Glen - Excellent self-examination of your meaning of effigification and effigy. I like the point of "reflective" models. It actually carries some of the qualities in my version of "straw man" which is *deliberately* weak, not so it can be torn down easily, but so nobody is offended if it gets radically reconfigured, in fact the author is naturally rooting for it being replaced/plated over with something more better. I sense that when people speak in pre-emptively self-deprecating ways... offering up their faults en-caricature so that others will either accept those faults as acknowledged or even argue against their sharpest edges on their behalf. "oh no, no, no, you are not THAT bad!".
I do think the business of caricature in cartoons is useful in this way... both to make fun of (through caricature) "inconsequential things" (say like Obama's ears or his hesitant/measured style of speech" and to point at more important features but in a way that allows some plausable deniability to the caricaturist and the caricatured. I think this is part of the point you make about Hebdo, et al. Unfortunately, one culture's "inconsequential" may be "fighting words" to another.... I for example don't think I can even *guess* what the British Royal Family is hyper-sensitive to (even though I did watch "The Crown") or more aptly, what commoners like Diana or Meghan might be sensitive to (not just words but treatment) coming *from* the Royal Family. - Steve On 4/9/21 8:16 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: > Yes, I definitely consider them effigies. But I don't focus on the antipathy > so much as some sort of canon or prototype. You can do with it what you will > once you have that analog. > > People often have a problem separating their *self* from their arguments. All > the lip service we give to avoiding ad hominem gets completely lost almost > all the time. If you make the same argument a thousand times, you begin to > identify with it. So even if someone attacks the argument in a reasonable > way, the person who made it feels attacked. > > Effigies help, especially political and religious ones. We see this most > interestingly in video playbacks of athletes and horribly with body > dysmorphia. If your coach burns you down with "You're soft! You need to be > more aggressive!", it's difficult to depersonalize that criticism. But if she > shows you your effigy and burns *that* down instead, then it allows you to > think more objectively about your behavior and how it might be improved. > > Effigies are not merely models. They're reflective models. When GW Bush > watches his effigy > <https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-burn-an-effigy-of-us-president-george-w-bush-news-photo/80440447>, > he should be *comforted* that they're not burning *him* down. But with the > act, he has the opportunity to not be offended and to tease apart what he > symbolizes. The same would be true of blasphemous images of Mohommed or > Meghan Markle > <https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/14/europe/charlie-hebdo-meghan-intl-scli-gbr/index.html>. > > It's useful to ask oneself how you'd feel if a group of people got together > to burn your effigy? Would you react with fear? Anger? Accuse them of being > stupid savages? Or perhaps wonder if you've done something seriously > criticizable but provided the criticizers no refined way of criticizing? > > > On 4/8/21 11:04 AM, Steve Smith wrote: >> uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: >> >> But (mildly?)_ obscured (to me) is whether you consider the >> straw<->steel man continuum to in fact be *effigies*? >> >> My connotation of "effigy" includes the business implied by "to burn in >> effigy" which in fact *does* apply well to the more flammable end of the >> spectrum (i.e. straw), but I don't know if you intend that aspect. >> Straw-Steel men *are* models, and perhaps caricatures in some sense. >> >> I'm not deliberately splitting hairs to undermine your argument, but >> rather to understand more better what all might be implied by your use >> of the straw-steel idiom. I'm late to the party, having only recently >> (months) let go of my archaic mapping which was roughly opposite >> yours... in that "straw-good because it is designed to be discardable or >> an armature to plaster over into a more elaborate model" vs "steel-bad >> because it likely represents premature binding". > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
