PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy

Victor interviews Professor Carolyn Pedwell, editor of the Affect Theory Reader (two volumes) and Revolutionary Routines ( https://amzn.to/44FykoA ). Pedwell argues that minor gestures may be as significant as major happenings, revealing the potential in our ability to remake social or political habits and then to reinhabit everyday life.

Erik and Pills break down the myths of grooming, childhood, sexuality and the semiotic systems which produced them. The book is Roland Barthes, 195, Mythologies ( https://amzn.to/47i5kpd) The rest of this series on myth is available at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Diego Ruzzarin is back on the Plastic Pills Podcast to talk about mythologies of the Left and Right as analyzed by Roland Barthes in his 1957 book (https://amzn.to/47i5kpd). Our previous two episodes covering "Mythologies" (introducing the book and analyzing car commercials) are on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

With the release of the Barbie movie, the feminine symbol has been deployed this summer. But for thousands of summers previous, the role of the feminine was managed by folk stories and fairy tales. Featuring the literary stylings of Victor Hainagiu (known to us as Lit Vic) we broach the topic of the feminine symbolic through the story of Snow White. Check out this version of Neil Gaiman's Snow Whi...

Everyone speaking on freedom but nobody's asking what it means. "Freedom-from interference" is a 400-year-old definition that covers a few bases but not much beyond that. We looked to Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology in this book ( https://amzn.to/3OdpzwL ) to give us something a little better.   Pill Pods #59, #60, #61, #62 are all about Merleau-Ponty in more detail.   Find all the episodes...

Pills and Erik celebrate Latour Day. Cracking one of our old favs ( https://amzn.to/3O2fLVp), to discuss the theory island chain, the scheme of actor network theory, and why reality is more complex than theoretical models.  All our episodes are up at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

One of those guys we rarely think about but who single-handedly pulled the track lever in the history of philosophy, it's Rousseau. We read Discourse on the Origin of Inequality this week and appraised its significance. Get all our exclusive episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Pill Pods 124 & 125 cover a paper written by Pills, which argues that despite banishing figurative language for the sake of "clarity", Western philosophy has forgotten it was founded on a metaphor equating reason with vision, a metaphor we unknowingly reiterate on the daily. The episodes are available to patron subscribers at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We revisit Atlantis, the new one, in this Victor Hainagiu (Lit Vic) episode where we peer into the the early modern, colonial, proto-capitalist imagination. Find the short story here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2434/2434-h/2434-h.htm Follow Victor @HoratioVictor Get all our eps at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Get the full episode, many others, and all the other exclusive content by supporting the podcast at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Today we discuss how to pet your professor's ego to get better marks, and review John Searles sassy attempt to take down Derrida by quoting Foucault gossip. Sources come from Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida and Limited Inc. https://amzn.to/3oIfJc0 More content—video and audio—at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

How many posts can be fit into a title? Diego's back is back and so are we to have a look at why Stiegler believes that the class war is over, the techno/grammatological pharmakon is in and proletarianization has been total. We looked at the first half of "A New Critique of Political Economy", which was suggested to us by a patron (thank you). Find Diego's work (mostly esp) on the internet (he's e...

We are still on the lookout for some worthwhile post-marxisms, we found a dude who is post-everything. Our reading is from "Ironic Strategies" from Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies ( https://amzn.to/3ZqeDhS ), and it turned out to be a pretty seductive text all around. All episodes: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

New week, new book, and we're still on the hunt for a "post-Marxism" that hits. As usual, we were split on which ingredients we look for in the recipes of political theorists. This is a preview of our debate and all our arguments can be found at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Erik and Pills duo on Althusser, reading "Contradiction and Overdetermination" from the book For Marx . We read this anticipating a couple episodes trying to figure out what "post-marxism" could mean, and we don't want to strawman, and this is one of my (Pills') favourite bites attempting to delineate what Marxist theory can and cannot aspire to. Get all the exclusive eps at https://www.patreon.co...

n the 80s, Laclau and Mouffe decided they wanted to succeed Marxism with discourse stuff and some identity politics thrown in. We read their apologetic for Post-Marxism and while Post-Marxism is interesting as a direction, this version of it leaves something to be desired. Find the full episode and many more on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Zizek allegedly wrote an article on the problems of wokeness and we argued about it. Reactionary? Transphobic? Trolling? We don't agree (with each other). The article: https://compactmag.com/article/wokeness-is-here-to-stay The rest of our episodes are available at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

How many of the intellectual left were assassinated by the CIA? THE TRUTH WILL SHOCK YOU! Guy Debord's head inflates by the time he gets to his book written about his own book, Comments on the Society of Spectacle https://amzn.to/3lLEsLa then we argue over whether America or China is more spectacular, in this last episode of our series on the Situationist International. If you like this kind of co...

We've been leading up to it, and here is the first spectacle of 2 on Debord's popular book ( https://amzn.to/3HRp0pj). Stay tuned for future spectacles. Get the full series on Debord and the Situationist International at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

This is a preview on our episode covering the Situationist concepts of psychogeography and unitary urbanism, from back when we hoped for such things.   Get the full episode and plenty more at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

From 1957 to 1972, the Situationist International published a slew of articles, pamphlets, films and journals trying to bring theoretical Marxist debates into everyday life and change public consciousness. Today we read a few of these articles on topics including art, revolution, and the Los Angeles Watts riots to see what of their imagination might be recovered.   Links to Articles: "The Revoluti...

We are starting a series on the theorists and artists of the Situationist International and their most well-known export: The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Get all exclusive episodes, bonus content, and help support our efforts at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

It's been a while since we released an exclusive episode, but I thought this that this episode is as pertinent as it ever was, so enjoy this release from two years ago, and Merry Christmas. It's a discussion of The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (whom we had then recently discovered, by the sound of it). Find the book here: https://amzn.to/3sW85IL As always, get more of this every week by joini...

After our episode claiming that ChatGPT would destroy university education as it currently exists, we had to de-mythologize the dumb philosophy status quo of Silicon Valley and its weird mix of objectivism, stoicism, and effective altruism. References from https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-transhuman-singularity All episodes and exclusive videos at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills 

Not with a whimper, but with a bang: it's time for another crisis of the Humanities.  Students, then teachers, then administrators will realize that AI has nullified our current evaluation methods in academia. In this episode we discuss the implications of OpenAI for essay writing, and how to prevent universities from devolving into AIs reading AIs. Get access to all the episodes and other media a...