Blame Theory

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss his new book We Have Never Been Woke. A great deal of discussion of wokeness attempts to trace it to the influence of certain thinkers and ideas: Foucault, Critical Race Theory, and so on. Al-Gharbi offers a different approach, focusing on the social stratum in which woke ideas became salient—that of "symbolic capitalists"—and how ideas function as a currency of social legitimation and status competition. 

Compact's Sohrab Ahmari joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss one of the most widely blamed thinkers of all time: Karl Marx. We consider why Republicans, all the way up to Donald Trump, are reviving anti-communist rhetoric during the 2024 presidential campaign, to what extent Marx can be blamed for the crimes of regimes inspired by his theories, why Marxism is so appealing to intellectuals, what we can still learn from Capital today, and more.  

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Writer David Shields joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss his new book and documentary How We Got Here. We ask whether postmodernists are to blame for our post-truth predicament and explore Trump's instinctive postmodernism, the propaganda techniques of Putin adviser Vladislav Surkov, and David's own theories on reality and (non-)fiction.

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David Dudrick, professor of philosophy at Colgate University, joins Geoff to discuss his recent Compact essay "Why Foucault Couldn't Kill Sexuality." They discuss the misunderstandings around Foucault's History of Sexuality and the persistence of what he called the "repressive hypothesis," even among those who might claim to be his followers. 

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Compact founding editor Sohrab Ahmari joins Geoff and Nina in this episode to examine Michel Foucault’s later work on biopolitics, governmentality, and economics. Did Foucault predict or even contribute to the dominance of neoliberalism? To what extent was Foucault ever left-wing? Can we reconcile the brilliance of his thought with the moral and ontological absence at the core of his work?

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This episode examines Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, vol. 1 and asks to what extent Foucault is to blame for contemporary progressive dogmas about sex, gender, and power.

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Anchored by our own Nina Power and Geoff Shullenberger, Blame Theory takes a seriously playful look at the ideas that have shaped our minds and our world, to ask: How have we ended up here, and whom or what can we blame? Plato? Hegel? Marx? Nominalism? Gnosticism? Feminism? Postmodernism? Critical theory?

This episode takes a page out of Nietzsche’s writings and asks whether we should blame the Greeks for society’s woes. Geoff and Nina discuss Geoff’s review of Brandes and Høffding’s book The Great Debate: Nietzsche, Culture, and the Scandinavian Welfare Society, published last week in COMPACT.

Listen either here on Substack or on your preferred podcast app.

Anchored by our own Nina Power and Geoff Shullenberger, Blame Theory takes a seriously playful look at the ideas that have shaped our minds and our world, to ask: How have we ended up here, and whom or what can we blame? Plato? Hegel? Marx? Nominalism? Gnosticism? Feminism? Postmodernism? Critical theory?

This episode asks whether we should blame Judith …

Anchored by our own Nina Power and Geoff Shullenberger, Blame Theory takes a seriously playful look at the ideas that have shaped our minds and our world, to ask: How have we ended up here, and whom or what can we blame? Plato? Hegel? Marx? Nominalism? Gnosticism? Feminism? Postmodernism? Critical theory?

The debut episode—“Blame Deconstruction?”—was recorded live at KGB Bar, featuring Avital Ronell, University Professor of German and Comparative Literature at NYU and author of The Telephone Book and Complaint, among many other books. We asked her whether deconstruction—with its emphasis on multiple truths and narratives—is to blame for our current woes. 

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