Overthink

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

Thou shalt not miss this episode! In episode 173 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about theft. They discuss our moral intuitions around theft, how feudalism and capitalism may be founded upon an original (and large scale) act that of theft, and the gendered association between kleptomania and women. They also critique the lack of legal repercussions for tech companies that steal information to train new AI models. Finally, they look at representations of theft and capital in film and television. What does the move from heist films to grift docudramas say about 21st century capitalism? And why do we love to take the side of thieves? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss the ethics of stealing from large corporations.

Go to Quince.com/overthink for free shipping on your orders and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Go to Rula.com/overthink for convenient therapy that’s covered by insurance.Works Discussed:Elaine Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department StoreAnna Kornbluh “Falling Heists, Rising Grift: Filming Capital in the Already Long Twenty-First Century”Robert Nichols, Theft Is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory

Highlight: Expropriation

* Expropriation essentially refers to the fact that the sovereign has the right to appropriate property for the common good

* All the land in a kingdom belongs to the king, so they can do whatever they want with it

* There were still some limits to expropriation, even within the feudal system

* Expropriation had to:

* Be for the common good

* Lead to fair compensation of the impacted parties

* If those two conditions aren’t met, then the expropriation is not justified

* Nowadays, we usually use the term eminent domain for this concept

* There is a legal process laid out for what the state should pay in exchange for private land

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

Does decolonization require violence? In episode 172 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a closer look at Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, “the bible of decolonization.” They discuss Fanon’s bold stance on violence, his condemnation of rituals and dance, and some potential criticisms. They also question what the subjectivity of colonized people looks like given colonialism’s psycho-affective effects. What does violence do for the colonized? Who gets liberation movements off the ground? And what are the challenges that a newly independent nation might face once a colonial power has been overthrown? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts talk about Fanon’s critique of Africanism and some of the clinical cases Fanon incorporates into this important work.Go to Quince.com/overthink for free shipping on your orders and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Go to Rula.com/overthink for convenient therapy that’s covered by insurance.

Works Discussed:

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of The Earth

Concerning Violence (2014)

Highlight: Decolonization and Violence

* Franz Fanon argues that decolonization is always violent and there’s no negotiating with a colonial power

* Colonialism is violent in three ways:

* Economic: resource extraction

* Physical: military rule and respression

* Mental: the dehumanization of the colonized

* For Fanon, the violence against the colonizer is restorative since it gives back the humanity that colonialism stole and gives the colonized more agency

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

Bottom, rump, booty, fanny, tush, and derriere! In episode 171 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about butts. Why do humans have bigger rear ends than other animals? Why are butts often seen as a site of aversion? And is anal sex a metaphor for the universe? They discuss the evolutionary history of butts, how the music industry helped normalize bigger butts, and how the exploitation of Sara Baartman in the 19th century is part of a larger story about the sexualization of black women. In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts talk about Marquis de Sade’s discussion of anal sex and appeals to nature in justifications of human sexual practices.

Works Discussed:

Georges Bataille, “The Solar Anus”

Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?”

Janell Hobson, “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture”

Dinah Holtzman, “Ass You Lick It: Bey and Jay Eat Cake”

Sadiah Qureshi, “Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’.”

Heather Radke, Butts: A Backstory

Christopher Wallner et al, “Interethnic Influencing Factors Regarding Buttocks Body Image in Women from Nigeria, Germany, USA and Japan”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

The discourse around today's crisis of care responds to the shredding of America's social safety net, but leaves out the most vulnerable almost entirely. In episode 170 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss how this works with Premilla Nadasen, author of Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. They discuss how gender fits into the care industry, the harms of associating care work with emotion, and how the practice of care has been commodified. How is it that we deny the most basic care from those who need it most? What are the harms of framing care workers as family members? And how has racial capitalism produced the explosion of the care economy that we're seeing today? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts think about the distinction between the practice of care and care itself and how labor workers can learn from care workers in their modes of organizing.

Works Discussed:

Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart

Premilla Nadasen, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

Highlight: Racial Capitalism and Care

* Premilla Nadasen highlighted several points where racial capitalism is useful for understanding care

* Racial capitalism = there is not capitalism without racism and in order to even understand capitalism, we must think about race

* The care system is inequitable

* Lower-class people have few care services and support than those with more privilege

* Tends to be people of color, especially women of color, unhoused people, unemployed people, single mothers, formerly incarcerated people, etc.

* As Nadasen says, “there is a racial hierarchy in terms of how we understand poverty and who as access to care support systems and who does not.”

* She also explains that the care economy is profit extraction from life

* Companies (e.g. healthcare, education, housing) make money off of our desire and need to care for ourselves and others

* Slavery, as Nadasen argues, is the best example of this point

* Beyond just labor exploitation, there were insurance companies, slave holders, and shipping companies that profited from life and the care economy

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

With the rise of hustle culture, the grind, and capitalist productivity, we often associate discipline with toxicity. But is there still value in disciplining oneself? In episode 169 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a disciplined approach to this question and more! They discuss modern culture’s rejection of discipline and how this manifests on the left vs the right, the association between discipline and punishment, and Michel Foucault’s seminal ideas on disciplinary power. How can we discipline children without resorting to punishment? And are there models of self-discipline that aren’t rooted in punishment of the self? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss Sandra Bartky’s argument that gender norms are a modern form of disciplinary power.

