The Intellectual

How do you start collecting objects for a cursed museum? Kasia and Dan spend all of their money in the gift shop of the Museum of Neoliberalism (well, it wouldn’t be a Museum of Neoliberalism if you left with more money than you entered with). They find a world curated by Darren Cullen - artist, activist and collector of some of the most mundanely dystopian objects imaginable. They discover corporate sponsored scout badges, chainsaws for kids and an Amazon employee’s bottle of piss. How can you represent an ideology like neoliberalism that has such far-reaching but poorly understood implications? 

PLUS they look at some of Darren’s own creations that mimic and subvert the horrors of the everyday: ‘baby’s first baby’, the infamous Hell bus, and a mini diorama of an Amazon ‘fulfillment centre’. But don’t worry, there are some blessed objects too - including ‘Don’t talk to them’ placards, that you can download from Darren’s website. The Museum of Neoliberalism is closing in mid-September, get down as soon as you can (and make sure you book!). 

If you want to hear more about Kasia and Dan's thoughts on neoliberalism (particularly in the Labour Party) find them in Rainbow Rhythms and Neoliberal Blues. You can also hear more about playmobil border force and riot cops in our episode on Dystopian Soft Play.

Theme music: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

Special thanks also to Alex Rees, for EQ advice.

In her memoir The Soul of A Woman, the best-selling Chilean author Isabel Allende explores how feminism has shaped her life over the past seven decades. At a very young age, as she raged against her patriarchal, Catholic, conservative family, her mother believed her rebelliousness was caused by a medical condition.

First broadcast in 2021.

Antoine Volodine is the primary pseudonym of a French-Russian writer of many books. The meditative, postapocalyptic noir Mevlido’s Dreams, translated by Gina M. Stamm, is an urgent communiqué from a far-future reality of irreversible environmental damage and civilizational collapse that asks what it means to love and care for others at the end of the world. Here, Stamm is joined in conversation with Joshua Armstrong about translating this key work in Volodine’s post-exotic fictional universe. Access the transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/1d38a405

Gina M. Stamm is assistant professor of French at the University of Alabama.

Joshua Armstrong is associate professor of French at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Mevlido’s Dreams: A Post-Exotic Novel is available from University of Minnesota Press.

“Translator Stamm does an admirable job of rendering Volodine’s serpentine prose in English, and the noirish, surrealist story turns into an unlikely romp as it riffs on the absurdity of 20th-century political institutions and pop culture.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Certainly the strangest and arguably one of the most accomplished contemporary writers of fiction in French, Antoine Volodine has created a vast and perplexing universe of bad dreams in several dozen works under a variety of pseudonyms over the past forty years. Mevlido’s Dreams provides a new pathway into Volodine’s labyrinth, which for all the horrors it recounts is always cast in stylishly crafted prose.”
—David Bellos, Princeton University

If you don't recall the 1976 Denver Olympic Games, it's because they never happened. The Mile-High City won the right to host the winter games and then was forced by Colorado citizens to back away from its successful Olympic bid through a statewide ballot initiative. In The Olympics that Never Happened: Denver '76 and the Politics of Growth (University of Texas Press, 2022) Dr. Adam Berg details the powerful Colorado regime that gained the games for Denver and the grassroots activism that brought down its Olympic dreams, and he explores the legacy of this milestone moment for the games and politics in the United States.

The ink was hardly dry on Denver's host agreement when Mexican American and African American urbanites, white middle-class environmentalists, and fiscally concerned local politicians realised opposition to the Olympics provided them new political openings. The Olympics quickly became a platform for taking stands on a range of issues, from conservation to urban livability to the very idea of growth, which for decades had been unquestioned in Colorado. The Olympics That Never Happened argues that hostility to the Olympics galvanised and empowered diverse citizens in a major US city, with long-term ramifications for Colorado and political activism elsewhere. The Olympics themselves were changed forever, compelling organisers to take seriously competing interests from subgroups within their communities.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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In this episode, Marvin Ester interviews Peter E. Gordon about his new book, 'Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity.' Gordon is the Amabel B. James Professor of History and a faculty affiliate in the Departments of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Government, and Philosophy at Harvard University. In 'Precarious Happiness,' Gordon argues that Theodor W. Adorno's social critique—contrary to what is often assumed—is, in all its ruthlessness, still grounded in the however fragile experience of happiness that hints at an unfulfilled potential for human flourishing.

Peter E. Gordon, A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity, The University of Chicago Press, 320 pages, 2023.

Peter E. Gordon, Prekäres Glück: Adorno und die Quellen der Normativität, 470 pages, Suhrkamp, 2023.

In Episode 106 of ⁠A is for Architecture⁠ Sabina Andron talks about her book Urban Surfaces, Graffiti, and the Right to the City, which she published with Routledge this year. 

The book discusses ‘the surfacescapes of our cities […] as material, visual, and legal territories [and] includes a critical history of graffiti and street art as contested surface discourses’ arguing for ‘surfaces as sites of resistance against private property, neoliberal creativity, and the imposition of urban order.’ 

Sabina is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cities and Urbanism at the University of Melbourne and can be found on her personal website, as well as on social media, including  X and Instagram.

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

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Benjamin Moser is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer celebrated for his in-depth studies of literary and cultural figures such as Susan Sontag and Clarice Lispector. His latest book, which details a twenty-year love affair with the Dutch masters, is one of Tyler's favorite books on art criticism ever.

Benjamin joined Tyler to discuss why Vermeer was almost forgotten, how Rembrandt was so productive, what auctions of the old masters reveals about current approaches to painting, why Dutch art hangs best in houses, what makes the Kunstmuseum in the Hague so special, why Dutch students won't read older books, Benjamin's favorite Dutch movie, the tensions within Dutch social tolerance, the joys of living in Utrecht, why Latin Americans make for harder interview subjects, whether Brasilia works as a city, why modernism persisted in Brazil, how to appreciate Clarice Lispector, Susan Sontag's (waning) influence, V.S. Naipaul's mentorship, Houston's intellectual culture, what he's learning next, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded February 15th, 2024.

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Photo Credit: Philippe Quaisse