Ep. 67 – Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy

In this episode, John and Sid are joined by friend of the podcast Danielle Hanley of Rutgers University to discuss Joel Olson’s The Abolition of White Democracy (2004). Our discussion weaves through a number of pressing questions: How does Olson center Du Bois in political theory debates about American democracy and citizenship? In what ways are Olson’s conceptualizations of “race,” “whiteness,” and “white privilege” precisely the kind of theorizations—politically astute, materially grounded, and non-reductive—that our moment calls for? What does Olson’s analysis of the constitutive relationship between race and American capitalism add to theories of racial capitalism? How does Olson’s vision of “abolition-democracy” expand democratic imaginaries and re-think agency and participation in critical race theory? Instead of turning to the work of Robin DiAngelo and Tim Wise, what if liberals interested in understanding and/or undoing “whiteness” read Olson’s prescient work?

Across our conversation, we find that Olson’s elegant work speaks to our historical and political moment in multiple ways and has much to offer the left, theoretically and practically, within and beyond academia.

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.

 

Links:

• Joel Olson archives, featuring academic and public writing, teaching materials, remembrances, and more
• Olson on white democracy and the 99%
• The Abolition of White Democracy at University of Minnesota Press

 

 

Ep. 27 – Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism

Special guest co-host Lindsey Whitmore (Rutgers) joins Rachel and John to talk about Lauren Berlant’s 2011 book Cruel Optimism. Join us as we traverse this notably title-colon-less text in queer theory and cultural studies (among other fields). We start by asking what is cruel about cruel optimism and how it is related to attachment and temporality. From there, we ask after the way affect works in the text, what we might say Berlant’s method is, how her book relates to the work of Sara Ahmed and José Esteban Muñoz, her rethinking of agency and sovereignty, and more. There are some critical questions to discuss as well: What does her analysis of fatness and obesity miss? What other relations to futurity are possible? Is optimism always (already) cruel? The discussion closes by Lindsey telling us about how Berlant’s concept of “slow death” works in her own project on debility and care and by thinking through optimism’s relationship to survival.

In One or Several Wolves?, we analyze a dream about Tina Turner and Hogwarts; In My Tumblr Friend From Canada, we advise on summer body hair.

Thanks to Hanna for suggesting this text. 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. Follow us on twitter. Subscribe on iTunes. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. This episode’s music by Jordan Cass and by B.

Links!

• Lindsey’s “Our Bodies, Their Data: Tracing Biopolitical Circuitry and The Illness Experience on PatientsLikeMe.com” in Gnovis: A Journal of Communication, Culture, & Technology
• Berlant’s homepage at Univ. of Chicago; Cruel Optimism at Duke UP
• Interview with Berlant about the book on The Critical Lede Podcast
• Public Feelings Salon with Berlant, José Muñoz, Ann Pellegrini and Tavia Nyong’o at Barnard.
• There’s an amazing punk song by Worriers inspired by the book
• “Cruel Optimism for the Neurologically Queer” by Micki McGee in Social Text

Ep.22 – Burka Avenger // Upstream Color

In this episode of Always Already, Emily, John, and B engage in a little film analysis for their first time on the show (and possibly in their lives!) Starting with the Pakistani cartoon Burka Avenger, your critical team struggles to uncover whether there is a reproduction of liberal rights discourse. Is there a colonized narrative behind the superheroine, whose full burka cloaks her schoolteacher identity as she confronts evildoers with books and pens and the ancient arts of inner peace? Always Already then tackles the highly abstract movie, “Upstream Color,” wondering WTF?, linking its metaphysics from Descartes to its more clearly metaphorical references to rape, trauma, and agency in a completely confusing world. What does it say, we ponder, about the relationships between human animals, non-human animals, and nature? We also deconstruct a dream about a plane in autopilot, and determine each others’ Star Wars characters. Don’t miss it!

Thank you to Brett for suggesting we watch Burka Avenger, and to Carter for asking after Upstream Color. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer on the show? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. This episode’s music by Rocco & Lizzie and by B.

Links!

• Interview with Haroon, the creator of Burka Avenger + debate on the show on India’s NDTV
• Novelist and journalist Bina Shah on the burka in Burka Avenger
• Write-up of Burka Avenger in the NYT
• Haroon’s website and available tracks on Spotify
• Lila Abu-Lughod’s Do Muslim Women Need Saving? at Harvard UP
• Collected reviews of Upstream Color at Metacritic
• Reviews of the film at AV Club and The Village Voice; The New Yorker on Thoreau and the film (“The Thoreau Poison“)
• Director Shane Carruth‘s previous film, Primer

 

 

 

 

 

Ep. 17 – Walter Benjamin on the Concept of History

Welcome back Rachel to the podcast by joining us for our reading of Walter Benjamin’s theses on The Concept of History. Moved by our joint out loud reading at the start and end of the podcast, Rachel, John, and B explore the ways that history, for Benjamin, has become a tool of conquerors–a condition that only historical materialism has the ability to articulate. Yet, can historical materialism become an orthodoxy, homogenizing the past it wishes to liberate? And what other kinds of orthodoxies, ways of reading, and disciplinary attitudes foreclose desubjugating the knowledge of history? In the process of thinking through these and other questions, we explore themes and concepts of messianism, temporality, teleology, agency, class struggle, fragmentation and wholeness, redemption, and more; we also touch on queer temporality, Adorno, Foucault, Levinas, Kathi Weeks, and Lukács.

Of course, Our Tumblr Friend from Canada has plenty of questions, and a cameo from Sid Issar, featuring advice on: a pesky roommate tension; how NOT to reproduce power in the pronunciation of proper names; and how being powerful is not, in itself, always already problematic.

Requests for texts for us to discuss? Advice questions for the show? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. This episode’s music by B and by Jordan Cass.

Links!

• “On the Concept of History” and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” at marxists.org
• Walter Benjamin biography at the European Graduate School
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy comprehensive entry on Benjamin
• Susan Buck-Morss’s book on Benjamin and the Arcades project, Dialectics of Seeing; explore multiple Benjamin-inspired visual constellations at her website
• Write up on Radio Benjamin (Verso, 2014) at The Guardian
• Alex Ross in The New Yorker on Benjamin, Adorno, their correspondences, and critique of pop culture

Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920), discussed by Benjamin in the 9th Thesis as the Angel of History

Benjamin plays chess with Brecht

 

 

Ep. 9 – Dipesh Chakrabarty on Climate, Species, and Universality

Join us for another hearty episode of Always Already Podcast with B, John and Rachel. This time we’ll be discussing Dipesh Chakrabarty‘s “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Exploring the relationship between capitalism, climate change, and the role of humans as a species in the warming of the planet, Chakrabarty pushes us to rethink narrow constructions of history that minimize a longer-range geological perspective. In this podcast we discuss the People’s Climate March in New York City, Flood Wall Street, the potentiality and limits of the term “species” in organizing efforts, and universality. We conclude by digging into the implications of a geopocentric take on climate change for political theory.

During the Shoddy Advice portion of our show we entertain a question from Regan in British Columbia about how to pick up somebody in the library. Good riddance and good luck, Regan.

Thanks for Ittai Orr for suggesting we read Chakrabarty. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Advice questions to submit? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 here. RSS feed here. This episode’s music by B (intro and outro) and Jordan Cass (inter-segment).

Links!

• Chakrabarty books: Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Habitations of Modernity and Rethinking Working-Class History.
• Chakrabarty’s keynote speech at The Anthropocene Project
• Photos from NYC People’s Climate March and Flood Wall Street

One of John’s photos from the Climate March