WFHB

Today we offer a repeat of our interview with Rebekah Sheldon, author of The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe. This was a live show recorded in our studios. I have taken the opportunity to update our underwriting as well as adjust the sound mix.

The TOPICS discussed in the program might now have more resonance than even in 2017 as we can now add a pandemic to the list.

* Figurations of the child, the reproductive woman, the future, and the planet under global warming.

* Against survivalism (and literary environmentalism) and “reproductive futurism” and how the “child” is made central to those political articulations in the Anthropocene.

* What we mean when we talk about the human and how this is changing in the face of the unleashed energies of climate change; the death of “humanism.”

* Somatic Capitalism as “the way of all flesh.”

Sheldon explores representations of this perilous future and the new figurations of the child that have arisen in response to it. Analyzing catastrophe discourse from the 1960s to the present—books by Joanna Russ, Margaret Atwood, and Cormac McCarthy; films and television series including Southland Tales, Battlestar Galactica, and Children of Men; and popular environmentalism—Sheldon finds the child standing in the place of the human species, coordinating its safe passage into the future through the promise of one more generation. Yet, she contends, the child figure emerges bound to the very forces of nonhuman vitality he was forged to contain.

GUEST

Rebekah Sheldon is an assistant professor in the English Department at Indiana University in Bloomington. Her critical work focuses on American literature and culture, with particular emphasis on speculative and science fiction and also queer theory, childhood studies, speculative philosophy, and feminist new materialism. Her first book is The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2016, which considers the child figure under conditions of environmental threat.

Live Version: In the Name of the Future

RELATED

Somatic Capitalism: Reproduction, Futurity, and Feminist Science Fiction by Rebekah Sheldon

Double Agency: Knowledge | Performativity by Rebekah Sheldon

A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway (pdf)

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin

MUSIC

The Postal Service, “We Will Become Silhouettes”

The Decembrists, “The Calamity Song”

Tom Waits, “The Earth Died Screaming”

Daft Punk, “Technologic”

The Beatles, “Tomorrow Never Knows”

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Studio Engineer: Bryce Martin

Executive Producer: Kade Young

Today we offer a repeat of our interview with Rebekah Sheldon, author of The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe. This was a live show recorded in our studios. I have taken the opportunity to update our underwriting as well as adjust the sound mix.

The TOPICS discussed in the program might now have more resonance than even in 2017 as we can now add a pandemic to the list.

* Figurations of the child, the reproductive woman, the future, and the planet under global warming.

* Against survivalism (and literary environmentalism) and "reproductive futurism" and how the "child" is made central to those political articulations in the Anthropocene.

* What we mean when we talk about the human and how this is changing in the face of the unleashed energies of climate change; the death of "humanism."

* Somatic Capitalism as "the way of all flesh."

Sheldon explores representations of this perilous future and the new figurations of the child that have arisen in response to it. Analyzing catastrophe discourse from the 1960s to the present—books by Joanna Russ, Margaret Atwood, and Cormac McCarthy; films and television series including Southland Tales, Battlestar Galactica, and Children of Men; and popular environmentalism—Sheldon finds the child standing in the place of the human species, coordinating its safe passage into the future through the promise of one more generation. Yet, she contends, the child figure emerges bound to the very forces of nonhuman vitality he was forged to contain.

GUEST

Rebekah Sheldon is an assistant professor in the English Department at Indiana University in Bloomington. Her critical work focuses on American literature and culture, with particular emphasis on speculative and science fiction and also queer theory, childhood studies, speculative philosophy, and feminist new materialism. Her first book is The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2016, which considers the child figure under conditions of environmental threat.

Live Version: In the Name of the Future

RELATED

Somatic Capitalism: Reproduction, Futurity, and Feminist Science Fiction by Rebekah Sheldon

Double Agency: Knowledge | Performativity by Rebekah Sheldon

A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway (pdf)

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin

MUSIC

The Postal Service, "We Will Become Silhouettes"

The Decembrists, "The Calamity Song"

Tom Waits, "The Earth Died Screaming"

Daft Punk, "Technologic"

The Beatles, "Tomorrow Never Knows"

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Studio Engineer: Bryce Martin

Executive Producer: Kade Young

We open with the first movement of Beethoven’s “Tempest,” or Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, composed in 1802, performed here by Glen Gould on March 19, 1967 on the television program “Music For a Sunday Afternoon.”

