Ep. 72 – Miguel de Beistegui, The Government of Desire

Back from a hiatus in western Massachusetts, B joins John and special guest co-host Alyssa Ruth Mazer to discuss Miguel de Beistegui’s book The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject. What is a liberal subject and how does desire open up its discourses and genealogy and governmentalities? Did Beistegui try to out-Foucault…Foucault, the book’s stated intellectual inspiration? The team attempts a reparative reading of the Introduction, Conclusion and Beistegui’s chapters on recognition. But these three self-professed genealogists hit a snag. Critiquing the murky depths of desire and recognition requires more than what the Western canon provides! What happened to queer theory? Is there feminism at all? Could Black and Indigenous theories of personhood have made a more prominent appearance? Is there a “true” kind of resistance? With so much to discuss, you can’t not desire tuning in!

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:

• De Beistegui’s homepage at University of Warwick
• De Beistegui, “The Political Honour of Psychoanalysis” talk at Warwick (2015)
• Relevant Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries: desire; recognition; Foucault
• Combahee River Collective Statement at Black Past
• Remembering Lauren Berlant (UChicago; Duke)
• Patricia Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights
• Wendy Brown, “Suffering Rights as Paradoxes” (2000) in Constellations

Interview: Barbara Sostaita on Immigration Urgencies – Epistemic Unruliness 19

In this first installment of Epistemic Unruliness recorded from within the Trump Age, James interviews Barbara Sostaita, a Feministing.com columnist, community organizer, and doctoral student in Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina where she researches Latinx migrant faith practices and communities. Their conversation focuses upon immigration policy and the recent urgencies created by the Trump Administration. They cover the gambit from ICE raids and detentions to potential roving National Guard posses and the unique dangers posed by uncertainty regarding DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) provisions for college students. They conclude with a discussion on the tradition of sanctuary and its latest resurgence through the New Sanctuary Movements. Barbara and James offer tips for how new activists can join those who have already been doing this work to engage these urgencies in cogent and useful ways without centering themselves in the process.

But that’s not all! After the interview, this episode also includes an audio response to last month’s episode on Martin Konings’ The Emotional Logic of Capitalism from Nicholas Kiersey, Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio University, host of the OccupyIRTheory blog, one of the hosts of the Fully Automated podcast, and the person who suggested Konings to us. Thanks to Nicholas for engaging with the episode!

Support us on Patreon to help us upgrade our 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. Thanks to Leah Dion for the intro music, to Bad Infinity for music throughout the episode, and to B for the outro music. Get the mp3 of the episode here.

 

Links:

• Barbara’s Feministing profile
• Barbara’s Twitter
• Barbara’s op-ed in The Daily Tar Heel publishing UNC President’s internal memo
• UNC President Margaret Spelling’s response/op-ed to President Trump in The Washington Post  
• Sanctuary Movement information
• National Immigration Law Center

 

Interview: Banu Bargu on the Weaponization of Life

Over at New Books in Global Ethics and Politics, John interviewed Banu Bargu on her recent book. Thanks to the NBN, we are cross-posting the episode here.

What is the relationship between state power and self-destructive violence as a mode of political resistance? In her book Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (Columbia University Press, 2014), Banu Bargu (Politics, The New School) analyzes the Turkish death fast movement and explores self-inflicted death as a political practice. Amid a global intensification of the “weaponization of life,” Bargu argues for conceptualizing this self-destructive use of the body as a complex political and existential act. In doing so, she theorizes a reconfiguration of sovereignty into biosovereignty and of resistance into necroresistance. To accomplish this, the book innovatively weaves together political and critical theory with ethnography in a way that enables the self-understanding and self-narration of those in and around the death fast movement to speak to canonical thinkers and concepts.

 

 

Ep. 39 – Marcuse and Radiohead: A Special Episode with Theory for Turntables podcast

Tune in to this week’s very exceptional episode of the Always Already Podcast! John, B, and Emily are joined by special guests Matt and Ryan from the Theory for Turntables Podcast for a spectacular crossover brand synergy event featuring a discussion of Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, and Radiohead’s OK Computer. In this episode, we ask about Marcuse’s prescience of 21st century capitalism — what still resonates, and what would Marcuse make of the freelance economy? We also attempt to situate OK Computer alongside Marcuse’s critical social theory — is the auteur of the album the one-dimensional man? is he the philosopher? We close our discussion with several juicy cliff-hangers. Stay tuned for the second part of the crossover event, available over in the Theory for Turntables stream!

Also in this episode, your favorite segments My Tumblr Friend From Canada and a very special edition of One or Several Wolves. We discuss our own neoliberal subjectivities (one dimensionality, perhaps?) in relationship to our new Patreon account, and our guests engage in an excellent dream analysis, replete with veganism and father figures.

Remember to support us on Patreon to help offset/reimburse the cost of our fancy new microphone, which we have named Lacan.

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. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. Thanks to Jordan Cass for the music.

 

Links!

• Marcuse entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• “Marcuse Today” by Ronald Aronson at Boston Review
• Website dedicated to Marcuse and his works
• Transcribed Marcuse lecture on “Marxism and Feminism”
• Radiohead and Philosophy: Fitter Happier More Deductive, edited by Brandon W. Forbes and George A. Reisch
• “Radiohead, or the Philosophy of Pop“, by Mark Greif at n+1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ep. 26 – Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism

***Update 1/17/18: Transcript available here (transcribed by Scott McLellan)***

Special guest co-host James Padilioni, Jr. joins B and John to discuss several works in the vital, burgeoning discourses of Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism. Join us as we talk about texts from Jared Sexton, Hortense Spillers, Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman, and Frank B. Wilderson III. After overviewing major arguments and stakes of these discourses, we discuss black social life and black social death, ‘the political’ and whether lived experience remains a valid category, the relationship between blackness and critical theory, resistance and performance, and more.  Not to mention dream analysis about a labyrinthian journey and its obstacles, and advice about a potentially-racist office mate.

Thanks to James and to Eric T. for suggesting these readings. 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. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. This episode’s music by Jordan Cass and by B.

As of a couple weeks ago, we’re now on Twitter, so send a follow our way.

Links!

• James Padilioni Jr.’s previous visit to the show, discussing his work on St. Martin de Porres; find James on academia.edu on Twitter @ApontesGhost
• Websites: Hartman; Wilderson III; Sexton; Spillers; Moten
• Many relevant books: Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks; Patterson, Slavery and Social Death; Hartman, Scenes of Subjection; Moten, In the Break; Wilderson III, Red, White, and Black – which we will be discussing in an upcoming episode
• An overview and bibliography of Afro-Pessimism from Wilderson III
• Jared Sexton lecture, “People-of-Color-Blindness”
• Hortense Spillers lecture, “The Idea of Black Culture”
• Video conversation between Robin DG Kelley and Fred Moten, “Do Black Lives Matter”
• Wilderson III gives a talk on afro-pessimism
• Moten’s curated playlist for a special issue of the journal Women & Performance

 

James Padilioni, Jr.

 

Hartman

 

Wilderson

 

 

Sexton

 

Spillers

 

Moten