WFHB

Tim Brennan joined me in the WFHB studio when he was in Bloomington to deliver the lecture “Biopolitics: The Limits of the Liberal Imagination” as a guest of the Contemporary Africa Seminar Speaker Series.

The conversation ranged from the aforementioned biopolitics to seeing the state as a precious and necessary form of human freedom even as we challenge its current form as the handmaiden to corporate power. This state need not be the state.

Brennan says the vital Left of the early 20th century left the political field of play; perhaps driven away by the anti-communism of the US, but in retreat finding a new safe space in the academy. This allowed the Right to demonize the university and the humanities AND actually making use of the discourses of the Left which sprang out of Critical and Literary Theory.

This has led to a Left which undermines its own traditions by promoting a post-humanism that supports authoritarian structures and limiting critique through the project of digital humanities which sets aside human intellection in favor of computing power...with algorithms directing research in the place of the analogizing mind, confirming Freud’s insight in Civilization and Its Discontents, written in 1929:

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times. ... we will not forget that present-day man does not feel happy in his God-like character. (trs, Peter Gay)

Our opening song is "Historicity" by jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer off the album Historicity, recorded in 2008. Iyer accompanies us throughout.

Our GUEST today is Timothy Brennan, Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities at the University of Minnesota and a professor in the departments of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, and English. He’s the author several books, among these are At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now (Harvard UP) and Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right (Columbia UP). His most recent book is Borrowed Light: Vico, Hegel and the Colonies, vol. 1 (Stanford UP). And he has just completed writing an intellectual biography of Edward Said.

RELATED

"The Digital-Humanities Bust" by Timothy Brennan (paywall)

"Left, Right, and Muddle" by Timothy Brennan (paywall)

"Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities" by Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette, David Golumbia

Selling Democracy (Interchange with Guest Wendy Brown)

Vijay Iyer & Rudresh Mahanthappa | photo credit: Bill Douthart

MUSIC - Vijay Iyer

“Historicity” (Historicity)

“Revolutions” (Reimagining)

“Telematic” (Simulated Progress - Fieldwork)

“Forgotten System” (Raw Materials - Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa)

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Executive Producer: Wes Martin

Photo: Still from the 1927 movie Metropolis

Today independent producer and Interchange contributor Dan Young interviews Don Fitz and Stan Cox, two long-time environmental activists and writers. For many years both Fitz and Cox have advocated that solving not just global warming but other major environmental crises will require an overall reduction in the size of economy and industrial production. Now they …

Image via Yeşil Ekonomi KonferansıToday independent producer and Interchange contributor Dan Young interviews Don Fitz and Stan Cox, two long-time environmental activists and writers. For many years both Fitz and Cox have advocated that solving not just global warming but other major environmental crises will require an overall reduction in the size of economy and industrial production. Now they are concerned that the Green New Deal recently introduced in the U.S. Congress is premised in major EXPANSION of industry and the economy. Fitz and Cox feel that this so-called “green growth” would be unlikely to stop global warming, and would only worsen numerous other global environmental crises. Though they support a rapid changeover to renewable energy coupled with economically egalitarian reforms, they believe this needs to come along with a major reduction in industrial production. Some of the potential changes they talk about include a shorter work week and new regulations aimed at eliminating planned obsolescence, that’s when consumer items are manufactured with the intention that they will quickly break and need to be replaced, waste serving profit.

GUESTS

Don Fitz, an Environmental Psychologist in St. Louis, Missouri, has written pieces for Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Green Social Thought, teleSUR, and CounterPunch. He’s on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought and is on the National Committee of The Greens/Green Party USA. He’s produced the show "Green Time" in conjunction with KNLC-TV in the City of St. Louis for over 20 years.

Stan Cox is a senior scientist at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. Before that he was a wheat geneticist in the US Department of Agriculture for 13 years. He has written three books: Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine (Pluto Press, 2008); Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (And Finding News Ways to Get Through the Summer) (The New Press, 2010); and Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing (The New Press, 2013). His articles have appeared in wide range of newspapers and he continues to write about the intersection of environmental, political, and economic issues, most often for Al Jazeera English, AlterNet, CounterPunch, and Green Social Thought.