We read ourselves in Shakespeare’s Tempest – not only can we chart our sociological course by surveying productions of the play, but we, each of us, expose our notions of gender, politics, and race, when we open our mouths in interpretation. I certainly do.

The play upends or reverses our understanding time and again. A shipwreck that is not a shipwreck restores to order a broken ship of state. But what is revealed by the main action of the play is the rot at the core of that ship. It is made to forever founder.

This play gives us the great sorcerer, or White Mage, Prospero, who through the power of his magic or art (a kind of burgeoning science) achieves one such “restoration” of political and worldly power. But it’s the nature of that “art” that must be called into question and challenged. That’s our task today.

GUEST

Our guest for the hour is Helen C. Scott, associate professor in the department of English at the University of Vermont, and author of Shakespeare’s Tempest and Capitalism: The Storm of History, published by Routledge.

Scott’s book tracks the way productions of the play reveal the politics of each successive age – how to some Prospero is the benevolent mage of the liberal arts and yet to others he is a colonizer and slave master; a philosopher king and harbinger of scientific progress who is revealed to be nothing but the thief of natural resources and labor power.

Through this short play we can interrogate so many ideas: the nature and order or worldly power and those who dominate and those who are oppressed; enslavement, dispossession, torture, the right of conquest and imperial projects; the application of science, and the use of bodies as productive labor and reproductive labor. And finally we are confronted with all of life’s impermanence and how it drives humanity toward meaning.

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

RELATED

Full Text of The Tempest

Such Stuff: Henry Woronicz on The Tempest

On the Concept of History (1940) by Walter Benjamin

AUDIO CLIPS

Marianne Faithfull – “Full Fathom Five” (Ariel)

Naxos Production of The Tempest (Boatswain, Prospero, Miranda, Caliban)

George Schaefer Showcase Theatre presentation of The Tempest (Caliban)

MUSIC

Beethoven – “Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2,” performed by Glenn Gould

Miles Davies Quintet – “The Sorcerer”

Albert Ayler – “The Wizard”

Charles Mingus – “Haitian Fight Song”

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Executive Producer: Kade Young

We open with the first movement of Beethoven’s "Tempest," or Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, composed in 1802, performed here by Glen Gould on March 19, 1967 on the television program "Music For a Sunday Afternoon.”

We read ourselves in Shakespeare’s Tempest - not only can we chart our sociological course by surveying productions of the play, but we, each of us, expose our notions of gender, politics, and race, when we open our mouths in interpretation. I certainly do.

The play upends or reverses our understanding time and again. A shipwreck that is not a shipwreck restores to order a broken ship of state. But what is revealed by the main action of the play is the rot at the core of that ship. It is made to forever founder.

This play gives us the great sorcerer, or White Mage, Prospero, who through the power of his magic or art (a kind of burgeoning science) achieves one such “restoration” of political and worldly power. But it’s the nature of that “art” that must be called into question and challenged. That's our task today.

GUEST

Our guest for the hour is Helen C. Scott, associate professor in the department of English at the University of Vermont, and author of Shakespeare’s Tempest and Capitalism: The Storm of History, published by Routledge.

Scott’s book tracks the way productions of the play reveal the politics of each successive age - how to some Prospero is the benevolent mage of the liberal arts and yet to others he is a colonizer and slave master; a philosopher king and harbinger of scientific progress who is revealed to be nothing but the thief of natural resources and labor power.

Through this short play we can interrogate so many ideas: the nature and order or worldly power and those who dominate and those who are oppressed; enslavement, dispossession, torture, the right of conquest and imperial projects; the application of science, and the use of bodies as productive labor and reproductive labor. And finally we are confronted with all of life’s impermanence and how it drives humanity toward meaning.

The Sleep of Caliban,Odilon Redon. 1895-1900

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

RELATED

Full Text of The Tempest

Such Stuff: Henry Woronicz on The Tempest

On the Concept of History (1940) by Walter Benjamin

AUDIO CLIPS

Marianne Faithfull - "Full Fathom Five" (Ariel)

Naxos Production of The Tempest (Boatswain, Prospero, Miranda, Caliban)

George Schaefer Showcase Theatre presentation of The Tempest (Caliban)

MUSIC

Beethoven - "Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2," performed by Glenn Gould

Miles Davies Quintet - "The Sorcerer"

Albert Ayler - "The Wizard"

Charles Mingus - "Haitian Fight Song"

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Executive Producer: Kade Young

As we face a pandemic that has created a kind of general strike we need to think about organizing our lives differently. Today’s Interchange offers a class perspective to stand against the capitalism that offers only destruction for so many of us.

