PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy

Erik brings a shocking discovery to the Pill Pod, oh yea and what the hell is structuralism anyway?   Get the full ep and hours more educational content by supporting our efforts over at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Evoked by no less than Agamben, Byung-Chul Han, Deleuze, and Zizek's wardrobe, Bartleby is a compelling character. This week we are joined by Lit Vic to bust us into some literary analysis of a prophet of American capitalism: Herman Melville, in his text "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Read the text for free here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231 Anything you've missed is up at www.patreon.com/pl...

Parts I and II comprise 3+ hours of discussion on Zizek's Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. Join up with us on Patreon to get it all and 30+ exclusive episodes www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Professor Jeremy Gilbert from across the pond gives a primer on his primer: Twenty-First Century Socialism. Gilbert gives a jargon-free explanation as to why buy-in to the system of consumer product bribery is no longer working, how "socialism" is being detoxified in the anglosphere, along with some proposed goals for socialists if we can avoid microwaving ourselves this century. Gilbert's (inexpe...

Part 1 of our reading of Zizek's attempt to take down Deleuze, whom he calls an ideologist of late capitalism in "Organs Without Bodies." Join up with us on Patreon to get the full dish, and find out who reigns supreme in the final decision next week www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Jack Black (no, the Other Jack Black) joins the Pill Pod to discuss his new book "Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy: A Psychoanalytic Exploration." Cover the hits from Hegel to Monty Python, and up to Žižek, Zupančič and Sacha Baron Cohen. Check out Jack's book here: https://amzn.to/3kGAEq6

This is a preview for a 2.5 hour romp through performativity and performative speech acts in analytic and continental philosophy, stopping off at J.L. Austin, Louis Althusser and others on the way to Judith Butler. Get the full ep and hours more educational content by supporting our efforts over at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

In memoriam of the coalition state-building adventure in Afghanistan, we look to the inveterate morons who continue to ventriloquize the "humanitarian empire" of the United States, including Canada's own failed philosopher king: Michael Ignatieff. Way back in 2001, Ignatieff painted the picture of the Afghanistan project in the New York Times, which now deserves a second-look. Find the article her...

As a supplement to Plastic Pills' new documentary on Project Cybersyn, the Pill Pod is joined by Marion, who is usually our Foucault correspondent but here in her capacity as a Mexican political theorist. We get through a segment on some unanswered questions about the documentary, and then an brief overview of Latin American politics, as well as some correction on the misconceptions and stereotype...

Quarantine Agamben! He's at it again! This episode we getinto it the kindred bond between critical theory and conspiracy theory, how states do and do not dominate in response to pandemics, and how Deleuze dominates Agamben in response to Foucaults. Find Agamben's blog post here:  https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-cittadini-di-seconda-classe   Get all episodes at https://patreon.com/plasticp...

Professor David Matijasevich, author of Radical Democracy and Its Limits, joins Matt and Victor to discuss the limits of radical democracy and the aesthetic ideal of protest politics, and how they are often the luxury of those who are already cozy in a political system wherein are not threatened by existing power structures. He contends that our understanding of political action should be broadene...

Here's a preview of this week's episode featuring Uncle Bob, Baudrillard, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Lacan and the simple question: Dude, why not just bin "meaningfulness" as an evaluation of life? Full episode is a click away at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

In Round 4 of the Pill Pod's Fight Night, we feature a theoretical battle over the foundation of politics: is politics founded on the struggle for recognition? Or is it the aesthetic creation of a future? French Insurrectionist Jacques Ranciere pits himself against the chief of the Frankfurt School's third generation, Axel Honneth.   If you're partial to the format, you can find Round 1: (Baudrill...

This week we depart from the usual solemnities to diagnose the latest object of conservative hysteria: critical race theory. It's being banned from curricula, bounced around conservative media outlets, and kicking off the careers of some new fear-mongering pundits. But what actually is it? Find all our exclusive episodes over on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Professor Ashley Frawley, author of The Semiotics of Happiness, joins us to discuss the cyclical history of some slippery signifiers: "self-esteem," "well-being," and "mental health," the only productive value of which is the generation of corporate consultants, conference panelists, and mind cops. In this interview, she explains how 'trauma discourse' reifies status quo politics.   Find Ashley on...

The Pill Pod is off this week for an AFK project, so please enjoy this unlock from the exclusive patron vault, which sorta serves as an intro to Derrida, who's been hot on the pod lately. It's pretty old so our production requires some forgiveness. Cheers nerds!

Not to be called a n00b, Foucault slaps back at Derrida (eventually) with "My Body, This Paper, This Fire" defending his Madness and Civilization from Derrida's critique (see Pill Pod 42). Foucault claims Derrida can't read Latin properly, and more substantively, that Derrida includes subsumes madness under the dreaming philosopher, while Descartes juridically separates them so as to exclude madne...

Victor interviews Mouthy Infidel from the Mouthy Infidel YouTube channel , which features debates, debunks and arguments from a left perspective. This ranging discussion covers online debate culture, Mouthy's debate prep, some policy questions and proposals, and language games.   You can find @MouthyInfidel on Twitter or on Youtube.

The Year is 1963 and our Versus Series continues with Fight Night Round 2, in which a young challenger, Jacques 'Derridevil' Derrida, comes at Dr. Archaeology himself, Michel Foucault, accusing him of committing the cardinal cosmological sin: METAPHYSICS.   After a sound pounding through the first few pages, Derridevil lands a crippling blow, that Foucault's reading of Descartes was "naive," enoug...

Today we have a heady one for ya. This is some in-the-weeds political theory, where Ben, Matt, and Victor consider libertarianism via professional sophist, Jason Brennan. Are there good libertarian arguments? Or are they exclusively hasty consequentialist defenses of one sublime object: the market? Find out in our review of Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know. To stay on what Ben's up to f...

Welcome to Round 1 of our new series, which covers theorists' takedowns of other theorists. This episode features an exciting 1977 bout between the young iconoclast, Jean Baudrillard and the king of the French academy, Michel Foucault, as found in the provocatively titled: Forget Foucault. Can a well-timed tag team with Deleuze save Foucault? Or will Baudrillard be forever condemned to circle in t...

Mike Watson of the Acid Left (@_leftaesthetics) joins Matt (@mattpolprof) and Pills (@plasticpills) to talk about Acid Communism, Adorno, and The Memeing of Mark Fisher, Mike's new book (due out September 2021).   As always, all the extra content is still at www.patreon.com/plasticpills

The Pill Pod is joined by Meaghan, a real life cognitive scientist and VR researcher, to answer our ignorant questions about brains, behaviour, and perception while we try to deduce whether or not Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology holds up in virtual reality.   Visit www.patreon.com/plasticpills for this and the rest of our exclusive episodes.

The Pill Pod takes on two definitive philosophers opposed to the fantasies of uploading consciousnesses into machines: John Searle and Hubert Dreyfus. Apologies in advance but we gotta burst your 20-year-old-cousin-who-retweets-Elon-Musk's techno-utopian bubble in a Chinese room.   If you've gone through the public feed there's more exclusive audio and video content on www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Matt and Victor are joined by Meagan Day (@meaganmday) to discuss Michael Brooks' ambitious proposal for cosmopolitan socialism, its relation to particularity and difference, and what it could mean for the future of the left. Find Meagan's article Unions are Essential for Eliminating Racism here www.jacobinmag.com/2020/07/multiracial-solidarity-unions If you've finished the public feed, all of our...