Works Discussed:

Joan E. Durrant and Ashley Stewart-Tufescu. “What is “Discipline” in the Age of Children’s Rights?.”

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality

Adekunle A. Ibrahim and Philomena A. Ojomo. “Discipline and Punishment in Schools: A Philosophical Appraisal.”

Go to Rula.com/overthink for convenient therapy that’s covered by insurance.

Head to AquaTru.com now and get 20% off your purifier using promocode O-V-E-R-T-H-I-N-K AquaTru even comes with a 30-day best-tasting water guarantee or your money back.

Highlight: Foucault on Self-discipline

* Can we discipline the self and to what extent is self-discipline different from punishment?

* We associate discipline with punishment, resulting in an immediate averse reaction to it

* Discipline may even seem worse when it’s self imposed

* However, there are models of self-discipline that do not suggest punishment of the self

* Foucault’s writings on antiquity explore the notion of self-discipline and how subjects throughout history have carried out different projects that require serious training, commitment, and self exertion to discipline their minds and bodies

* He uses the Greek term askesis, meaning an exercise or a mode of training that would allow the self to give form to their subjectivity through the application of a certain kind of force

* We are always forming the subjects that we are through these self-directed forms of discipline

You often hear people say “everything is political” and political disagreements feel like a fight. But what if our obsession with debate and rational argumentation is actually making polarization worse?

Drawing on Sarah Stein Lubrano's Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds, David explains how endless social media debates cause people to dig their heels in and what we need to do instead. This video was inspired by our episode with Sarah Stein Lubrano which you can find here.

If you have more questions for Ellie & David, we’d love to hear them! Whether it’s inspired by one of our episodes, something you’ve been reading, or a random thought you had, anything is welcome :) Leave a comment, or, if you’re a paid subscriber, drop them in our exclusive subscribe chat!

We’ll see you on Tuesday for our next episode ;)

Love, Overthink

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

Why do we seek to escape from ourselves? In episode 168 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a closer look at Emmanuel Levinas’s article “On Escape.” They discuss Levinas’s claim that escape is central to the human condition and explore what exactly we try to escape from and escape to. They explain how this aspect of human existence is crystallized by our experiences of need, pleasure, and even nausea. Are we condemned to being needy beings? How does Levinas’s view of shame put him at a distance from Sartre? And is Levinas right that to be a human is to never be at peace with oneself? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss why escape is the condition of our time and critique Levinas’s reading of idealism.

Go to Rula.com/overthink for convenient therapy that’s covered by insurance.

Head to AirDoctorPro.com and use promo code OVERTHINK to get UP TO $300 off today! AirDoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, plus a 3-year warranty—an $84 value, free!

Works Discussed:

Emmanuel Levinas, “On Escape”Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Highlight: Levinas on the Human Condition

* Levinas believes that being human means not being at peace with yourself

* David mentions two important terms to understanding Levinas:

* Escape

* We, by our very nature, are constantly seeking to escape who and what we are

* Impotence

* We seek to escape, but we fail every time

* We’re left with the combination of desire and a yearning for departure that can never come to fruition

* This was a very basic introduction, so listen to the episode to hear Ellie & David grapple with more of Levinas’s ideas :)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

Are some people born evil, or are we all capable of evil acts? In episode 167 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about all things evil. They think through the characterization of evil in Disney films, Leibniz’s best of all possible worlds theory, the conflation of evil with badness, and Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. How does Manichaeism attempt to resolve the problem of evil? Is evil simply the lack of good in the world? And does the concept of evil still have relevance in an age of secular ethics or is the concept too weighed down by its own theological past? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss evil people and how we might categorize them.

Works Discussed:

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt, “Nightmare and Flight”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Paul Formosa, “The Problems with Evil”

Paul Formosa, “A Conception of Evil”

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy

Gavin Rae, Evil in the Western Philosophical Tradition

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

Content warning: this episode involves discussion of sexual violence and sexual assault.

Can pornography be liberating or does it just promote the hatred of women? In episode 165 of Overthink Ellie and David discuss pornography. They talk about the feminist ‘sex wars’ and the pro-porn and anti-porn views that emerged from it. They talk about how the figure of the porn star has changed in the era of OnlyFans, and how porn blends sex with visuality. How might porn endanger women as a class? Can sex in pornography be considered art? And are AI and deepfakes enhancing the harms of pornography? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts chat about Heated Rivalry and discuss the relationship between art and porn.

Go to Quince.com/overthink for free shipping on your orders and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance.

Head to AirDoctorPro.com and use promo code OVERTHINK to get UP TO $300 off today! AirDoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, plus a 3-year warranty—an $84 value, free!

Works Discussed:

 Laura Bates, The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny

Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women

Catharine MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination

Oriana Small, Girlvert: A Porno Memoir

Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex

Highlight: Catharine MacKinnon

* Mackinnon was an anti-pornography American lawyer, feminist activist, and legal scholar who famously wrote Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination

* She also was friends and worked with Andrea Dworkin

* She criticized pornography through the lens of anti-discrimination law

* Mackinnon argues that pornography violates the rights of women as a protected class

* Based off Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, she contends that sexual harassment is to sex what separate but equal was to race

* Sexual harassment in the workplace is a violation because it infringes upon women’s rights

* She makes the same argument about pornography

* By eroticizing the abuse, humiliation, and domination of women, pornography harms women as a class and locks them into a position of social inequality