Critical Media Studies

Barry and Mike discuss Bruno Latour’s essay, “On Actor-Network Theory: A few clarifications.” They work through his key terms in an attempt to better understand the new meanings he ascribes to actors and networks and what this theory allows us to do with media theory. 

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss a chapter from Jacques Attali, book, Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Following on their discussion from the Glenn Gould episode, they interrogate at Attali's take on the impacts of recorded music as an archive and as background noise.

In this episode Barry and Mike talk about Glenn Gould’s essay “The Prospects of Recording.” They focus on two central arguments from the essay – how technology creates the new, empowered, listener and the significance of background music. 

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Andre Bazin’s collection of essays on new media and how the evolution of television and technological development impact how we see film.  Specifically, they discuss how “Industrial Art” challenges traditional ideas about aesthetics. 

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Derrida's 1972 talk turned essay, "Signature, Event, Context." The episode engages his critique of Plato and Austin and turns to the relevance of his findings as they relate to AI. The discussion ends on a thought provoking read of human connection and the authenticity of language. They wonder, is AI a threat, or does it highlight our embarrassment over our i...

At Mike's insistence, the guys return for a second consecutive Adorno episode. "Opera and the Long-Playing Record" sees Adorno pivot, celebrating the advances and opportunities that the vinyl record affords music beyond archival purposes. Here, rather than denegrating vinyl as being a cheap proxy container for art, Adorno adopts a hopeful position, celebrating its ability to save art from stalenes...

In this episode Barry and Mike work through Adorno's "The Form of the Phonographic Record", extrapolating his arguments against technology and the phonograph and marveling at the surprising about-face at the end of the essay.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss an essay by Dina Litovsky, " The Problem of AI Photography is not the Medium, It's the Message. " They channel previous discussions on Susan Sontag, Andre Bizan and Jean Baudrillard to talk about the hyper-real, the role of AI in art and photography, and where the boundary between what we consider legitimate and illigitimate may be in contemporary art.

In this episode Mike and Barry take the Baudrillardian grand tour: we visit Disneyland, Los Angeles, Viet Nam, and pause to consider the philosophical significance of the 1972 Watergate break-in. In other words, we discuss “The Precession of Simulacra” by Jean Baudrillard (from “Simulacra and Simulation,” 1981) , the text that introduced readers to the “hyperreal,” the idea that what we call reali...

In the “Ontology of the Photographic Image,” Andre Bazin makes the provocative claim that the invention of photography is "clearly the most important event in the history of the plastic arts." At the same time, Bazin questions our naïve faith that the photographic image is just as real as the object that it depicts. He goes on to provide an alternative history of painting and photography, highligh...

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Susan Sontag’s essay In Plato’s Cave from her book: On Photography.  In this essay Sontag argues that photographs are much like the images that the prisoners in Plato’s cave see reflected on the walls: representations of reality, but not reality itself.  Sontag argues that, like Plato’s prisoners, we too have difficulty distinguishing the image from...

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Jonathan Crary’s book, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep.  Though there are a few detours, the discussion focuses on two of Crary’s central arguments: the devaluation of sleep, and the human cost of living as a part of the technological spectacle (to borrow a little bit from DeBord).  The discussion goes a little bit long, but we had a rea...

In This episode of the Critical Media Studies podcast we discuss Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle. As the book is aphoristic, rather than trying to address the work as a whole, Barry and Mike look at what Debord means by Spectacle and hone in on a few particular sections (24-28). The focus of this episode settles around the question of whether or not there is a continuity between Debord's...

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss the French Christian mystic Simone Weil and her focus on attention and its role in the “right way” of doing things. This discussion picks up on the previous episode with Byung Chul Han regarding distraction and multi-tasking.  Though this chat functions as a stand-alone discussion, In some ways this is a continuation of that previous discussion.  If...

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Byung Chul Han’s “The Burnout Society” with an eye to his discussion of multitasking and the loss of what Han calls “profound boredom.”  The discussion invokes Bernard Steigler’s concept of noesis and Jauques Eleul’s concept of technique as a means of better understanding the spaces of focus and attention in the modern world. 

Barry and Mike pick up their discussion on Raymond Williams’ monograph, Television: Technology and Cultural From . In their previous episode they covered the idea that media technologies are answers to specific problems, rather than inventions looking for applications.  In this episode they discuss how Williams’ ideas fit and clash with Marshal McLuhan’s ideas of media as being self-determini...

Barry and Mike begin their discussion of Raymond Williams’ 1974 book, Television.   Their discussion revolves around the question of the place and purpose of media as a social process. The crux of the debate revolves around the question: Is television a solution looking for a problem, or is it, rather, the form that contains both? As a part of this, naturally, they go back to “...

Barry and Mike wrap up their discussion on The Dialectic of Enlightenment by taking on the final section on antisemitism and then offering their takeaways from the book.  It’s a long discussion that covers a good bit of ground.  Among other topics, they spend time talking about the dangers of partially understood ideologies, the role of access to public services (and how belonging to the...

What do Taylor Swift, Beethoven, and Raidohead have in common? In the fourth part of their series on Horkheimer and Adorno’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment” Barry and Mike talk about the “Culture Industry.”  Among other topics, they discuss how money influences how art gets made and how capitalism impacts media.  We hope you enjoy!  

Horkheimer and Adorno – Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality In this episode, Barry and Mike discuss "Excursis two: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality," from Horkheimer and Adorno's "The Dialectic of Enlightenment." Here Adprno and Horkheimer argue that, despite their many differences, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and the French libertine writer the Marquis de Sade shared one id...

Barry and Mike take on Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment, the second chapter of Horkheimer and Adorno’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment,” focusing on three key moments in the story of Odysseus' journey: the encounters with Circe, the Cyclops, and his return home. They explore the ways that Horkheimer and Adorno’s understanding of Enlightenment thinking is manifest in Odysseus’ actions, perhaps most e...

The people have spoken! One of our listeners, Jessica, asked if we would do an episode on the Frankfurt school, preferably Horkheimer and Adorno. And when you folks ask, we oblige! In prepping for an episode on chapter two of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Barry and Mike asked the age old question: Why just do one chapter of incredibly dense German philosophy when you can take on the book in its...

In this episode Barry and Mike wrestle with the idea of updating Benjamin's article "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility." Of the many questions that they attempt to address, perhaps the central one is: Can we update Bejmanin's theory and still maintain its philosophical integrity? Or has the digitization of virtually all media created an environment where his terms rem...

In this episode Barry and Mike take up Stuart Hall's 1980 essay, Encoding and Decoding. They discuss how his arguments hold up after 40+ years and what our participation in the current media landscape mean for not only consumption, but the production of meaning as well.

Barry and Mike discuss Wendy Chun's book, "Updating to Remain the Same" and discuss the political and social implications of her arguments. They begin by deconstructing the terms of her argument that Crisis + Habit = Update and pay particular attention to the role that Chun assigns neoliberalism in defining the perpetually shifting nature of our networked selves. This one gets a little messy.