Ep. 12 – Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race

B is out of town but that doesn’t stop us all from recording a new episode, about Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race, edited by Emily S. Lee. Discussing two chapters from Lee – the Introduction as well as Body Movement and Responsibility for a Situation – and one from Donna-Dale L. Marcano – Race/Gender and the Philosopher’s Body – the crew explores the ways attention to embodiment through a phenomenological lens helps us think through the persistence of racism. What’s real about social construction? How much embodiment is too much embodiment? What ethical projects and provocations might arise from a phenomenological account of race? We engage these questions and more, and disagree about the extent that Lee’s phenomenology is too individualistic.

In My Tumblr Friend From Canada, we dispense advice on a question of academic and professional ethics and the eternal conundrum of mind, matter, and game shows.

Thanks to James Padilioni Jr. for suggesting we read this text. 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.

Links!

• Living Alterities at SUNY Press
• Homepages for Emily S. Lee and Donna-Dale L. Marcano
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries for Race and for Phenomenology
• Donna-Dale L. Marcano on The Philosophical Canon and the Role of Fanon
• 1999 issue of Radical Philosophy on race and philosophy

Ep.11 – Rancière, The Distribution of the Sensible

This episode we discuss Jacques Rancière’s “The Distribution of the Sensible” from The Politics of Aesthetics. We start by parsing the first sentence of this text for several minutes, which sets the tone for a discussion of the interconnectedness between aesthetics and politics and the “self-evident” systems of the political order that determine that which is visible/invisible, audible and silent, and even thinkable and unthinkable. Listen as we debate the merits and demerits of exclusion as a concept, the bodiless embodiment of Rancière, and the potential for prefigurative politics found in this work. We’ll also give shoddy advice to our friends Fritz and Alexis about the weather and PhD application writing samples, respectively.

Thanks for Katie for suggesting we read Rancière. 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!

• A blog on all things Rancière
• Rancière’s “Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art” in Art & Research
• Video of Rancière on the “The State of Things” and the distribution of the sensible

A distribution of the sensible at criticaltheorydesigns.wordpress.com

Interview: Abbas Jaffer on Digital Publics, Affect, and Contemporary Music in Pakistan

John interviews Abbas Jaffer, Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at Harvard University on his dissertation project, New Tracks: Digital Publics and Contemporary Music in Pakistan. They talk about how interactions around music and digital media generate publics in Pakistan, how to conceptualize affect and digital affect, the complicated political effects of music production and these digital publics, cyberethnography, the relationship between methodology, theory, and ethics, and more.

Links!

• Abbas suggests we check out Noori and Poor Rich Boys (and the toothless winos)
• Vincent Mosco’s The Digital Sublime at MIT Press
• Austin Music Map

Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety; Carol Gould on Interactive Democracy (Part I of Interview)

In this episode B, John, and guest-host Joanna Tice talk about Politics of Piety by Saba Mahmood (Chapters 1 and 5). Everyone was enthralled with this complex work, and we discuss why in terms of Mahmood’s account of agency as it relates to embodiment, religion, and social conditions, her deep engagement from and learning from the practices of the women in the Egyptian mosque movement she studied, and her engagement and critique of Western feminism for its overemphasis on resistance at the expense of understanding actors and their agential practices.

We also interview Carol Gould (Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at The Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNY) on her forthcoming book, Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice. Our conversation covers contemporary democracy’s failed promises, social ontology, how to justify human rights, Gould’s new “interactive” conceptualization of democracy, and democratizing education.

Finally, we give advice on dissertation anxiety/writer’s block and on what to do if one’s dissertation distances them from their romantic partner.

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.

Links!

• Saba Mahmood’s page at Berkeley
• Politics of Piety on Google Books
• Interview with Mahmood on the piety movement
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on poststructural feminist perspective on power
• Review and critique of the book in Jadaliyya
• Carol Gould’s homepage
• Cambridge Univ. Press page for Interactive Democracy