Acid Horizon

Can myth itself serve as a material force in struggles for liberation? Federico Campagna joins me to discuss how myth—too often dismissed as escapism or co-opted by reaction—can instead become a practice of imagination, solidarity, and survival. We look at myth’s place in anti-capitalist politics, its tension with materialism, and its role in resisting despair. What emerges is a vision of myth as...

What happens when the self we imagine drifts further from the one we actually live? In this episode, philosopher Fredrik Westerlund joins Craig and Nicholas de Warren to explore his concept of “identity on credit,” where our sense of self is built on promises yet to be realized. From Sophocles’ Ajax to Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Scheler, we trace how recognition, resentment, and failure shape the mod...

What happens when the painter’s hand breaks free from the eye, and chaos reorganizes the entire field of vision? In this episode of Acid Horizon , we join Charles Stivale, translator of On Painting and The Logic of Sense , to explore Gilles Deleuze’s rare 1981 seminar on painting. Together we trace how concepts like catastrophe, diagram, and modulation emerge from Deleuze’s live philosophical “lab...

What if analytic philosophy isn't as politically neutral as it claims to be? In this episode, we explore the hidden ideological scaffolding of analytic philosophy—its deference to science, retreat to common sense, and therapeutic impulse. Christoph Schuringa, author of A Social History of Analytic Philosophy (Verso), reveals how analytic thought emerged from institutional, class-based, and ge...

What does it mean to become worthy of the event ? In this episode, we’re joined by Justin, longtime collaborator and host of our current reading group on Pierre Klossowski’s Living Currency . Together, we explore Deleuze’s stoic metaphysics, Nietzsche’s ethics of affirmation, and the revolutionary stakes of releasing ourselves from resentment. Along the way, we consider how play, pedagogy, and the...

What happens when the dialectic between Sartre and Fanon is not one of influence, but of mutual transformation? Today we're live at Webster’s in State College with Tyrique Mack-Georges, who returns to the podcast to discuss his research on seriality, group infusion, and the possibility of a new humanity. Together, we explore how Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason illuminates Fanon’s revo...

What if the history of feminism wasn’t only a story of liberation—but also one of betrayal, reaction, and complicity? In this episode of Acid Horizon, we speak with Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley, authors of Fascism and the Women's Cause , about the forgotten histories of white feminist collaboration with the far right—from the suffrage movement to the Ku Klux Klan and the British Union o...

What does it mean to write philosophy in a time of catastrophe? In this episode, we’re joined once again by Stuart Kendall to explore Georges Bataille’s On Nietzsche, a fragmented, intimate, and disorienting text written in the final years of World War II. We examine how Nietzsche becomes not just a philosophical reference but a companion for Bataille—a figure through whom Bataille grapples with s...

What does it mean to politicize sex rather than assume its politics? In this episode, we're joined once again by Juliana Gleeson to discuss her new book Hermaphrodite Logic: A History of Intersex Liberation, a sharp and sardonic retelling of intersex activism from 1990 to today. We trace the expressive politics of sex through protest, medical confrontation, and wit as strategy, asking how hum...

Don't miss Vintagia; campaign ending soon: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acidhorizon/vintagia-i-ching-oracle-for-psychogeographers-and-creatives Is Black Mirror still speculative fiction—or just a stylized documentary of our present? In this episode, we dive into Black Mirror Season 7, Episode 1 ("Common People") with writer and philosopher Emily Herring, who recently explore...

In this installment of The Anti-Oedipus Files , we welcome translator and theorist Taylor Adkins for a wide-ranging conversation on Lacan’s “Position of the Unconscious.” Beginning with a historical primer, we trace Lacan’s fraught institutional legacy and his confrontation with psychoanalytic orthodoxy. From the topology of the lamella to the philosophical rift between Guattari and Lacan, we expl...

What does it mean to say that queerness is ontological? In this episode, we’re joined by Billie Cashmore and Xenogothic (Mattie Colquhoun) to explore the philosophical foundations and political tensions surrounding queerness, normativity, and the symbolic order. Drawing on thinkers like Judith Butler, Heidegger, and Lacan, we examine queerness not simply as identity, but as a condition of social a...

