who isn't.

Let's stop this embarrassing debate and go back to the real stuff, ie book recs.

>>6757535
Ah, my old favorite. The 4chan trick of making assumptions about a poster so that you don't have to actually answer to him.

I live in Northwest Europe (not Ireland) and am whiter than 70% of the natives there, so no white envy on my part. I was just saying, race these days is an overblown meme, and a good deal of 4chan cannot even get this meme right. Case in point: calling Portugueses non-whites, which would be like calling a Texan KKK leader a Peruvian.


Also, no, your point doesn't stand, people who complain over the internet are generally stupid and undereducated or extremely biaised, hence why they tend to ignore whole countries and assimilate whole continents with a couple nationalities. It has nothing to do with Portugual being shit or not (which it is, but again, besides the point).

Because we speak English you faggot.

How come you only use medicals and treatments invented by Europeans and Americans?

Or do you go looking for some yellow frog saliva to put on your skin when you have skin cancer or some other shit traditional primitive 'medicine'?

Get real, little shit, almost everything that's worthwhile was invented by European men.

>>6757687
Also Achebe's book is highly eurocentric, because the novel is a form invented by an European white man (Cervantes and his other spaniard/portuguese predecessors) and the printing industry was also invented by a white man.

In order to avoid Eurocentrism, you should go to African jungle and listen to a live nigger retelling his tales, and not read an intrinsically eurocentrical object like a printed book.

>>6757696
kek

>>6752613
It's a European world, you just live in it.

>>6752613

I LITERALLY bullshitted my was through pretending to read this book my freshman year of ART SCHOOL.

>>6756203
>Ketik Novoselova
>>6756028

>>6752613
That's not really true. Most of what this board discusses is very Eurocentric (we are an English speaking board) but tbh there's plenty of love for eastern philosophy and novels.

>>6752613
Because I only know European languages

that said, I like some of the English fiction out of India

>>6757046
>with a stick and a bowl

>>6757741
>Russia
>Europe

>>6758576
This place is just /pol with books. It becomes more obvious every day.

>>6758591
Then make a like a cuck and fuck off back to your cuckshed

>>6757625

Portuguese people are Hispanic. To be white you have to be from northern or western Europe. Everyone else is a wog pretty much. I think the Irish are white but are culturally/historically wogs. French are borderline wogs. Fuck there are Iranians that look more white than Portugal/Spain/Italy/Wogland.

>>6752620
I'd punch your pierced, smug hipster face in if I ever saw you irl

no homo

>>6752613

this book is mediocre, it's insulting to the author that it is held in high regard, like people amuse by a monkey dancing to an organ.

>>6752763

this is true let's be honest when they say eurocentric they mean english.

>>6752964
>Nigerian values

lol u mean bribing and stealing everything? Why are Nigerians known as criminals all over Africa and the world in general?

I think you have some bigger things to worry about before your lit.

>>6753152

JM Coetzee is the best African author.

>>6753251

I can smell you coming down the street.

>>6757696

Lol'ed

Who could have predicted that this thread would be shit?

>>6757000
Stop it Tyrese.
The African "civilisations" were situated where Arabs bought slaves

>>6757741
This is why I have that YAMATO SPIRIT


NIPPON BANZAIIIIIIIIIIII

Latin American lit is whats up.

>>6758720
Since at least 2013, /lit/ has been about as stupid as /r/books.

>>6752639
Why are you posting pictures of the kid from R.E.M's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" music video?

>>6758652
There is a pretty hilarious anecdote of Nigerian soccer announcers calling a game that spend the entire second half seriously speculating as to how much bribe money was spent on the match

>>6752613
>how come /lit/ only reads Eurocentric books?

Because books written by black 'people' are primitive, like any other kind of 'art' produced by that cursed race of darkness.

I cannot identify with any of the garbage they produce. They have no literary tradition, and thus any written work they produce within a contemporary context can never hold the title of literature.

>>6758620
>Americans thinking the people in Spain and Portugal look like their shitskin mexicans
>Doesn't know true Persians are whites and the original aryans
This is what happens when a country's primary source of education comes through a happy meal leaflet.

>>6752613
Someone's got to counteract all the SJWs.

>>6759044
>Someone's got to counteract all the SJWs.

I'm surprised the SJW have not organized public book burnings of problematic white male writers like Hemingway and Conrad.

>>6752613
Because, quite frankly, I don't care. I tried reading some non-Eurocentric books out of curiosity, but Asian books were usually too weird for me (and not in a good sense of that word like Kafka, for example) while African books were downright disappointing. Little to no literary value in my opinion.

Besides, I am European. Of course I'm going to focus on books that are culturally close to me. I understand them and I love them. What's so strange about it?

>>6759053
They only read YA, so they're not aware of all the 'problematic' content (yet).

>>6759057
I wouldn't be so sure of that. I didn't screencap it because it was too stupid and my brain couldn't handle it, but I saw some tumblr post telling people they shouldn't feel bad for not liking classic literature because it was all written by straight white men and that's the only reason it was considered good.

>>6759054
>What's so strange about it?

You're supposed to hate and revile your own culture you evil white man.

Don't you know that these black people who can barely string together a coherent paragraph are so much more relevant than you are?

You need to learn that you are on the way out, and these beautiful black people who are so much smarter than you are on the way in.

>>6759062
Stop oppressing me by assuming I'm white, you shitlord. I'm actually Slav and every stormweenie knows we aren't white, so shut your privileged mouth. Really, erasing existence of oppressed people is the only thing you're good at.

>>6752613
I read this book for IB English. Shit was pretty cash. I got 27/30 for my IOP about this book.

>>6758620
Have you ever gone to these places, American? Your ignorance is showing

>>6757696
>>6757687
lol fucking rekt

>>6757741
>take Shanghai
>China is green now
shit Piotr, we need more jerkoff.

>>6759053
They have, in England they turned on a Trotskyite party for internally covering up a rape accusation of one of its members. Now SJW's attacks their stalls and burn their literature whenever they can, its hilarious

>>6760372
>in England they turned on a Trotskyite party for internally covering up a rape accusation of one of its members.


Holy fuck that's awesome. I love hearing about leftists tearing each other apart.

I always knew that they would eventually start burning the 'paper witch' at the altar of their pseudo-religion but I never imagined them burning their fellow commies works. I was looking forward to the delicious irony of them acting like Nazi's and burning copies of Being and Time or some other works by 'nazis'.

Do you have sauces?

>>6757471
>implying I'm white

>>6752763
>implying Africa doesn't begin at the Pyrenees

>>6752991
The Earth would become uninhabitable anyway. Our technological development just needs to outpace the sun's aging.

>>6753465
You haven't even read the book, your knee jerk reaction is just LOL NIGGERS. Fuck off back to /pol/.

>>6761767
mein nigga