Interview: Jane Gordon and Drucilla Cornell on Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg — Epistemic Unruliness 36

This episode, Rachel and John have the honor and pleasure of interviewing Dr. Jane Anna Gordon and Dr. Drucilla Cornell about their new edited volume, Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg. Part of the Creolizing the Canon series, this volume examines the political economy and political philosophies of Polish Marxist thinker and revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, from her work on imperialism and the expanded reproduction of capital, to the violence of fascism, and her theory of primitive accumulation. The volume also considers her reception across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, asking how her work can be expanded and applied in contemporary revolutionary politics.

As you have may have guessed from our podcast series on Luxemburg and our episode on Geraldine Heng, Rachel, Sid, and John have a chapter in the volume! We rethink primitive accumulation as a concept for theories of racial capitalism. For more about the book, check out the book panel from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung’s Rosa Luxemburg at 150: Revisiting Her Radical Life and Legacy conference from March 2021.

We begin by asking Gordon and Cornell about the concept of “creolization” and its relevance for the work of Luxemburg. Next we turn to ask about racism and capitalism, about social reproduction and Marxist feminism, and about how Rosa’s work points us to the co-constitutive nature of racism, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism. Finally, we ask what Rosa would think about theories of neoliberalism and contemporary forms of imperialism. Join us for this rich discussion of the creolized Rosa Luxemburg’s socialist horizons.

Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes or Spotify. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Patreon here. Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, “Post Digital,” from their album FutureCommons; always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here

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Interview: Eric Bayruns García on Race and Epistemic Injustice — Epistemic Unruliness 35

In this episode, Emily and Rachel talk with the inimitable Eric Bayruns García, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Cal State San Bernardino, about two recent articles. Specializing in philosophy of race, epistemology, and Latin American philosophy, Bayruns García’s writing and teaching addresses racial injustice, colonialism, and epistemologies of ignorance, among other topics. In this episode we discuss two recent articles, “How Racial Injustice Affects News-Based Inferences,” in Episteme, and “Expression-Style Exclusion,” in Social Epistemology. We begin by discussing Bayruns García’s motivation for both articles and the research out of which they arise. Next, we delve into the difference between knowledge and understanding, and the implications of considering expression-style exclusion for the neoliberal university. We conclude by hearing Bayruns García’s thoughts about the stakes and implications of both pieces for radical politics and transformation. Tune in for this awesome conversation between giddily reuniting CUNY alums!

Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Patreon here. Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, “Post Digital,” from their album FutureCommons; always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

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Ep. 69 – Dorfman and Mattleart on Disney and Imperialism

In this episode, Emily, James, and John enter the Worrisome World-Making of Disney (™) via How to Read Donald Duck, a 1971 Chilean Marxist critique of the American imperial-capitalist project of Disney, republished in 2018. Our trio approaches the book in form and content, and they discuss its social opposition through state censorship — whether as literal book-burning under the Pinochet regime or the banal violence of copyright infringement litigation in the United States — as well as praise the clarity of its cultural studies analysis of the Donald Duck comic strip (1938-1995). The comic, let us remind you, depicted the bourgeois imaginaries of the ne’er-do-well Donald Duck; his miserly ol’ Uncle Scrooge McDuck; everyone’s pal Daisy; our favorite triplets Huey, Dewey, and Louis; and all the aspiring burghers of Duckburg…and the realms beyond.
Does the “fantasia” and “magic of Disney” truly serve to mystify the processes of primitive accumulation? Is Scrooge McDuck’s Monroe-Doctrine, Robber-baron aesthetic the farcical return of Hobbes’ Leviathan? What might the fetishization of gold teach children about the value of labor? Why are there only uncles and aunts in Duckburg? What happened to production, reproduction, labor, class, and social antagonism? What does Donald Duck make invisible, and what does it seek to make natural? Is Donald Trump Scrooge? Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe the bourgeois ideology machine of our time?
Bonus: Find out why you should be simultaneously terrified of the acronym E.P.C.O.T. and grateful Walt Disney’s delusions of grandeur sank right back into the swampy Florida glades from which they sprung. Double bonus: critical mallard studies.
Always Already Medici Club patron Jason H requested we discuss this book, thank you Jason! Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Patreon here. Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, “Post Digital,” from their album FutureCommons; always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

 

 

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Cover of How to Read Donald Duck

Ep. 68 – W.E.B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

Join Emily, B, Sid, and John for a classic AAP text discussion, this time featuring W.E.B. Du Bois’s Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil. Our discussion begins (perhaps unsurprisingly!) with knowledge, education, and epistemology, and spans Du Bois’s analysis of racial capitalism, his materialism, aesthetics, canonization as a political theorist, and more. We interrogate Du Bois as a democratic theorist in his own right, analyze his (maybe) humanism and (maybe) universalism, and ask, what does it mean to read DuBois as a prescient diagnostician of our own political moment (and who is the revolutionary subject?)? While we barely scratch the surface of all this book has to offer (what of “work,” whiteness, poetics, and proto-feminism in this text?!), we welcome you to join us for the close reading, and stay for the water puns!

Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Patreon here. Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, “Post Digital,” from their album FutureCommons; always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

 

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Black and white photograph of Du Bois, looking at the camera

W.E.B. Du Bois in 1918; from WikiMedia Commons

 

Blue-on-blue cover of Darkwater

First edition of Darkwater; from WikiMedia Commons

Interview: Jessica Blatt on Race and the Making of American Political Science — Epistemic Unruliness 34

In this episode, John welcomes Jessica Blatt, Associate Professor of Political Science at Marymount Manhattan College, for a conversation about her 2018 book Race and the Making of American Political Science. What was political science’s role in shaping a de-radicalizing ‘race relations’ paradigm? How did the early discipline of political science turned to categories of ‘race’ in a bid for foundation funding and claims to scientific knowledge? What are the pedagogical implications for political scientists today of the book and of this genealogy of racism in the discipline? Tune in to explore these and other questions about a sometimes (read: frequently) ahistorical and not particularly self-reflective discipline).

Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Patreon here. Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music from their album FutureCommons; always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

 

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