Critique of the Podcast Form

Critics & theorists, this is a bonus episode containing a recording of the presentation and discussion of “Excavations,” the second volume of our E-Journal Margin Notes: A Journal of Critical Theory, which took place on zoom on the 19th of September, 2026.

The link to the journal: https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/projects/3_project/

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The CTWG Marxist science subcommittee returns! In this episode, we discuss Pietro Daniel Omodeo’s Political Epistemology, which develops the Berlin school of historical epistemology (discussed in episode 19!). We examine Omodeo’s enlarged conception of ideology as the dialectic of identity and position as applied to science studies broadly construed, what political epistemology even is, and how action, understood as the unity of praxis and poiesis, mediates history, the middle term between the polis and episteme.

Episode reading:

• Pietro Daniel Omodeo. Political Epistemology: The Problem of Ideology in Science Studies. Springer, 2019.

Recommend readings:

• Lukas Meisner and Pietro Daniel Omodeo. “Beyond Facticity and Post-Truth: Towards a Marxist Political Epistemology.” Historical Materialism 33, no. 1 (2025): 88–118.
• Helen Eleonora. “On the Falsity of Prevailing Ideas: The Concept of Ideology in Early Critical Theory.” Margin Notes 1 (2024), 84–126.
• Wolfgang Lefèvre. Theory of Nature and Mode of Production: The Genesis of Modern Science in Materialist Perspective. Political Epistemology. Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025.
• Jürgen Renn. The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. Princeton University Press, 2020.
• Peter Osborne. “The Planet as Political Subject?” New Left Review, no. 145 (March 2024): 103–16.
• For a good constructive critique of Boris Hessen, see: Ioannis Trisokkas. “Boris Hessen and Newton’s God.” Society and Politics 13, no. 1 (2019): 64–86.

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Nora and Imogen are joined by Billie to discuss her forthcoming essay 'Charaktermasken: Value, Relation and Performance in Marx's Critique of Political Economy' in which she traces the history of Marx's concept of the Charaktermasken.. With excursions into Goethe's Faust, the critique of Marx brought to bear by Black radical thinkers (namely Sylvia Wynter and Fred Moten), the antinomies of the structuralist reading of Capital and the comedy of the Rosean recovery of speculative thought, the three consider the Charaktermaske first as tragedy and again as farce.

Donate to Billie's FFS fund! https://gofund.me/0a72791c1

Billie's Acid Horizon Course on the Commodity, starting September 8: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses/p/the-commodity-appearance-reification-and-practice-from-karl-marx-to-sylvia-wynter

Texts mentioned:

• Louis Althusser (1963) 'The ‘Piccolo Teatro’: Bertolazzi and Brecht - Notes on a Materialist Theatre' in: For Marx

•Theodor S. Adorno (1966) 'Negative Dialectics'

•Gillian Rose (1978) 'The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno'

• Fred Moten (2003) 'The Resistance of the Object' I&II in: 'In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition'

•Sylvia Wynter (unpublished) 'Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World'

Resident CTWG Infantiles Morrain and Cam meet CTWGs resident Marxist Unity Group member Mac, with backup from NYCDSA MUG member Ben, to get to the bottom of what the heck this renegade Kautsky guy is all about and why today's hot TV stars such as Bill Maher can't get enough of him. In play is Lars Lih's book Lenin Rediscovered, as well as

• Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917) by Eric Blanc
• Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the challenge of left unity by Mike Macnair
• https://prometheus-mag.com/2026/07/29/a-short-course-on-the-history-of-the-marxist-unity-group-part-one-background-and-foundation/
• https://prometheus-mag.com/2026/07/30/a-short-course-on-the-history-of-the-marxist-unity-group-part-two-partyism-in-practice/
• https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/nov/13.htm

Nora, Imogen, and Helen are joined by friend of the pod Ashley to discuss two articles from the new volume of Mediations: Emma Heaney's "On the Cisness of the Bourgeoisie" and Amy De'Ath's "Two Substantialisms: On Value and Sexual Difference." Together, they answer a burning question of our movement: are trans women bourgeois?

For episode 24 and part 2 in our Schelling series, James is joined by Imogen and Nora to discuss one of Schelling's unfinished works: Clara, or On Nature's Connection to the Spirit World. After situating the text within Schelling's wider oeuvre and patiently clearing the author from accusations of dark magic, we ruminate on its themes of resurrection, transmigration, the singularity of the soul and the magnificence of beavers. Putting Schelling in discussion with Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Freud, Mao, Bordiga and Kazuo Ishiguro we ask the ultimate question: can Naturphilosophie mourn?

In this episode, Anatarah, Bile, and Crane discuss the introduction to Schelling’s 1797 Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature and the introduction to Schelling’s 1799 First Outline. Working up to Schelling’s ambitious declaration that philosophy is a “natural history of our mind,” the hosts discuss some of the fundamental concepts—like force, equilibrium, and organism—in Schelling’s philosophy of nature, the difference between Schelling’s earlier philosophy of nature and his “identity system,” and the relationship between Schelling’s project and those of his contemporaries in philosophy and natural science. In conclusion, we debate whether and, if so, how Schelling’s early philosophy of nature might provide us with a basis for a critical theory of nature and natural science.

Recommend readings:

• Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature as Introduction to the Study of This Science, 1797. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature. State University of New York Press, 2004.

• The Schelling Reader. 1st ed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

• The Palgrave Schelling Handbook. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2026.

Imogen, Helen, and Nora kvetch about "The Logic of Gender" from Endnotes 3. Topics include whether capital is a totality (it is), whether Butler reduces gender to the value-form (they don't), and whether this article gets into enough detail regarding the history of the family (absolutely not.)

Texts:

The Logic of Gender in Endnotes Vol 3: https://www.endnotes.org.uk/issues/issue-3/endnotes-the-logic-of-gender

In this episode, Crane is joined by Julian Assele to discuss Max Horkheimer’s long-running critical engagement with contemporary Neo-Thomism, the history of Catholic thought, and the social content of theological controversies dating back to the early Christian church. Starting from Horkheimer’s 1930s short-form polemics on the church and fascism, the hosts turn to his extensive criticism of Neo-Thomism in “Conflicting Panaceas” from Eclipse of Reason (1947)—as well as the earlier version of the text, the unpublished “The Revival of Dogmatism” (1943)—and conclude with a critical look at the late Horkheimer’s neo-conservative instrumentalization of religion in “Theism and Atheism” (1963), posing the question: what might a “critical theory of religion” look like today?

Texts:

“On the Concept of God” [or: “Thoughts on Religion”] (1935): https://jamescrane.substack.com/p/collection-horkheimers-fragments

“On Theodor Haecker’s Der Christ und die Geschichte [The Christian and History]” (1936): https://jamescrane.substack.com/p/collection-the-materialist-as-polemicist

“The Revival of Dogmatism” (1943): https://jamescrane.substack.com/p/collection-society-and-reason-1944

“Conflicting Panaceas,” in Eclipse of Reason (1947)

“Theism and Atheism” (1963), in Critique of Instrumental Reason (1974)

Follow Julian on Substack https://substack.com/@julesnotes

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Mac and Re are joined by Shreya from the Center for Struggling Trade Unions (CSTU) to discuss the recent workers strikes in various industries of North India. Since March, workers in the automobile and garment industry were joined by domestic service workers to mobilize against low wages, unpaid overtime and deteriorating labor conditions. We also discuss the history of the workers mobilization in North India and raise some questions of the problems of labor organizing today.

History of the Manesar automobile workers struggle: https://class-notes.org/2025/06/04/maruti-story-book/

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