State of the Theory

This is Episode 77 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

This week we discuss prizes – as the Booker and the Nobel both announce this year’s winners, we think of the role awards play in a capitalist economy. Do prizes help spread privilege, or do they reinforce privilege? Does “trickle-down” work when it comes to award-recognition and representation? And, perhaps most of all, why do we still care about prizes in the first place?

You can read about Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood winning the Booker here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/15/booker-winners-bernardine-evaristo-margaret-atwood-rule-breaking

You can read about Abhijeet Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer winning the Nobel Prize in Economics here: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/nobel-economics-prize-for-2019-awarded-to-abhijit-banerjee-esther-duflo-michael-kremer-for-studies-on-poverty/story-TgkwgPUwOcvYbmo4xob1lO.html

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 76 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

This week we are excited by the return of “Spitting Image” (https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/sep/28/spitting-image-returns-chaotic-times-trump-putin-zuckerberg) and think about what makes effective satire. What is the relationship between satire and time, and why does some satire age well, while others don’t? What is the point of satire anyway?

You can watch the “Going for an English” sketch from “Goodness Gracious Me” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huSP7PtctC4

You can watch the “Delhi Mail” sketch from “Goodness Gracious Me” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7nU2a23m9o

You can listen to “The Post 9/11 Blues” by Riz MC here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKTsJpfC0IQ

You can listen to “Send the Marines” by Tom Lehrer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFvxqQTh3m4

You can listen to “National Brotherhood Week” by Tom Lehrer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgASBVMyVFI

You can watch “Black Jeopardy” with Tom Hanks on “Saturday Night Live” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7VaXlMvAvk

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 75 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

Here we do a callback to Episode 37: Mindhunting with Foucault, in which we use the theories of Michel Foucault to analyse the Netflix show "Mindhunters". Now that Netflix has released the second season of the show, we return to these theories to think about what has changed in the second season, and how it finds ways of testing the limits of the categories that it has created.

You can watch the Ed Kemper comparison video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDYBmNYc8IA

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 74 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

In the middle of the possible impeachment of Donald Trump, Penguin Random House has released the nine-page letter from the anonymous CIA whistleblower as an audio book, which you can listen to hear (https://soundcloud.com/penguin-audio/the-whistle-blower-complaint-released-by-the-house-intelligence-committee-9262019) This got us thinking about the importance of ritualised performance in our democracy. We talk about the performance of the Chilcot Report in Edinburgh in August 2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/aug/09/comedians-begin-edinburgh-recital-of-chilcot-report-iraq-out-and-loud) and the dramatization of the Muller report (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/its-the-end-of-my-presidency-movie-stars-channel-mueller)

We use J.L. Austin, Mikhail Bakhtin and Victor Turner to think about the importance of performance, and its connection to our body politic.

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 73 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

In this episode, we continue our discussion about climate change and political activism from last week, and talk about teenage political activism. Focussing on Greta Thunberg, Emma Gonzalez and Malala Yousafzai, we interrogate the position occupied by these young women, and how their political activism is received and consumed by an adult world.

You can watch Emma Gonzalez speak at the March for our Lives rally here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u46HzTGVQhg

You can watch Greta Thunberg speak at the United Nations here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW3IQ-ke43w

Our thanks to Dr Peter Mackay (@PadraigMacaoidh) for supplying some really useful ideas for this episode.

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 72 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

In this episode, we talk about the climate change and political activism, and discuss what appears to us to be the strengths and the weaknesses of the Extinction Rebellion movement. We ask: what should be the relationship between the human and non-human, and who should have priority?

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 71 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

In this episode, recorded on 5 July, we talk about the recent controversy arising from the decision to cast Halle Bailey (a black actor) in the role of Ariel in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. We use this story to explore the role of race and gender in the politics of casting.

We refer to this twitter thread about the diversity in the ways in which mermaids have been represented through history: https://twitter.com/erik_kaars/status/1146690062182232065

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 70 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

In this episode, recorded on 30 August, we talk about Boris Johnson’s (Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) decision to prorogue parliament, which will reduce the time parliament has to try to work on a brexit deal. We explore this decision and the reaction to it, and try to understand what it tells us about democracy.

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 69 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

In this episode, we talk about the Indian government’s punitive and military measures in Kashmir. We think about effects of the combination of religious nationalism, racist misogyny and unbridled capitalism on the situation in Kashmir.

#StandWithKashmir #EndKashmirBlockade

We mention the work of Dibyesh Anand: https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/91407/porno-nationalism-and-the-male-subject-an-ethnography-of-hindu-nationalist-imagination-in-india

You can read BBC coverage of allegations of torture by government forces here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49481180

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR)

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors

This is Episode 68 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.

In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

In this episode, we talk about recent and historic controversies about sporting celebrations – from Sourav Ganguly taking his shirt off on the player’s balcony at Lord’s Cricket Ground, to Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe’s celebrations during the 2019 Women’s Football World Cup. We read politics of race, class, and empire into these celebrations and the responses they have elicited in the media.

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick and Anindya Raychaudhuri

Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @drhfitz and @DrAnindyaR