Jonathan Beller, "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2021)
In The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism (Duke UP, 2021) Jonathan Beller forcefully demonstrates that the history of commodification generates information itself. Out of the o...
15 Apr 202259min
Intertextuality
In this episode Kim and Chad talk about Julia Kristeva’s theory of “intertextuality.” Chad references Chapter 3 of Kristeva’s book Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Transl...
15 Apr 202212min
Death of the Author
In this episode, Kim and Saronik discuss Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” printed in Image Music Text, translated by Stephen Heath, New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. The image for this wee...
14 Apr 202212min
Autonomous Work of Art
Kim talks with Pardis about Theodor Adorno’s concept of the autonomous work of art, as articulated in his Aesthetic Theory, and The Dialectic of Enlightenment (with help from Max Horkheimer). Pardis D...
12 Apr 202213min
James C. Ungureanu, "Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
The story of the “conflict thesis” between science and religion—the notion of perennial conflict or warfare between the two—is part of our modern self-understanding. As the story goes, John William Dr...
12 Apr 20221h 11min
G. S. Sahota, "Late Colonial Sublime: Neo-Epics and the End of Romanticism" (Northwestern UP, 2018)
Taking cues from Walter Benjamin’s fragmentary writings on literary-historical method, Late Colonial Sublime: Neo-Epics and the End of Romanticism (Northwestern UP, 2018) re-constellates the dialectic...
12 Apr 202243min
Alice Jardine, "At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva (Bloomsbury, 2020) is the first biography of Julia Kristeva--one of the most celebrated intellectuals in the world. Alice Jardine b...
8 Apr 202252min
Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost, "The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America" (NYU Press, 2015)
Over the last 40 years, the US penal system has grown at an unprecedented rate―five times larger than in the past and grossly out of scale with the rest of the world. In The Punishment Imperative: The...
7 Apr 20221h 4min
