Interview: Breea Willingham on Incarceration, Higher Ed, and Abolition – Epistemic Unruliness 37

In this episode, John is joined by his colleague, Dr. Breea Willingham, to discuss her multiple forms of work on higher education in prisons, both within and without academia. Their conversation about the new Journal of Higher Education in Prison, the Jamii Sisterhood, the States of Incarceration Project, and being a Black woman abolitionist in the discipline of Criminal Justice raises several pressing questions: how does one define an academic field that seeks to abolish the need for that very field? How do Black women scholars enact political practices between academic institutions that reject them and carceral systems that would capture them? What is abolitionist pedagogy at a rural PWI in a county and region structured by their carceral warehousing of Black and Brown people? How are Black women made hyper (in)visible by academia and by American society? Listen in as we engage these and related issues.

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.

Links:

• Dr. Breea Willingham on twitter and at the Jamii Sisterhood
• Volume I, Issue 1 of the Journal of Higher Education in Prison
• The Jamii Sisterhood on facebook, including the announcement of their Spring 2022 symposium
• SUNY Plattsburgh’s contribution to States of Incarceration, “Cuffs to Classroom: College in Prison — How Can Higher Education Redefine Mass Incarceration in New York’s North Country“; Mountain Lake PBS coverage of the exhibition
• Willingham’s TedXArcadia talk, “Blinded By My Black Skin: The Hyper (In)visibility of Black Women“

Photo courtesy of Dr. Breea Willingham

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.

 

Links:

• Follow Jessica Blatt on Twitter
• A 2019 interview with Blatt at the Society for U.S. Intellectual History
• A 2018 interview with Blatt on Detroit Today
• A 2018 talk by Blatt, “With a Little Help from our Friends: Scientific Racism and the Making of Modern Political Science“
• Books mentioned: Leah Gordon, From Power to Prejudice: The Rise of Racial Individualism in Midcentury America; Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics; Alice O’Connor: Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History

 

 

Interview: Frank B. Wilderson III on Afropessimism – Epistemic Unruliness 28

In this very special episode, Sid and James sit down with Dr. Frank B. Wilderson, III for a lively and wide-ranging conversation about his new highly-anticipated book Afropessimism. Culminating much of Wilderson’s critical theoretical ouevre of the last twenty years, the trio discuss this coming-of-age narrative that chronicles Wilderson’s youthful journey via radical political movements in the US and South Africa and intimate relationships through which Wilderson came to realize his iconoclastic premises of Afropessimism: “Blackness is coterminous with Slaveness…[and] social death” (102). How does Afropressimism view the relation between the libidinal and political economies in generating and sustaining anti-Blackness? Are liberationist-abolitionist projects the ruse of the Human? Should one read Afropessimism as a slave narrative, in anticipation of aporia and oxymoron? And in an Always Already exclusive scoop for our listeners, Wilderson details the wild scene from one memorable night during his stint as a bouncer at Prince’s Minneapolis nightclub.

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. Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, “Desiring Machines,” from their album FutureCommons; always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

 

Links:

• Frank B. Wilderson III’s webpage
• Paul Taylor’s review of Afropessimism
• Wilderson III’s interview about Afropessimism in The New York Times 
• Covid-19 and Afropessimism
• Wilderson III reads and takes questions on Afropessimism
• Links to earlier episodes that relate to this discussion: Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism; Frank B. Wilderson III’s Red, White, and Black; and Calvin Warren and Frank B. Wilderson III on Antiblackness, Nihilism, and Politics

 

 

via frankbwildersoniii.com/

 

 

Interview: James Chamberlain on Undoing Work, Rethinking Community – Epistemic Unruliness 23

In this episode, James A. Chamberlain (Political Science, Mississippi State) joins John to discuss his recent book, Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work. After situating the book in relation to recent political theory literature on work and labor, they delve into the way work society–and even some radical post-work thinkers–define work as the criteria for inclusion into society, and how this implicates specific kinds of social ontologies and notions of community. From there, they discuss Universal Basic Income and job guarantees, the gendering and racialization of labor, rethinking academic work, and how critiques of work interface with questions of borders and migration.

Support us on Patreon to help us upgrade our recording equipment and provide episode transcripts — plus, you may have the chance to jump your request to the top of the request queue. 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. We are part of the Critical Mediations network. Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, and always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

 

 

Always Already On the Road: Voices from ASA, Part 2 – Epistemic Unruliness 18

It’s Part 2 of Always Already on the Road (for part 1 click here!), where James attends the American Studies Association Annual Meeting in Denver, CO for conversations with a multiplicity of critical, engaged scholars. In this episode, James and his guests discuss American colonialism and Puerto Rico, Standing Rock and the dispossession of indigenous land that gave rise to the city of Denver as the “home” for this year’s conference itself, Chicano punk culture, and more. Dr. Kara Keeling pays us a very special visit to give a word on black queer studies’ central role to imagining more ethical worlds and mobilizing tactics to realize those futurities, and a senior editor of a university press shares #protips on how to turn your dissertation into a published book.

This episode features music from the Deleuze-inspired EDM musician Bad Infinity (whom we interviewed earlier this year), with clips from his songs “Being in the World,” “Mirrors,” and “The Order of Things,” all off of the 2015 album Monadology. Check out Bad Infinity on Soundcloud. Thanks also to Leah Dion for our intro music, her “Static Loops.”

Please support us on Patreon to help with recording equipment. 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. Get the mp3 of the episode here.