Support the campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acidhorizon/vintagia-i-ching-oracle-for-psychogeographers-and-creatives "Living Currency" syllabus: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OeUT0XSZdIQ9VpgLaqjuw0sP3blJZySG/view?usp=drive_link What happens when queer liberation becomes entangled with the myths of the nation-state? In this episode, we speak with Alexander Stoffel about h...

Support Vintagia: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acidhorizon/vintagia-i-ching-oracle-for-psychogeographers-and-creatives What if communism isn’t a destination, but something already unfolding in everyday acts of resistance, care, and imagination? In this episode, Richard Gilman-Opalsky joins us to discuss the political force of utopian thinking, the ongoing tension between Marxism and anarch...

Buy the Book: https://www.versobooks.com/products/977-the-future-of-revolution?srsltid=AfmBOopbQABhI9H6efsVC8cJLfIxh2LNXMqxpppbp8xUVVnxNMtAyEPc How might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed? Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory, fr...

Follow Vintagia now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acidhorizon/vintagia-i-ching-oracle-for-psychogeographers-and-creatives What if capitalism isn’t just an economic system—but a transcendental structure that configures our very experience? In this episode, philosopher Henry Somers-Hall helps us unravel Deleuze and Guattari’s enigmatic claim that capitalism is an axiomatic system. Drawing fr...

In this special 10-minute solo dispatch, Craig reveals what’s brewing behind the scenes. From the unveiling of Vintagia: I Ching Oracle for Psychogeography and Creative Discovery to a series of live events that blend philosophy, art, and sound—this is your glimpse into the next season of the Acid Horizon project. We talk about the upcoming artist residency in State College, Pennsylvania, where Cra...

Follow Vintagia : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acidhorizon/vintagia-i-ching-oracle-for-psychogeographers-and-creatives In this special crossover episode of LEPHT HAND and Acid Horizon, we explore the radical mysticism of François Laruelle through his essay Vision-in-One or Unlearned Knowing . Laruelle proposes a mysticism stripped of transcendence and doctrine—one grounded in solitude, imm...

In this episode, Will reads Maurice Blanchot’s essay Friendship , a haunting reflection on the impersonal and ineffable nature of true friendship. Blanchot challenges the idea of friendship as mutual understanding, revealing instead a relation marked by silence, distance, and exposure. This reading anticipates our upcoming "Philosophers and the Friend" reading group beginning May 18, fea...

Cameron Carsten is back with us to enjoy an exploration of Jean Baudrillard’s concept of “absolute advertising” and its transformation of communication, desire, and the public sphere.  This discussion addresses the rise of techno-fascism and the symbolic saturation of everyday life in view of Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulation'. What happens when advertising becomes the default...

What happens when the ego fails to form a symbol? In this episode of Acid Horizon, we're joined by Dr. Ben Morsa, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic thinker working at the intersection of queer theory, neurodiversity, and mental health. Together, we dive into Melanie Klein’s pivotal essay The Importance of Symbol Formation , examining how sadism, fantasy, and ego development shape our...

CW: Includes references to drug use and racialized violence discourse. King Ketamine: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/king-ketamine Acid Horizon welcomes back Taija Mars McDougall to discuss her latest essay “King Ketamine,” published in Parapraxis Magazine. Together, we examine how ketamine—favored by Silicon Valley elites like Elon Musk—has become  the drug of the techno-fascist sacr...

Follow the Campaign over at: https://www.instagram.com/crmepers/  Eflux Open letter: https://www.e-flux.com/notes/658933/open-letter-from-crmep-students-researchers-on-kingston-university-s-proposed-closure-of-the-department-of-humanities Verso Open Letter: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/open-letter-from-crmep-students-researchers-on-kingston-university-s-proposed-closure-of-the-depar...

Craig's designs: https://www.etsy.com/shop/critdrip The Ordeal: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/p/crossing-the-line-the-repeater-books Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/acidhorizonpodcast We are joined by philosopher Nicolas de Warren to explore his concept of the anarchist imaginary, drawn from his essay "Anarchism, the Shock from Elsewhere: Glissant and Levinas". Together, w...

CW: explicit mentions of pornography and revenge porn Is AI a cruelty machine? In what ways do the aesthetics of fascism intersect with techno-futurism and reactionary fantasies—and how should we respond? Acid Horizon welcomes Gareth Watkins (Death Sentence Podcast, New Socialist) to discuss his article on how the far-right embraces AI—not for innovation, but for domination, aesthetics, and contro...