High Theory

Angelina Eimannsberger talks to Saronik about cultural phenomenon Jonathan Van Ness, and movements in queer femininity that they represent. They touch briefly on Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Jean Genet’s Notre Dame des Fleurs, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness, and the hashtag #transisbeautiful inaugurated by Laverne Cox. They also talk about Michel Foucault’s interview “Friendship as a Way of Life“. Angelina and Saronik had a post-recording conversation about the activistic work that JVN does. On that note, here is a list of organizations they support, and that you can support too: Planned Parenthood, RAINN, Phoenix House, The Trevor Project, National Coalition of Anti Violence Programs, Advocates for Youth, GLSEN, Peer Health Exchange, ASPCA. The image for this episode is a frame titled “Flowering Tree” by the fin de siècle English artist Aubrey Beardsley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An excerpt from Kim’s conversation with Elaine Freedgood on commodity fetishism that didn’t make it into the original episode. Elaine references Louis Althusser and Slavoj Žižek on ideology; Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Cornell UP: 1981; and Claude Levi Strauss’s work on Caduveo body painting (which seems to have been published in the surrealist magazine VVV in 1942 and is very hard to find on the internet — see Luciana Martins ‘Resemblances to archaeological finds’: Guido Boggiani, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Caduveo body painting” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2014. DOI:10.1080/13569325.2017.1309317.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim talks with Elaine Freedgood about Karl Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. The concept comes from: Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, edited by Frederick Engels, 1887, available on marxists.org Other texts mentioned: -Peter Stallybrass, “Marx’s Coat” in Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, edited by Patricia Spyer, Routledge, 1998. -Rosalind Morris and Daniel Leonard, The Returns of Fetishism: Charles de Brosses and the Afterlives of an Idea. University of Chicago Press, 2017. In the longer version of our conversation we talked about: -Tamara Ketabgian, The Lives of Machines: The Industrial Imaginary in Victorian Literature and Culture. University of Michigan Press, 2011. -Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. Translated by ---Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1852. Internet Archive. -And Elaine’s book, The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel. University of Chicago Press, 2006. Elaine is super cool. She studies Victorian Literature and teaches in the English Department at NYU. Image borrowed from archive.org. If this image is under copyright, please inform us and we will remove it promptly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Huzaifa Omair Siddiqi talks about the idea of debt, mainly with respect to the book by David Graeber on its history. This episode is dedicated to his memory. Huzaifa is a doctoral candidate at the Department of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University, working on speculative materialism. He has written on several subjects including Graeber’s work. The image is that of the Cone of Urukagina, which has the first recorded instance of the word ‘freedom’ (‘amargi’). In his book, Graeber talks about this record as one of several issued periodically by Sumerian kings to “declare all outstanding consumer debt null and void…, return all land to its original owners, and allow all debt-peons to return to their families”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode Kim and Chad talk about Julia Kristeva’s theory of “intertextuality.” Chad references Chapter 3 of Kristeva’s book Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Translated by Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez, (Columbia UP 1980). The last quote (the permanent revolt one) is from Chapter 15, “Europhilia-Europhobia,” of Kristeva’s Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, Translated by Jeanie Herman, (Columbia UP, 2002). Chad Hegelmeyer is a postdoc in English at NYU. He wrote a dissertation about fact checking! The Capybara still stands, proudly, in place of Chad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Kim and Saronik discuss Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” printed in Image Music Text, translated by Stephen Heath, New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. The image for this week is plate three from Jules Morel, Manuel d’Anatomie Artistique. Paris: Grand, 1877. Medical Heritage Library Collections on Internet Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Linstrom talks about the ecosphere, a way of understanding the world deriving principally from the work of ecologist and philosopher Stan Rowe. We also refer briefly to James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, crown shyness in trees, Aldo Leopold’s idea of a ‘land community’, Wendell Berry’s The Way of Ignorance and knowledge humility. John Linstrom is a 7th year Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of English, New York University., and series editor of The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library for the Comstock Publishing Associates imprint of Cornell University Press. The image for this episode is that of red-blue-and-green sea anemones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim talks with Pardis about Theodor Adorno’s concept of the autonomous work of art, as articulated in his Aesthetic Theory, and The Dialectic of Enlightenment (with help from Max Horkheimer). Pardis Dabashi is an assistant professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she specializes in 20th-Century literature and Film studies. Starbucks Christmas Blend is one of her many guilty pleasures. Adorno would be upset. Image source: Witches dancing in forest, in the Compedium Maleficarum of Francesco Mario Guazzo, published in 1608. Available on Wikimedia Commons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Kim talks with Saronik about the game “Fort / Da” — a game played by Sigmund Freud’s grandson in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (which you can borrow from the amazing Internet Archive). Our cover image comes from another text on Internet Archive, in the Medical Heritage Library’s collection: Die Suggestion und ihre Heilwirkung, written by Hippolyte Bernheim and Sigmund Freud in 1888. The image appears on page 330. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Saronik talks with Diane Enobabor about Afropessimism and Afrofuturism. Diane is a Ph.D. student at The Graduate Center at CUNY. She studies Black Geographies, social movements, borders, critical theory and migration. Reading List: -Diane’s recent article “A Call for Mourning: How To Adapt to Our American Ruins” -Frank B. Wilderson III, Afropessimism. Norton, 2020. -Afro-pessimism: An Introduction. Racked & Dispatched, 2017. Available online for free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode Kim and Saronik discuss Bruno Latour’s essay, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004): 225-248. Image source: M. Platen, The New Curative Treatment of Disease: Handbook of Hygienic Rules of Life, Health Culture, and the Cure of Ailments Without the Aid of Drugs… London : Bong & Co., 1893, p. 668 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Saronik asks Chad about narrators in fiction, and life, who cannot be trusted – their quirks, productive unreliabilities, their effect on present politics, the works! We talk around Wayne C. Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chad Hegelmeyer is a postdoc in English at NYU. His current project is sunbathing while reading Hannah Arendt. The Capybara stands, proudly, in place of Chad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Kim finds out that Saronik gets a little weird when it comes to dogs. We talk about Donna J. Haraway’s book The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Haraway studies methods (and practitioners) of agility training in order to try and figure out what these praxes that bring together nature and culture, by means of which humans relate with species they have evolved with. Saronik is waiting to meet Miles, Kim’s amazing Newfie. Below, you can see him with Toby. He met Toby on two occasions a year apart, at the same cafe in Bushwick, completely by accident. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura. The idea comes from Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Besides the central text, the episode references Benjamin’s 1940 essay, “On the Concept of History” in which the Angel of History appears. We also talk about Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” And make a passing mention of the British artist Banksy. The image is a photograph that Kim took of a painting of peaches in an art museum in Amsterdam. She forgets artist and title of the painting, and would welcome reminders from listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to High Theory! High Theory is a podcast in which we get high on the substance of theory. And we ask the three standard questions, to each other, and our guests. We invite you to listen and learn, and think critically! This podcast comes at difficult ideas from the academy with irreverence. Wikipedia says that “critical theory” is “the reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures,” which suggests a rather serious subject, but we think theory is hardly dense and somber and sober. In these times, we need to love, and finding the buzz of curiosity and delight in critical thinking, we want to bring that joy to you. We aim to distill some solid points from our ramblings. We are looking at theory differently, and making pretty wild connections. Like maybe having and loving a dog will make you a better activist. Or hating on Humbert Humbert might help you sift through fake news. If you have an idea you would like us to talk about, let us know! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices