Ep. 53 – Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

Explicit content warning

12/27/17 • -1 min

Always Already Podcast, a critical theory podcast

In this episode of AAP, Rachel, Emily, and John tackle a special request from Patreon supporter Alex. We discuss Byung-Chul Han‘s The Burnout Society, positioning the account alongside other contemporary theories of neoliberalism. We interrogate the relationship of the disciplinary society to what Han posits as the achievement society, think through the consequences of his view for democracy, and question the ‘view from nowhere’ in the text. Along the way, we get into his engagements with Hannah Arendt and Friedrich Nietzsche, unpack his use of the terms ‘negativity’ and ‘positivity’ as they relate to violence and power, and tire ourselves out engaging his chapter on tiredness. And we, of course, ask our favorite AAP question – how (if at all) can the argument account for dynamics of race, class, gender, and (neo)colonialism? Plus! A very beautifully vivid dream that harkens back to a recent text discussion on mushrooms.

Support us on Patreon to help us upgrade our recording equipment, potentially provide episode transcripts, and more – plus, you may have the chance to jump your request to the top of the request queue. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here.Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, and always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

Links!

https://alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/han.mp3

Links!

https://alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/han.mp3

Previous Episode

Ep. 52 – Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages

We’re back, and with an episode featuring frequent guest of the show Sid Issar joining Rachel and John! The trio engages with a two-part article (here and here) by Geraldine Heng, “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages.” How does Heng’s work reconfigure the temporality of race and racism? What does race-making look like in the Middle Ages, and how does that change our political analyses of the present? In what ways does medieval race-making consolidate whiteness? What genealogies of racialization are lost when we focus on modernity as the exclusive origin of racism? How is Heng’s work related to other investigations into race and racism? How many times can we use Heng’s work to pithily resignify Marxist concepts in just one hour?

Join us for this journey as we come to realize that maybe not EVERYTHING is modernity’s fault.

Support us on Patreon to help us upgrade our recording equipment. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Thanks to Leah Dion for the intro music, and always already to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

https://alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/heng.mp3

The Hereford Mappa Mundi (world map) from c. 1300. Heng uses the map to demonstrate medieval modes of racialization.
By Unknown – unesco.org.uk, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41201813

Next Episode

Ep. 54 – Alexis Pauline Gumbs, M Archive

In this episode, James is joined by AAP Fanon correspondent M. Shadee Malaklou as they welcome a new guest, Derrais Carter, assistant professor of Black Studies at Portland State University. The trio discuss Alexis Pauline Gumbs‘ forthcoming M Archive: After the End of the World (Duke UP, March 2018), the second book of her “planned experimental triptych.” M Archive is a speculative documentary project that chronicles the end of the world from an unspecified position of futurity. We sit with the ways Black poetics enact forms of knowledge that resist grammar and structure, and how Gumbs’ work exceeds genres and disciplinary boundaries. We also tease out the polemical strains of Black feminist metaphysics and ecocriticism that resonate throughout the imagined otherwise world that Gumbs conjures for her readers. What happens after the world ends? How can we take the act of breathing as the project of Black feminism? Take a listen and discover the ways that Afro-pessimism, Black optimism, and Afro-futurism fold into each other and open onto other dimensions of Black life in the Anthropocene.

https://alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/gumbs.mp3

Links:

Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ website – with lots more links to her spaces and places online
“We Stay In Love with Our Freedom: A Conversation with Alexis Pauline Gumbs” from the Los Angeles Review of Books
Hortense Spillers and Alexis Pauline Gumbs in conversation on Left of Black
Kodwo Eshun’s 1998 The Wire article “Drexciya: Fear of a Wet Planet” archived at Last.fm