universality

Ep. 68 – W.E.B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

Join Emily, B, Sid, and John for a classic AAP text discussion, this time featuring W.E.B. Du Bois’s Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil. Our discussion begins (perhaps unsurprisingly!) with knowledge, education, and epistemology, and spans Du Bois’s analysis of racial capitalism, his materialism, aesthetics, canonization as a political theorist, and more. We interrogate Du Bois as a democratic theorist in his own right, analyze his (maybe) humanism and (maybe) universalism, and ask, what does it mean to read DuBois as a prescient diagnostician of our own political moment (and who is the revolutionary subject?)? While we barely scratch the surface of all this book has to offer (what of “work,” whiteness, poetics, and proto-feminism in this text?!), we welcome you to join us for the close reading, and stay for the water puns!

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.

 

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Black and white photograph of Du Bois, looking at the camera

W.E.B. Du Bois in 1918; from WikiMedia Commons

 

Blue-on-blue cover of Darkwater

First edition of Darkwater; from WikiMedia Commons

Ep. 23 – Butler and Žižek on Universality and Radical Democracy

In this episode of Always Already, Rachel, B, and Emily attempt to de-jargonizify the concepts universal and particular as they circulate in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality by Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, and Ernesto Laclau.  In this discussion of Butler’s chapter “Competing Universalities” and Žižek’s chapter “Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes please!” the team tries to unpack what the terms of radical democracy are as they emerge from these pages. Is their form of radical democracy a project only for the intellectual? Can a contemporary articulation of radical democracy make sense when the main intellectual resources are primarily drawn from dead white men? Is it really possible to explain what a universal is without using jargon-laden tautology? Can we really conduct a successful podcast on a summer afternoon!? We also discuss a teaching related advice question that we’ve been asking of ourselves of late, and analyze a dream about life transitions!

Thank you to Amogh of the Symptomatic Redness Podcast for suggesting we talk about this book. 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 (intro) and Rachel and B (between segments and outtakes!).

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JudithButler2013

 

Slavoj_Zizek_Fot_M_Kubik_May15_2009_01

 

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!
One of John's photos at the Climate March

One of John’s photos from the Climate March

Ep. 4 – Ernesto Laclau’s Emancipation(s); Part 2 of Amy Schiller interview on philanthropy and neoliberalism

Join B, John, and guest-host Emily Crandall in a (sign)nificant conversation about Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity and Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics? by Ernesto Laclau on political identities, universals, particulars, and the role of empty signifiers in democratic politics. The group analyzes the relationship between the universal and particular, where identity comes from, agency and subjectivity, and what it would mean to use Laclau to think about gender identities. At points contentious, but always reflective, the group takes on multiple methods of interpreting these two chapters from Emancipation(s) –whether it be rejection of Laclau’s dismissal of post-modernism’s embrace of pure particulars, or B putting on a pouty face about Lacanianism and semiotics.

The episode also includes Part 2 of John’s interview with Amy Schiller on her recent pieces, discussing philanthropy, neoliberalism, and time-traveling with Luce Irigaray. We give advice on revise-and-resubmits to academic journals and work through B’s promising but tricky dating life.

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. Download the mp3 here. RSS feed here. This episode’s music by B Aultman.

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