This episode explores French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of ‘mauvaise foi’ or Bad Faith as presented in Being and Nothingness.

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PRIMARY TEXT

Jean-Paul Sartre, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (Routledge Classics)

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AUDIO SAMPLE

Death of a Salesman (1985), dir. Volker Schlöndorff

For more Majorly Useless content you can find the show on Instagram @majorlyuseless

www.instagram.com/majorlyuseless

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Thank you for listening to another episode of Majorly Useless: A Philosophy and Literature Podcast.

What do movies like The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Amélie and Pan’s Labyrinth have in common with literary works like Beloved, Like Water for Chocolate, Kafka on the Shore and Midnight's Children?

You guessed it. They all fall under the magical realism category, which happens to be the topic for this episode of Majorly Useless.

One of my favourite literary modes, this episode will cover what magical realism is, a brief history of it in literature and then, of course, its application in different literary works, namely the four texts from my initial question.

Also, magical realism is NOT fantasy. So if you aren’t a fantasy fan, please don’t tune out just yet (although I do love fantasy too).

For more Majorly Useless content, you can find the show on Instagram @majorlyuseless

https://www.instagram.com/majorlyuseless/

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PRIMARY TEXTS COVERED (in order)

Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel

Beloved - Toni Morrison

Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

OTHER WORKS MENTIONED

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

Joseph Anton - Salman Rushdie

REFERENCES

Le Mystère Laïc - Jean Cocteau

Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism in Postmodernist Fiction - Wendy Faris

Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved versus Unresolved Antinomy -  Amaryll Beatrice Chanady

Speaking the Unspoken: Rewriting Identity Loss and Memory of Slavery through Magical Realism in Toni Morrison’s Beloved -  Md Abu Abdullah

Privileging Oddity and Otherness: A Study of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore - Rasleena Thakur and Vani Khurana

AUDIO SAMPLES

Salman Rushdie on Magical Realism: True Stories Don't Tell the Whole Truth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZtdhLndVYg

Narcos Season 01 Episode 03:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG852G-pDS4

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Thank you for listening to another episode of Majorly Useless: A Philosophy and Literature Podcast.

Welcome back to yet another episode of Majorly Useless: A Philosophy and Literature Podcast.

This week's episode will be covering the work of philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo, specifically his 1734 PhD thesis: On the Apathy of the Human Mind.

For more Majorly Useless content, you can find the show on Instagram @MajorlyUseless.

RESOURCES

Anton Wilhelm Amo: Introduction & English Translation by Dwight K. Lewis Jr.

https://www.academia.edu/32648027/Anton_Wilhelm_Amo_Introduction_and_English_Translation

Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body, Edited and Translated by Stephen Menn and Justin E. H. Smith

https://www.bookdepository.com/Anton-Wilhelm-Amos-Philosophical-Dissertations-on-Mind-Body-Stephen-Menn/9780197501627

A. W. Amo: First Great Black Man of Letters by Reginald Bess. A journal article from the Journal of Black Studies

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2784391?read-now=1&seq=1

Note: Even if you don’t have an institution login, this article is accessible with a free JSTOR account. You get up to 100 free articles per month.

Anton Wilhelm Amo, A Black Philosopher in 18th Century Europe by Temitope Ajileye

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it made sense that this ep should look at the poem that might be responsible for it all, The Parliament of Fowles by medieval English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. 

This ep will cover a brief history of Valentine's Day, the poem itself, and whether or not it's the reason we celebrate Valentine's Day today. 

Find the show on Instagram @majorlyuseless. 

RESOURCES

Read The Parliament of Fowls in Middle English: http://www.librarius.com/parliamentfs.htm

Read The Parliament of Fowls in Modern English: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/English/Fowls.php

Listen to The Parliament of Fowls in Middle English: https://youtu.be/4O_ztmu1FxE

Thank you for listening to Majorly Useless: A Philosophy and Literature Podcast, new episodes drop every second Tuesday.