In this episode we welcome Dr. Ashley Bohrer to discuss Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence”. We talk about the relationship between violence and the law, reflect on the limits of institutional power for emancipatory projects, and get really real about the spiritual dimension of justice. Keep your messianism weak, comrades.

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ashleybohrer.com

Pedagogies for Peace podcast: https://kroc.nd.edu/research/intersectionality/pedagogies-for-peace-podcast/

References:

Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” trans. Edmund Jephcott, in Selected Writings Volume I: 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

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This episode dives behind the Iron Curtain into socialist Albania in discussion with Lea Ypi on her new memoir “Free.” The crew explores what has been gained and what has been lost in the transition to capitalism. Lea explains why some of the symmetry may surprise us and why Marxism is a philosophy of human freedom.

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References:

Lea Ypi, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Penguin Random House, 2021)

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In this episode, the crew takes on a beloved figure of the academic ‘left’: Michel Foucault. The discussion gravitates around Foucault’s work in the early 1970’s on the ‘punitive society’, power as civil war, and popular rebellion. This post-‘68 period of his life and work is often seen as his most politically ‘radical’, both because of his activist involvement in the Prisons Information Group (GIP) and because he directly engages with Marxist discourse and thought. Nevertheless, the conversation quickly turns skeptical (to put it mildly). We question both the explanatory power and the political stakes of his historical studies: What is the principle of connection between the often remote historical discourses and events he examines and present conditions of life? What are the consequences of rejecting causal explanations of historical development? Above all, how salient and clarifying are his histories for emancipatory struggles in the present? We try to answer these questions, while poking a bit of fun at our Foucauldian friends and comrades. Oh and we talk about the CIA’s alleged awareness of the increasing hegemony of French theory in the academic left—apparently they loved that for us.

Listen to the full episode on our Patreon!

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References:

Michel Foucault, Penal Theories and Institutions: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1971-1972, ed. Bernard E. Harcourt et. al., trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador)

Michel Foucault, The Punitive Society: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972-1973, ed. Bernard E. Harcourt, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave MacMillan)

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In this episode, we welcome Professor Melvin Rogers of Brown University to discuss his forthcoming book The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought. We focus on the often elided importance of character in social struggle and transformation, the tension between optimism and pessimism in African American political thought, and the centrality of rhetoric and persuasion in this tradition. It is not to be missed!

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References

Rogers, Melvin. Forthcoming. The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

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In this episode we are joined by Joel Michael Reynolds for a wide-ranging discussion about disability theory. We dig into the relationship between disability and white supremacy, the idea of politics as differential capacitation, genomics and medicalization, justice as equity, and more. Naturally we put full-bore social constructivism on blast. Leftists gotta be materialists, you know?

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References:

Joel Michael Reynolds, “The Meaning of Ability and Disability.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 33.3 (2019).

Joel Michael Reynolds, “Genopower: On Genomics, Disability, and Impairment.” Foucault Studies 31 (forthcoming).

Joel Michael Reynolds, “Disability and White Supremacy.” Critical Philosophy of Race (forthcoming).

Joel has also graciously compiled a comprehensive list of literature related to disability theory and politics, which you can find here.

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In this episode we are joined by Professor Robin Celikates to discuss the big “method” question in critical theory: What is it doing, and why? Since Marx, this tradition has had a special connection to emancipatory struggles, so we talk about how that works (or doesn’t) in relation to contemporary debates about civil disobedience and migration.  

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References:

Robin Celikates, 2019. “Constituent Power Beyond Exceptionalism: Irregular migration, disobedience, and (re-)constitution,” Journal of International Political Theory 15(1): 67-81.

Robin Celikates. 2018. “Slow Learners? On Moral Progress, Social Struggle, and Whig History,”  "Forms of Life, Progress, and Social Struggle", in Amy Allen/ Eduardo Mendieta (eds.), From Alienation to Forms of Life, University Park: Penn State University Press, 137-155. 

Robin Celikates, “Radical Civility. Social Struggles and the Domestication of Dissent," in: Julia Christ et al. (eds.), Debating Critical Theory, London: Rowman & Littlefield 2020, 83-94.

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For this episode we discuss David Walker’s 1830 radical anti-slavery tract An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World and Melvin Rogers’s 2015 article “David Walker and the Political Power of the Appeal.” We explore Walker’s political philosophy of judgment and its relationship to normativity, solidarity, and reconstructing civic society. Walker offers an insightful critique of the insidious pathologies race introduces into Western political formations. We cover questions of universalism, the contentious role of violence in political change, and what it means to inherit a political tradition.   

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References:

David Walker. 1830. An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Found at https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeaamericanstudies/15/

Melvin Rogers. 2015. “David Walker and the Political Power of the Appeal.” Political Theory 43(2): 208-233.

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In this episode we talk through the work of one of the most infamous figures in the history of political thought, Niccolò Machiavelli. Looking both at the Prince and some passages from the Discourses, we ask ourselves what the Florentine can teach us about strategy, the need for vision and flexibility, and the virtues of leaders and citizens in a world of duplicity and chance. Is he a ruthless lover of cruelty, a clear-eyed political scientist, or a partisan defender of freedom as non-domination?

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References:

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, eds. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971).

Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us, ed. François Matheron, trans. Gregory Elliott (New York: Verso, 2000).

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In this episode we finally get around to talking about Spinoza. It turns out normativity is kind of complicated when you think everything is strictly determined and there’s no such thing as contingency! We discuss the relationship between affect and power, the inherently social nature of knowledge, and why you should want joy for others as much as for yourself. Along the way we also manage to work in a needless and slanderous dig against Heidegger, just for good measure.

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References:

Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, trans. and ed. Edwin Curley (New York: Penguin, 1996)

Benedict de Spinoza, Political Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000)

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In this Patron exclusive episode, we move to the third part of our mini-series “What is Dialectics?” and take on the works of Karl Marx. The WLOP crew investigates what Marx took and rejected from Hegelian dialectics while defending why Marx remains deeply relevant in our contemporary moment. We cover the role of mystification under capitalism, Marx’s moral and political critique of value, and the future of Marxism in the context of ecological crisis. There’s even a mention of spectres for you Derrida fans out there! It’s a can’t miss episode for sure.

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References:

Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), 53-66.

Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), 67-77.

Karl Marx, “Introduction to the Preface of the 1859 Critique,” at Economic Manuscripts: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 1859 (marxists.org)

Karl Marx, “Appendix to the 1859 Critique,” at Economic Manuscripts: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 1859 (marxists.org)

Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin Books, 1982).

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