***

We begin with exploitation and expropriation: Capitalism’s twin pillars of abuse and theft–and how this frames and limits the ways humans can even conceive of alternative ways of organizing society. We then move quickly to the necessity of envisioning and propounding a very anti-capitalist set of essential positions through which we might begin to understand how the very American and very powerful myth of individualism keeps us separated from a much needed working class solidarity. Our lives depend on that solidarity.

GUEST

Michael D. Yates began a University teaching career in Economics at the University of Pittsburgh’s satellite campus at Johnstown in the mid-70s where he participated in union organizing activities, first with the maintenance and custodial workers on campus and then with the teachers. He traveled all over the state of Pennsylvania and into West Virginia and Ohio, educating workers about labor unions, their right to form a union, and economics. He taught for many years in the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where his students were union officers and members.

RELATED

Exploitation and Expropriation, or Why Capitalism Must be Attacked with Equal Force on Every Front by Michael Yates

Michael Yates on Labor Education (A 5-Part Series)

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About the Economy (Interchange)

Labor Strikes Are Essential History (Interchange)

Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)

Richmond Progressive Alliance

MUSIC

All songs by The Redskins off of Neither Washington Nor Moscow (1986)

“Reds Strike the Blues”

“Go Get Organized”

“Turnin’ Loose”

“Keep On Keepin’ On”

“Lean On Me”

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Executive Producer: Kade Young

As we face a pandemic that has created a kind of general strike we need to think about organizing our lives differently. Today's Interchange offers a class perspective to stand against the capitalism that offers only destruction for so many of us.

***

We begin with exploitation and expropriation: Capitalism’s twin pillars of abuse and theft--and how this frames and limits the ways humans can even conceive of alternative ways of organizing society. We then move quickly to the necessity of envisioning and propounding a very anti-capitalist set of essential positions through which we might begin to understand how the very American and very powerful myth of individualism keeps us separated from a much needed working class solidarity. Our lives depend on that solidarity.

GUEST

Michael D. Yates began a University teaching career in Economics at the University of Pittsburgh’s satellite campus at Johnstown in the mid-70s where he participated in union organizing activities, first with the maintenance and custodial workers on campus and then with the teachers. He traveled all over the state of Pennsylvania and into West Virginia and Ohio, educating workers about labor unions, their right to form a union, and economics. He taught for many years in the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where his students were union officers and members.

Antonio Berni | La gran ilusión (The Grand Illusion), 1962, mixed media, approx. 8 x 8 feet, MALBA, Buenos Aires.

RELATED

Exploitation and Expropriation, or Why Capitalism Must be Attacked with Equal Force on Every Front by Michael Yates

Michael Yates on Labor Education (A 5-Part Series)

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About the Economy (Interchange)

Labor Strikes Are Essential History (Interchange)

Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)

Richmond Progressive Alliance

MUSIC

All songs by The Redskins off of Neither Washington Nor Moscow (1986)

"Reds Strike the Blues"

"Go Get Organized"

"Turnin’ Loose"

"Keep On Keepin' On"

"Lean On Me"

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Executive Producer: Kade Young

Carol Gilligan is very well-known for having authored the influential feminist classic In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development published in 1982. This centered on a critique of the then current theories of moral development which literally excluded the study of girls and women and simply assumed studying boys and men would suffice to give the whole picture. Within this framework, women were found inferior and their moral landscape less sophisticated than that of men. Carol Gilligan showed how wrong that was and how much psychology has been a field for patriarchal explanations of human behavior. And she has continued showing us very clearly the sites of disruption, the when and the where that the codes and scripts of patriarchy overwhelm our own voices.

For today’s show we focus on Gilligan’s two recent books, both out from Polity Press. These are Joining the Resistance and Why Does Patriarchy Persist?, this last co-authored with Naomi Snider.

Gilligan continues to focus on the speaking voice and insists that fostering the space for this voice is essential for democracy, care, and love…all of which might be considered as aspects of what is best in the beings we call humans.

