Lefties 9: This will succeed through its success

You're wanking on the wrong thread ...

Hadn't thought about that at all, Eleison. Good point. And it does seem to fit, neatly, with irony, too, for some reason.

"The poor, to be worthy objects of state support, must live lives of straitening and squalor, with as little joy as possible, that evoke our compassion."

And back to politics. My bf reckons that in this visual age, the Left should choose someone who looks good versus DC. , a visual representation of difference. ie Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper. Not a Milliband - they're too similar.

(That has an enthymeme hidden in it somewhere, re. visual culture, I suspect.)

Just one more apologetic remark. Animula, it is interesting that you see enythmeme as a negative, though. My first thought of it (when I discovered it just now) was as a positive, socratic thing - leaving readers/hearers to work to a conclusion themselves. The P&P statement is enthymimetic not only in the sense that you mention, but also in the further sense that, by laying the commonly held belief out so explicitly and without comment, it allows readers to draw their own conclusion about the absurdity od a belief that they had (some of them) formerly held implicitly.

@ Venn diagram.

Only kidding, Eleison (and Onebat) - I thought it was a great addition - not a hi-jack (just imo). It's a great word, too.

Back to politics. The Labour Leadership Venn Diagram

All fascinating stuff, and I love the appeal to enthymeme to start to unpack that fantastic P&P statement. But I'm afraid I've been horribly hijacky so will back off now.

Sozza.

Onebat and Eleison -- off to the wankers thread with you. I'm holding the pair of you responsible if this thread veers off-course!

Eleison - I took enthymeme to point to those "commonly held truths" ("It is a fact universally acknowledged to be true that a single man in possession of a good fortune is in want of a wife", as a famous example), that people base arguments on. And they don't bother arguing the premiss, because they are so sure that everyone agrees.

Except they don't. they're usually quite questionable premisses.

Mn - and internet - is a place where many people come together. As such, it has the potential for lots of people to concur on these "commonly-held beliefs", to reinforce them, even to generate new ones.

But, it also has the potential, because so many people gather together, brought together by an interest that isn't the object under discussion, for others to interject, and puncture the implied unanimity of the "commonly held belief".

i think ... .

Or perhaps the indea is that internet discourse is full of bottom-of-hierarchy types who don't know any better than to assert partial premises or think their point is made without formal appeal to a conclusion.

"Enthymeme" is alarmingly addictive as a word, isn't it? I see it's potential as an infuriatingly withering put-down - made more irritating by its capacity to operate as a sort of verbal Masonic hand-shake owing to its origin in a less-frequented corner of the mn-universe. It has "clique-word" potential. And also immediately is one of those "how did I live without it words.

Well done, eleison.

I'm still trying to understand the thing about enthymeme in internet discourse. Why is the internet a good place for enthymeme? How does personal equate to virtual? And most interestingly, is it in the combined discourse, rather than individual statements, that the enthymeme lies - i.e. is the 'accretion of veracity' in a multiduce of posts the location of the implicit conclusion?

For another thread, though, sorry.

x post

Oh vg, animula

I wonder whether MN is a formally or less formally hierarchical information-space? It certainly tends towards the enthymimetic, discourse-wise

Oh splendid. I love 'accreting veracity', that is a wonderful phrase.

Or

"Ffs, This whole argument about your dolee neighbour's plasma screen is based on a f**ing enthymeme."

Eleison - My offering:

"It is an open question as to whether the less formally hierarchical information-spaces generated on the internet will produce greater or fewer enthymimetic discourses. On the one hand, there is, clearly, the tendency for a gathering together of enthymeme-type statements, possibly "corroborated" with reference to personal (that is "virtual" in this context) experience. One may observe that these statements gain adherents, and "snowball", accreting veracity by sheer force of numbers. On the other, the internet makes available the insertion of easily reached, statistic-based "evidence", whose effect is often deflationary."

Sorry that was me accidentally in disguise. Not numbers.

Don't anyone try to google ehthymeme. It is a typo. Shd be enthymeme. Prize to anyone who can work it casually into a post.

eleison. Whatever you do, don't look up apocalypse, or conflagration or anything like that.

Love your blog onebat.

It is wanking of the best sort elevated to dizzying heights, and very funny.

And it is truly the mark of a wanker to use them Eleison Sorry about the collapse of the library.

I just created hideous domino effect when I pulled out a book to look up catastasis. Books fell, heavy slate souvenir-of-wales bookend fell, knocking over souvenir-of-spain guitar.

I always have to look up words like catastasis and ehthymeme and what-have-you. Lit analysis seems to reify every move a dramatist can possibly make. It multiplies nouns like those Victorians who invented collective nouns for every possible collection.