1. works are ranked according to three criteria: standard, salience and style:
is both the interdisciplinary and comparative positioning of the text relative to works similar to its nature, but also its expected accomplishment and influence. as an intolerable and almost offensive criterium, in my reviews, standard as a form of evaluation is considered only sparsely, or at the very least, under-considered. its importance isnt as a dogmatic metric for consistency, but falls more in line towards a discussion within the discipline that considers our own motives over the motives of the global audience.
is the most subjective metric of the three, which refers to my personal level of enjoyment and pleasure during the actual reading experience. as such, it sits as its own category precisely because on an intuitive level it gives us a unique phenomenological window into the affective states our works produce, which also exposes some usually subconscious and repressed evaluations that have been seemingly socially disregarded in certain critical approaches, but that usually attempt to surface as somehow engrained in a sense of rationality, which is naturally a very dishonest perspective on the side of criticism.
refers to most of the structural build and flow of the text itself in its written form, including, as a secondary criterium, most of the actual substance of the text and its integrated components (concept, narrative, theme, flow, density, lexicality, glossary, approach). style as such is exclusively a subjective preference in my view, and as such is at best simply an evaluative metric which i use to contextualize and study my own theoretical preferences, rather than to hate on the style of the text itself, which is interdisciplinarily pointless and politically costly. the reason that style is both form and substance is because i believe these two categories have reached an almost total collapse in todays literary landscape, for better or worse. in a sense, all written text is regurgitated, and stylistically self-confirming, where works rarely break away from this aspect.
2. scoring
there is no scoring criteria. the final score remains entirely unquantifiable and a product of only my innermost positionings, which is actually precisely the only thing that gives my final score any type of life at all. this doesnt mean it is irrationally decided, there are naturally plenty of reasons i decide on one score over another, but they may be strategic, political or performative, or my criteria could wildly shift between any two rankings. it is also very likely that the very concept of a grade as i present it is just decided on a whim and has no deeper calculated properties. this is done intentionally, if it were up to me i would simply be evaluating style, but audiences look towards reviews to get an edge on things and reconsider their position on a text as a cultural artifact rather than to see me attempt to “objectively” evaluate something. unfortunately because of the nature of how reviews work, my grade is about half the reason
3. standard
standard criteria is contextually expanded on based on my own level of experience rather than on hierarchical or objective metrics. i simply evoke comparative reference points and choose where to situate a text myself, that land as (under, situated, over) irt. the standard line. it usually doesnt have a large impact on the score but is still important to clarify because it shows probably the largest amount of usually left out bias in any single reviewers final rankings, given that comparative analysis is subconsciously imbued in any evaluation.
4. salience
mood a: i’m forcing myself to read this even though i’m apparently supposed to be enjoying it
mood b: this is fun and easy to read but honestly i kind of feel it pathetic and below me
mood c: reading this made me want to do bad things to myself the whole time basically
mood d: i had to ask chatgpt to read it back to me because i felt that most of it was useless to my reading experience
mood e: i got through this at a decent pace but it literally made me feel nothing but light dread
mood f: the extremely rare actual goosebumps and thrill when reading a text experience
5. axes
the criterial axes for cultural research are as follows:
delineation → does the text even know its terrain and boundaries?
embedding → is the text able to handle data and empirics without drowning in them?
continuity → does the text have descriptive integrity in its referential or ethnographic sequencing?
association → are references woven into arguments or do they sit apart from the actual stakes?
framing → framing is seen as being relevant to your own intentions, where meandering is seen as getting out of your own imposed limit.
the criterial axes for theoretical work are as follows:
novelty → are the newly introduced concepts, operators and problems, if even any, actually or just semantically fresh?
scaffolding → is there internal return-looping or conceptual recursion? the backbone of theology’s influence on speculation as a genre
narrative → how is the conceptual movement and story as it unfolds and its level of consistency?
compression → conceptual load to textual volume is about subtle key dynamics that cause intentional oversaturation, density is about sitting neatly between everything, not standing above the text.
polemic → functionally, a polemic isnt a style but the total gathered amount of imbedded and energetically intense encounters with the discourse at hand.