But let’s give Gilligan and Snider the floor:

Our book begins from the observation that patriarchal codes of masculine honor and feminine goodness enforce a sacrifice of love for hierarchy. Think of the biblical Abraham, willing to sacrifice his son Isaac to prove his devotion to God. Patriarchy hinges on our willingness to make a similar sacrifice—to override authentic connection and love – which hinge on mutual recognition and respect – for the sake of securing our position within the existing hierarchy of privilege and power. A boy, seeking to establish himself as a real boy or a manly man, needs to cover his “feminine” qualities by hiding his tenderness and disavowing his desire for someone to be there for him. A girl who wants to be seen as a “good girl” or the kind of girl or woman others want to be with needs to silence the voice that says what she really thinks and feels.

Contrary to popular belief, this sacrifice of connection for the sake of hierarchy is neither inevitable or natural.

GUEST

Carol Gilligan is an American feminist psychologist who has transformed the way we think about women and men and the relations between them. Currently a professor at New York University, in 1982 she published her ground-breaking book In a Different Voice. Her more recent work has focused on the implications of human relationships and gender for citizenship, emphasizing that a sensitive appreciation of gender development can open up a more humane way of thinking about personal and political relationships. Books discussed: The Birth of Pleasure(Knopf, 2002), Joining the Resistance (Polity, 2011), Why Does Patriarchy Persist?, with Naomi Snider (Polity, 2018).

RELATED

Carefully Smash the Patriarchy (NYT)

Still Face Experiment: Dr. Edward Tronick (YouTube)

“In a Different Voice”: Act II, by Carol Gilligan

A Revolutionary “New Truth” for America: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, with Carol Gilligan.

MUSIC

The Raincoats – “No One’s Little Girl”

The Bags – “Babylonian Gorgon”

Mecca Normal – “Man Thinks Woman”

The Brat – “Attitudes”

CREDITS

Carol Gilligan is very well-known for having authored the influential feminist classic In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development published in 1982. This centered on a critique of the then current theories of moral development which literally excluded the study of girls and women and simply assumed studying boys and men would suffice to give the whole picture. Within this framework, women were found inferior and their moral landscape less sophisticated than that of men. Carol Gilligan showed how wrong that was and how much psychology has been a field for patriarchal explanations of human behavior. And she has continued showing us very clearly the sites of disruption, the when and the where that the codes and scripts of patriarchy overwhelm our own voices.

For today’s show we focus on Gilligan’s two recent books, both out from Polity Press. These are Joining the Resistance and Why Does Patriarchy Persist?, this last co-authored with Naomi Snider.

Gilligan continues to focus on the speaking voice and insists that fostering the space for this voice is essential for democracy, care, and love…all of which might be considered as aspects of what is best in the beings we call humans.

But let’s give Gilligan and Snider the floor:

Our book begins from the observation that patriarchal codes of masculine honor and feminine goodness enforce a sacrifice of love for hierarchy. Think of the biblical Abraham, willing to sacrifice his son Isaac to prove his devotion to God. Patriarchy hinges on our willingness to make a similar sacrifice—to override authentic connection and love – which hinge on mutual recognition and respect – for the sake of securing our position within the existing hierarchy of privilege and power. A boy, seeking to establish himself as a real boy or a manly man, needs to cover his “feminine” qualities by hiding his tenderness and disavowing his desire for someone to be there for him. A girl who wants to be seen as a “good girl” or the kind of girl or woman others want to be with needs to silence the voice that says what she really thinks and feels.

Contrary to popular belief, this sacrifice of connection for the sake of hierarchy is neither inevitable or natural.

GUEST

Carol Gilligan is an American feminist psychologist who has transformed the way we think about women and men and the relations between them. Currently a professor at New York University, in 1982 she published her ground-breaking book In a Different Voice. Her more recent work has focused on the implications of human relationships and gender for citizenship, emphasizing that a sensitive appreciation of gender development can open up a more humane way of thinking about personal and political relationships. Books discussed: The Birth of Pleasure (Knopf, 2002), Joining the Resistance (Polity, 2011), Why Does Patriarchy Persist?, with Naomi Snider (Polity, 2018).

RELATED

Carefully Smash the Patriarchy (NYT)

Still Face Experiment: Dr. Edward Tronick (YouTube)

“In a Different Voice”: Act II, by Carol Gilligan

A Revolutionary “New Truth” for America: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, with Carol Gilligan.

MUSIC

The Raincoats – “No One’s Little Girl”

The Bags – “Babylonian Gorgon”

Mecca Normal – “Man Thinks Woman”

Today we look at the local effects of COVID-19 in and around the major cities of Italy and then we’ll widen our view to try to see the socio-political impacts of governmentality in the face of a crisis like a pandemic. Using both lenses we hope to find a focus that often escapes us when confronting the global and seemingly diffuse catastrophe of climate disruption in the capitalocene, out of which this novel coronavirus comes.

