What's Left of Philosophy

In this episode we are joined by Nathan DuFord to discuss their new book Solidarity in Conflict: A Democratic Theory. We unpack why they believe solidarity ought to be theorized as a political concept rather than moral injunction. For DuFord, we risk missing that solidarity is what the oppressed do with one another and that the oppressed will have disagreements within their solidary groups if we undertheorize the political dimensions of solidarity. We go on to discuss the relationships between trust and conflict, whether groups formed in solidarity can last forever, and contemporary questions concerning conflict in left organizations. If you believe in solidarity you won’t want to miss this episode!

leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil

References:

Nathan DuFord [published under Rochelle DuFord], Solidarity in Conflict: A Democratic Theory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022).

Music:

Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode we dig into some early writings by the incomparable black radical feminist and communist Angela Davis. We reflect on some of the contradictions involved in the transformation of women’s labor in the development of patriarchal capitalism and the latent potentials for the emancipated life in common that these developments nevertheless carry within themselves. We talk about the radical potential of industrializing housework, discuss strategies for the formation of effective solidarity, and—as usual—find a way to drag American suburbia. Get out there and contest capitalist power at the point of production! Those potentialities won’t actualize themselves, after all.
This is just a short clip from the full episode, which is available to our subscribers on Patreon:
patreon.com/leftofphilosophy
References:
Angela Y. Davis, "Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation," in The Black Feminist Reader, eds. Joy James and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (Malden: Blackwell, 2000)
Angela Y. Davis, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective”, in Women, Race, and Class (New York: Random House, 1983)
Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode we talk through the work of one of the most infamous figures in the history of political thought, Niccolò Machiavelli. Looking both at the Prince and some passages from the Discourses, we ask ourselves what the Florentine can teach us about strategy, the need for vision and flexibility, and the virtues of leaders and citizens in a world of duplicity and chance. Is he a ruthless lover of cruelty, a clear-eyed political scientist, or a partisan defender of freedom as non-domination?
patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphil
References:
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, eds. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971).
Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us, ed. François Matheron, trans. Gregory Elliott (New York: Verso, 2000).
Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

For this episode we discuss David Walker’s 1830 radical anti-slavery tract An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World and Melvin Rogers’s 2015 article “David Walker and the Political Power of the Appeal.” We explore Walker’s political philosophy of judgment and its relationship to normativity, solidarity, and reconstructing civic society. Walker offers an insightful critique of the insidious pathologies race introduces into Western political formations. We cover questions of universalism, the contentious role of violence in political change, and what it means to inherit a political tradition.
patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphil
References:
David Walker. 1830. An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Found at https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeaamericanstudies/15/
Melvin Rogers. 2015. “David Walker and the Political Power of the Appeal.” Political Theory 43(2): 208-233.
Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode we welcome Dr. Ashley Bohrer to discuss Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence”. We talk about the relationship between violence and the law, reflect on the limits of institutional power for emancipatory projects, and get really real about the spiritual dimension of justice. Keep your messianism weak, comrades.

patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphil

ashleybohrer.com

Pedagogies for Peace podcast: https://kroc.nd.edu/research/intersectionality/pedagogies-for-peace-podcast/

References:

Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” trans. Edmund Jephcott, in Selected Writings Volume I: 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com