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Why Theory

Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.

Ryan and Todd explore the possibilities for praxis in the vein of the notorious philosopher who expresses disdain for the possibilities of a philosophical praxis—Hegel. They look at instances of Hegelian praxis in action, including the church of contradiction developed by Peter Rollins. Hegelian praxis focuses on contradiction, failure, disappointment, and universality. Most importantly, it never operates through a preestablished road map.

Hegelian Praxis

In their annual Christmas special, Ryan and Todd explore the Lesbian Christmas film and the theoretical contribution that this specific type of film makes to the Christmas film genre. They discuss Carol, Happiest Season, and Let It Snow in terms of their depictions of desire and the importance of desire itself coming out.

Lesbian Christmas

Ryan and Todd work through Jacques Lacan’s Seminar X: Anxiety. Since this is the seminar that provides a great deal of Lacan’s initial theorizing of the objet a, they devote much of their time to this concept. Additionally, they discuss how Lacan responds in this seminar to existentialism, especially through his redefinition of anxiety. They conclude with an analysis of the role that sacrifice plays relative to anxiety.

Seminar X: Anxiety

Ryan and Todd pay tribute to David Lynch’s life and work by discussing each of his ten feature films in order of value as artworks (in the view of one of the cohosts). They explore the role of fantasy in Lynch’s works and how he implicates the desire of the spectator in the films.

David Lynch

Ryan and Todd discuss Lacan’s Seminar XVI: From an Other to the other. They focus on Lacan’s modification of Marx’s surplus value into surplus enjoyment and the implications of this discovery for the interpretation of capitalism. They frame this seminar as the end of the most fecund era of Lacan’s thought, a culmination that produces one of his greatest insights and the basis for a psychoanalytic theory of capitalism.

Seminar 16

On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Rick Boothby's terrific recent book, Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred. First they discuss how the book begins its argument by intervening in the gap between Freud's and Lacan's notion of religion (in both its social and psychical import). They then move to highlight Rick's original theorizing that links das ding to an encounter with the unknowability and indecipherability of the other. Finally, they conclude by discussing the relationship that Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker has to an extension of Rick's argument.

Also mentioned on this podcast:

Misconstruity, "Let Them Rot" (referenced as Russ Sbriglia's King Crimson power hour)

On Drugs, CBC Podcast (Special thanks to Hadeel and Geoff!)

Ryan's essay in World Picture

Embracing the Void

In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the erosion of the public under contemporary capitalism. Using Jurgen Habermas's influential writing on the public sphere as a jumping off point, the hosts move to discuss different challenges to imagining a vision of the public untethered to capitalism and self-defeating notions of inclusivity.

The Public

Ryan and Todd define and explore the key psychoanalytic concept of the symptom. They contrast the psychoanalytic understanding of the symptom with the therapeutic version and then think about how we must respond to the symptom, including what it means to enjoy one’s symptom. In the discussion of changing the relation to the symptom, they discuss the disaster film as a paradigmatic form of response.

The Symptom

Ryan and Todd discuss the political implications of the societal tendency toward euphemism. They theorize euphemism ultimately as a tool of the reactionary forces and as a way of blunting the necessity of critique. Euphemisms make the people employing them feel better while furthering the very structure of oppression that the euphemism claims to ameliorate.

Euphemism

In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the effect artificial intelligence is having on higher education, primarily through commentary on ChatGPT. They first discuss how immediacy and the elimination of labor are key to ChatGPT's appeal before moving to discuss how it produces an idea of what Lacan would term the Big Other and how its ruling logic is one of emergent consensus. They end by arguing that ChatGPT inverts Rick Boothby's axiom that "the Big Other doesn't know" and how that introduces a damaging psychic dilemma.

A.I.

This episode is the fourth in a series of episodes that Ryan and Todd are devoting to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Here, we go through what Hegel understands by the term "reason" and how it develops in this major section of the book.

Hegel's Reason

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