6. style
cultural research
drift (⸮)
delineation: weak
embedding: neutral
continuity: weak
association: strong
framing: neutral
shear (ˎˊ˗)
delineation: neutral
embedding: weak
continuity: neutral
association: neutral
framing: strong
segment (∴)
delineation: strong
embedding: neutral
continuity: weak
association: strong
framing: neutral
oscillation (∿)
delineation: neutral
embedding: strong
continuity: neutral
association: weak
framing: strong
anchor (⊶)
delineation: strong
embedding: strong
continuity: neutral
association: weak
framing: neutral
reciprocity (⇌)
delineation: neutral
embedding: strong
continuity: strong
association: neutral
framing: weak
theoretical work
spark (✶)
novelty: strong
scaffolding: weak
narrative: strong
compression: neutral
polemics: weak
pressure (⟡)
novelty: strong
scaffolding: strong
narrative: neutral
compression: weak
polemics: neutral
axis (☉)
novelty: neutral
scaffolding: weak
narrative: strong
compression: strong
polemics: neutral
loop (∞)
novelty: neutral
scaffolding: strong
narrative: strong
compression: weak
polemics: neutral
break (⧉)
novelty: strong
scaffolding: neutral
narrative: neutral
compression: strong
polemics: weak
torsion (⟁)
novelty: neutral
scaffolding: weak
narrative: neutral
compression: strong
polemics: strong
7. categorization
additionally, for synkar and as it may be known and displayed elsewhere, all works get one of five review precedents: pure theory, quality theory, quality research, disavowal or stock. all works are divided strictly along a theoretical vs. cultural axis, theoretical thinkers are divided according to the unholy trinity: figure, person and ghost (avatar/simular), publishers to geneological/historical archetypes: cathedral, bastion, lattice, crypt and forge, but furthermore, thematic domains themselves are divided according to corresponding flavors that attempt to capture theoretical thematicity slightly more accurately than self-pronounced ideologies or identifications on the side of writers, by focusing on the layered cultural pronouncements in the language itself under which the concepts actually remain in the theory. this also allows for accurate identification with the conceptual domain without accidentally entering dogmatic grounds (over-identification of the susbtance which prevents an awareness of the cultural dichotomy and aesthetic direction behind the text as such)
furthermore, works are also usually ranked according to an additional set:
the examples are split by fiction/non-fiction standards, some of it may or may not be categorical ragebait so watch out:
medieval → hierarchical cosmology, sacramental symbolism, scholastic formalism, ritual temporalities, angelology–demonology, providential causality.
most obvious examples: thomas aquinas, summa theologiae / dante, paradiso
gothic → ruination, obscurity gradients, architectural excess, spectral persistence, abjected bodies, temporal recursion, negative sublimity.
most obvious examples: georges bataille, inner experience / ann radcliffe, the mysteries of udolpho
baroque → ornamental overload, perspectival instability, metaphysical convolution, performative excess, fold-structures, intensity modulation.
most obvious examples: leibniz, monadology / gilles deleuze, the fold
romantic → infinite aspiration, nature-personification, sublime thresholds, interiority inflation, mythopoetic drift, ecstatic negation.
most obvious examples: friedrich schelling, system of transcendental idealism / novalis, hymnen an die nacht
industrial → mechanical rhythmics, standardized temporality, machinic causation, infrastructural determinacy, impersonal scale.
most obvious examples: sigfried giedion, mechanization takes command / marx, capital vol. 1
cybernetic → feedback loops, signal/noise dialectics, control gradients, recursive computation, distributed agency, interface ontology.
most obvious examples: stafford beer, brain of the firm / wiener, cybernetics: or control and communication
neon → hyperillumination, simulation layers, synthetic atmospheres, speed compression, volatility, luminous materiality.
most obvious examples: paul virilio, the aesthetics of disappearance / william gibson, neuromancer
haunted → parasitic memory, unresolved residue, temporal leakage, revenant logic, traumatic repetition.
most obvious examples: freud, das unheimliche / mark fisher - the weird and the eerie
arcane → hidden correspondences, symbolic overdetermination, esoteric semiotics, cryptic causality, ritualized cognition.
most obvious examples: walter benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama / elim. levi, dogme et rituel de la haute magie
pastoral → harmonic minimal-complexity, cyclical temporality, ecological attunement, low-entropy imaginaries.
most obvious examples: martin heidegger, the origin of the work of art / virgil, eclogues
ruined → post-technological strata, archaeological inversion, slow decay, speculative sedimentation.
most obvious examples: reza negarestani, cyclonopedia / j. g. ballard, the drowned world
mineral → underworld cartographies, subterraninaism, enclosed acoustics, pressure ecologies, non-surface temporality.
most obvious examples: félix guattari, chaosmosis / alarsón-barker, the tunnel
oceanic → fluid ontology, continuous gradients, dissolution motifs, depth–pressure.
most obvious examples: thomas nail - lucretius one / rachel carson, the sea around us