Last week we discussed positions on separation with philosopher Frédéric Neyrat: one can support social distancing while choosing to be against the separations brought by scapegoating others and deploying divisive politics. Neyrat suggests the most important separation can be the one we make from the current capitalist economic and ideological systems that have brought us this virus.

Today we consider a related notion – abandonment. This is another term freighted with contradictions. In the great essay Circles, Emerson tells us that “The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves…and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle….The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.”

Some of us have long been abandoned; new groups will now be abandoned. Some of us will choose abandonment. Some of us will find new and different chains around our necks and ankles. There is no going back. Let the golden age begin.

We begin with Andrea Ciccerelli on what’s happening in Italy by way of his home in Bloomington, Indiana via the social distancing option of internet communication tools.

GUESTS

Andrea Ciccarelli is Provost Professor of French and Italian at Indiana University. His work focuses on the concepts of migration, exile and borders in Italian literature and culture, as well as on the historical, artistic and cultural effects of 1968 on Italy. Ciccarelli is from Rome where his brother and his family live and he has relatives in the Milan area, two of whom are doctors who have been battling the disease.

Ian Alan Paul is an artist and theorist whose work examines instantiations of power and practices of resistance in global contexts. Their projects are formally diverse, often making use of text, photography, video, and code. Over the course of their life, Ian Paul has lived, taught, and worked for extended periods in the United States, Mexico, Spain, Egypt, and Palestine, and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.

RELATED

The Choice of Separation: On the Locally Global COVID-19

Shooting the Gulf: Allan Sekula In the American Grain

Ten Premises For A Pandemic by Ian Alan Paul

The Corona Reboot by Ian Alan Paul

11 countries are now using people’s phones to track the coronavirus pandemic (Business Insider)

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

MUSIC

Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi – “Spring”

Ahmad Jamal – “I Remember Italy”

Tom Waits – “You Can Never Hold Back Spring”

An exhausted nurse. Courtesy of Andrea Ciccarelli.Today we look at the local effects of COVID-19 in and around the major cities of Italy and then we’ll widen our view to try to see the socio-political impacts of governmentality in the face of a crisis like a pandemic. Using both lenses we hope to find a focus that often escapes us when confronting the global and seemingly diffuse catastrophe of climate disruption in the capitalocene, out of which this novel coronavirus comes.

Last week we discussed positions on separation with philosopher Frédéric Neyrat: one can support social distancing while choosing to be against the separations brought by scapegoating others and deploying divisive politics. Neyrat suggests the most important separation can be the one we make from the current capitalist economic and ideological systems that have brought us this virus.

Today we consider a related notion - abandonment. This is another term freighted with contradictions. In the great essay Circles, Emerson tells us that “The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves...and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle….The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.”

Some of us have long been abandoned; new groups will now be abandoned. Some of us will choose abandonment. Some of us will find new and different chains around our necks and ankles. There is no going back. Let the golden age begin.

We begin with Andrea Ciccerelli on what’s happening in Italy by way of his home in Bloomington, Indiana via the social distancing option of internet communication tools.

GUESTS

Andrea Ciccarelli is Provost Professor of French and Italian at Indiana University. His work focuses on the concepts of migration, exile and borders in Italian literature and culture, as well as on the historical, artistic and cultural effects of 1968 on Italy. Ciccarelli is from Rome where his brother and his family live and he has relatives in the Milan area, two of whom are doctors who have been battling the disease.

Ian Alan Paul is an artist and theorist whose work examines instantiations of power and practices of resistance in global contexts. Their projects are formally diverse, often making use of text, photography, video, and code. Over the course of their life, Ian Paul has lived, taught, and worked for extended periods in the United States, Mexico, Spain, Egypt, and Palestine, and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.

RELATED

The Choice of Separation: On the Locally Global COVID-19

Shooting the Gulf: Allan Sekula In the American Grain

Ten Premises For A Pandemic by Ian Alan Paul

The Corona Reboot by Ian Alan Paul

11 countries are now using people's phones to track the coronavirus pandemic (Business Insider)

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

MUSIC

Winston "Mankunku" Ngozi - "Spring"

Ahmad Jamal - "I Remember Italy"