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

Links:

• Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung
• Red Rosa
• “History and Heartbreak: The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg”
• Trailer, Rosa Luxemburg (film)

Interview: Zakiyyah Iman Jackson on Becoming Human — Epistemic Unruliness 30

In this episode, Emily is delighted to talk with Dr. Zakiyyah Iman Jackson about her new book Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World. Turning to African diasporic literature, Jackson theorizes the relationship between blackness and animality, bringing black critical theory and posthumanism to bear on one another. Our conversation traces Jackson’s intellectual journey to the book project and to the question of animality more broadly, examines the methodological approaches of the book and the possibilities and poetics of language, and unpacks the project’s political stakes. On the way, we discuss plasticity, Jackson’s ontology, the importance of cultural production for theorizing the human, the relationship between science/positivism and colonialism, and more.

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, “Post Digital,” from their album FutureCommons; always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

 

Links:

• Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s website and twitter
• Becoming Human at NYU Press
• Virtual book launch for the text hosted by NYU Press
• Interview with AAIHS on the book

 

 

Interview – Carolyn Pedwell on Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy

This interview is cross-posted from the New Books in Global Ethics and Politics podcast on the New Books Network, where John is one of the hosts. You should probably be listening to them in addition to your trusty Always Already Podcast. Text below is from the original post at New Books in Global Ethics and Politics. 

What are the multiple meanings, ambivalences, possible risks, and potentials for transformation that arise from interrogating empathy on a transnational scale? Carolyn Pedwell (University of Kent) thinks through these complex questions in her new book, Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). The book ambitiously traverses multiple disciplinary and intellectual boundaries, drawing together feminist and anti-racist social theory, media and cultural studies, international development texts and practices, scientific studies of empathy, the political rhetoric of Barack Obama, business books on empathy, and more. In doing so, Pedwell queries empathy as a social and political relation that cannot be separated from power, conflict, oppression, and inequality. This book explores the ways that empathy is a contested term employed transnationally in various ways and on behalf of various political and social interests, traces the ways that empathy might be translated and felt differently.

 

 

 

Ep. 28 – Maurizio Lazzarato on Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity

In this week’s episode, John, Emily, and special guest Sumru Atuk get into the nitty gritty of Maurizio Lazzarato’s Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity. We unpack and question his contribution to conversations about subjectivity, in addition to his characterization of neoliberalism. Totally unsurprisingly, we ask questions such as: what’s up with not talk about or citing any ladies? What does his work miss? How would Lazzarato deal with tech start-up and the resurgence of local craftsmanship? What actually is the crisis of capitalism? Is this capitalist subjectivity all encompassing? And can’t forget the ever-suspenseful underlying question – do we agree with these arguments!? Spoiler, this one has a surprise ending!

Also in this week’s episode is an amazing My Tumblr Friend From Canada segment, featuring extended early aughts pop culture analysis, and a One of Several Wolves discussion touching on (you guessed it) some more life transitions, this time in relation to a post-apocalypse tree house. Thank you to Sumru for joining us for this lively discussion!

Thanks to Sid Issar 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 Rocco & Lizzie and by B.

Links!

• Lazzarato’s page at Semiotext(e)
• Signs and Machines at MIT Press
• Review of Signs and Machines by Michael Maidan at Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
• 2008 interview with Lazzarato, Erin Manning, and Brian Massumi in INFLeXions
• Douglas Lain and Daniel Coffeen discuss Lazzarato’s The Making of Indebted Man on the Diet Soap Podcast 
• Lazzarato’s talk at the General Organology: The Co-individuation of Minds, Bodies, Social Organisations and Technè conference at the University of Kent

29.10.2012 Ljubljana, Slovenija. Maurizio Lazzarato, italijanski sociolog in filozof.FOTO: JURE ERZEN/Delo

 

Ep. 21 – Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy

In this episode, John, Emily, and B get down to the brass tacks of an affirmative biopolitics in Roberto Esposito’s  book Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy. After exploring what Esposito’s project and method are, generally, the team wonders: Is it Nietzsche-the-ironist (ahem…B) and/or Nietzsche-the-dark-eugencist who offers a more generative analysis of biopolitics’ beginnings? We leave that to the listeners to decide. The team then dives into developing the stakes of an affirmative biopolitics (whatever that means) through the darkest moments of modernity, namely Nazism (with a few digs at Heidegger). Emily rightfully asks where the HELL are all the feminist political thinkers in all of this (tsk tsk Esposito). And John is dismayed by the passing remarks about Mbembe’s work on necropolitics. Our new dream interpretation segment (!) – One or Several Wolves – features an interpretation of a dream involving werewolves and Sara Ahmed. And our Tumblr Friend from Canada wants to know about rice and our use of the word ‘productive’.

Thank you to Craig for suggesting we read this text! 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 B and by Rocco & Lizzie.

Links!

• The book, from University of Minnesota Press
• Esposito’s homepage (in Italian)
• Overview of Esposito’s works from Timothy Campbell
• Esposito lecture “Immunization and Violence” at Occidental College
• Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols
• Review of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks by Peter E. Gordon in the New York Review of Books