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H.Res.109 - Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal

That Green Growth at the Heart of the Green New Deal? It’s Malignant by Stan Cox

For Climate Mobilization, Look to 1960s Vietnam Before Turning to 1940s America by Stan Cox

Is nuclear power a solution to the climate crisis? by Don Fitz

How Green Is the Green New Deal? by Don Fitz

MUSIC by The Tallest Man On Earth

“This Wind”

“Shallow Grave”

“Into the Stream”

“Where Do My Bluebirds Fly”

“The Blizzard’s Never Seen the Desert Sands”

CREDITS

Producer and Host: Doug Storm

Show Producer: Dan Young

Executive Producer: Wes Martin

Image URL: https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/rassegna-stampa/dezeen-tirana-vertical-forest/

Our opening song is “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” – and its history alone illustrates the difficulties of centering anything black in this white capitalist country. We’re listening to Hank Crawford and Jimmy McGriff’s version off of their 1987 album, Steppin’ Up. Dubbed in 1919 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, …

Our opening song is "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" – and its history alone illustrates the difficulties of centering anything black in this white capitalist country. We’re listening to Hank Crawford and Jimmy McGriff’s version off of their 1987 album, Steppin’ Up.

Dubbed in 1919 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, as the “Negro National Anthem” for its power in voicing a cry for liberation and affirmation for African-American people.

It was first publicly performed as a poem in 1900 by its author James Weldon Johnson as part of a celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday at the Edwin M. Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida with Booker T. Washington in attendance. The school is named after Lincoln’s Secretary of War.

Johnson's brother, John Rosamond Johnson, put the song to music in 1905. The Johnsons intended the inspirational song to serve as a musical protest against the humiliating conditions of Jim Crow and the bloody wave of racial lynchings that were sweeping the country.

In 1985 Miller Brewing Company commissioned a new pop version of the song fronted by Al Green and Deniece Williams with backing vocals from Patti Austin, Roberta Flack, Deborah McDuffie, and Melba Moore. Miller is now MillerCoors, a joint venture of SAB (South African Breweries) and MolsonCoors. The Coors family is one of the funders of all things Right Wing in the USA.

In 1989 Spike Lee opens Do the Right Thing with a plaintive version of "Lift Every Voice" played by Branford Marsalis on the tenor saxophone.

Our GUEST today is Terri Francis, an Associate Professor in the Media School at Indiana University in Bloomington and Director of the Black Film Center/Archive. Francis’s forthcoming book The Cinematic Josephine Baker excavates how Baker pioneered her defining role in early African American cinema, seeking forms of authorship within performance.

Today's program begins with the institutional role of The Black Film Center/Archive within a State University where the black student population is roughly 4% of the total. We then move to the Oscars and the support communities for black filmmakers. Spike Lee looms large but new filmmakers and television series producers like Ava DuVernay (Queen Sugar) are discussed as examples of an empowered and expanded community of important creators and professionals.

We then reach back into the past to discover that Josephine Baker should be viewed as historically important as a black filmmaker of critical intelligence. What might be a revelation here is that Josephine Baker emerges as a comedian.

RELATED

Josephine Baker, “Speech at the March on Washington”

The Beautiful Clutter Of Black Film In 2018 by Zeba Blay

Josephine Baker & the burlesque by Terri Francis

What Does Beyoncé See in Josephine Baker? by Terri Francis

MUSIC

"Lift Every Voice and Sing," Hank Crawford and Jimmy McGriff

"Fight the Power," Public Enemy

"J'ai deux amours," Josephine Baker

"Everybody Wants to Dance Like Josephine Baker," Boney M.

"Blue Skies," Josephine Baker

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Executive Producer: Wes Martin

It’s become increasingly clear that the American Dream is dead.  Good riddance. Long ago Friedrich Engels identified economic mobility (said “dream” of wealth) in the US as a key barrier to class consciousness. Welcome to your waking hours, America. Today we explore the question, “Can Electoral politics lead the way to Revolution?” Marx, Engels, and …

It's become increasingly clear that the American Dream is dead.  Good riddance. Long ago Friedrich Engels identified economic mobility (said "dream" of wealth) in the US as a key barrier to class consciousness. Welcome to your waking hours, America.

Today we explore the question, "Can Electoral politics lead the way to Revolution?"

Marx, Engels, and Lenin insisted on the value of revolutionary parliamentarism; a lesson learned from the 1848 European Spring, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the spontaneous creation of Workers’ Councils or Soviets in 1905. Running independent workers’ party candidates would educate the people about alternative ways to organize their lives, but would also allow a party to measure support and how many people would be willing to take up arms for revolution. That is, it is a means to get us to a much different end than swearing in the capitalist status quo.

Revolutionary Parliamentarism stands in stark contrast to Parliamentary Cretinism, defined by Engels as

an incurable disease, an ailment whose unfortunate victims are permeated by the lofty conviction that the whole world, its history and its future are directed and determined by a majority of votes of just that very representative institution that has the honour of having them in the capacity of its members.

According to our guest, the honor of the greatest example of this in the university goes to his own discipline, that of Political Science.

That GUEST is August Nimtz, a professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and the author most recently of a two volume work published by Palgrave Macmillan on Lenin’s Electoral Strategies, subtitled, "The Ballot, the Streets - or Both." The books track Lenin’s use of electoral politics as a tactic to bring all power to the Soviets. Volume one shows Lenin’s deep knowledge and indebtedness to Marx & Engels, specifically the 1850 "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League" which he’s said to have memorized, while Volume Two shows the ways he put these lessons into practice to get from the first revolutionary stirrings of 1905 to the success of October 1917.

We begin with Lenin as a student of Marx & Engels in the realization that it’s not The Ballot OR the Streets…but both.

RELATED

Bringing Marx and Engels into the picture by August Nimtz

Taking elections seriously by August Nimtz

Triumph of ‘revolutionary parliamentarism’ by August Nimtz

Lenin, the Bolsheviks, and the electoral arena (a review by Todd Chretien)

The Future Cannot Be Capitalist: Michael Yates on the Working Class

MUSIC - Ornette Coleman

"Forerunner" - Change of the Century

"European Echoes" - At the Golden Circle (live in Stockholm)

"Bourgeois Boogie" - Virgin Beauty

"Law Years" - Science Fiction

Francisco Ferrer, whom the New York Times called a “philosophical anarchist,” was executed in Spain in 1909 for suspicion of insurrection against the Spanish King and he quickly became an international martyr to the cause of free thought in opposition to religious dogma and compulsory education at the hands of the state and the church. …

Francisco Ferrer, whom the New York Times called a "philosophical anarchist," was executed in Spain in 1909 for suspicion of insurrection against the Spanish King and he quickly became an international martyr to the cause of free thought in opposition to religious dogma and compulsory education at the hands of the state and the church. In the wake of his death Modern Schools based on his pedagogical design sprouted across Europe and the United States and extended as far as Brazil, China, Mexico, and Poland.

Though it’s probable Ferrer had no hand in the insurrection of the so-called "Tragic Week," Emma Goldman made plain that

Had Ferrer actually organized the riots, had he fought on the barricades, had he hurled a hundred bombs, he could not have been so dangerous to the Catholic Church and to despotism, as with his opposition to discipline and restraint. Discipline and restraint--are they not back of all the evils in the world? Slavery, submission, poverty, all misery, all social iniquities result from discipline and restraint. Indeed, Ferrer was dangerous. Therefore he had to die, October thirteenth, 1909, in the ditch of Montjuich.

As discussed last week in our show on Anarchy and Education, we know our schools not only model but teach authoritarianism, patriotism and nationalism, and prize abstraction. Our children learn “canons” of approved thought - We learn OF our so-called National heroes and founders without critical insight. We study wars we claim no responsibility for, praise the great discoveries of lone white men whose innovations first chain us to factory labor and then modernize us out of our jobs. We learn nothing of socialism, communism, the labor movement, or the very history of labor struggle in the US. These are practical lessons of conscious LIVING in the USA that are absolutely ignored and actively kept out of sight in order to assure a future of worker/citizen compliance. You literally pledge allegiance, FIRST to a flag, then a nation, and then a thing called “republic” and all of it “under” a mythical construction of belief.

The Martyrdom of Ferrer would appear to have been for naught.

But the Modern School Movement was not new pedagogy; we have known its truths for as long as governments have forced children into rows and rote learning. We learn best by doing; by experience, by first hand knowledge. That education must be based on freedom and love rather than on tyranny and fear.

Today’s GUEST via Skype is Mark Bray, a political organizer and historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe. He is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House 2017), and most recently, the co-editor of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader (PM Press 2018). He is currently a lecturer at Dartmouth College.

Our music today comes entirely from the live album Bells by American free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler recorded at The Town Hall in New York City in 1965. It just makes sound sense for this show.

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RBB School Board Hears From Community on Prayer Request (WFHB)

“The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther” (Democracy Now!)

MUSIC

"Bells" by Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler - tenor saxophone

Donald Ayler - trumpet

Charles Tyler - alto saxophone

Lewis Worrell - bass

Sonny Murray - drums

CREDITS

Producer & Host: Doug Storm

Executive Producer: Wes Martin

The public school exists to make automatons and to reproduce class hierarchies and authoritarian power dynamics. How different is 2019 from 1906 when Emma Goldman was writing in “The Child and Its Enemies” that schools drive children to become foreign to themselves and to each other, arranged into files, classified, and numbered with quality giving …