“Lack of political will and corruption of the ruling class are certainly enormous obstacles but do not (fully) explain the widespread inaction against our current multidimensional crisis (ecological catastrophe, failing democracies, permanent and more destructive wars, etc.).” So opens Andrea Righi’s Three Economies of Transcendence, which takes a deep philosophical dive into the fundamental dimensions of subjectivity, society, and time through the lens of transcendence. Here, Righi is joined in a wide-ranging conversation with Michael Lewis about finitude, infinitude, evolution, neoliberalism, and radical change.

Andrea Righi is a cultural theorist and professor of European studies and Italian at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Righi is author of Three Economies of Transcendence; The Other Side of the Digital: The Sacrificial Economy of New Media; and coeditor with Cesare Casarino of Another Mother: Diotima and the Symbolic Order of Italian Feminism.

Michael Lewis is senior lecturer in philosophy at University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and editor of the Journal of Italian Philosophy.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

René Girard

Adriana Cavarero

Emanuele Severino

Hannah Arendt

Paolo Virno

Jacques Lacan

Ministry for the Future / Kim Stanley Robinson

Fredric Jameson

Hardt and Negri

Three Economies of Transcendence by Andrea Righi is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book is part of the Forerunners series, and an open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.

In his book Late Star Trek, Adam Kotsko analyzes the wealth of content set within Star Trek’s sprawling continuity, beginning with the prequel series Enterprise, highlighting creative triumphs and the tendency for franchise faithfulness to get in the way of new ideas. Arguing against the consensus that franchises are a sign of cultural decay, Kotsko zeroes in on their status as modern myths, owned as corporate intellectual property, as a source of creative limitation. Here, Kotsko is joined in conversation with David Seitz.

Adam Kotsko teaches in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College and runs an active, free-to-read Substack. He is author of many books including Late Star Trek, Agamben’s Philosophical Trajectory, Neoliberalism’s Demons, and What Is Theology?

David Seitz is associate professor of cultural geography at Harvey Mudd College. He is author of A Different Trek and A House of Prayer for All People.

REFERENCES:
Shawna Kidman

Frederic Jameson

Anna Kornbluh

Christopher L. Bennett

Kirsten Beyer

David Mack

Michael Chabon

Lauren Berlant / On the Inconvenience of Other People

Star Trek references include:

Deep Space Nine

Enterprise

Nemesis

Discovery

Praise for the book:

​​”Combining the rigorous critical eye of a literary and political theorist with the encyclopedic knowledge of a devoted fan, Adam Kotsko offers an original, persuasive, ethical, funny, grim, and nevertheless hopeful examination of Star Trek’s twenty-first-century incarnations. Late Star Trek is a salutary intervention, a sustained, cogent analysis of what’s gone wrong, what’s gone right, and what possibilities remain for creative and critical storytelling in our late-neoliberal streaming era.”

—David Seitz

“Adam Kotsko has written an eminently readable and deeply researched book on twenty-first-century Star Trek, providing an analysis that is both timely and long overdue. A must-read for anyone teaching, doing research on, or just thinking about this ever-growing franchise.”

—Sabrina Mittermeier, coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek and Fighting for the Future: Essays on “Star Trek: Discovery”

Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era by Adam Kotsko is the inaugural volume in the University of Minnesota Press’s Mass Markets series.

Some attributes of the paranormal mind are dismissed as nonsense, but what can an exploration of pseudoscientific phenomena tell us about accepted scientific and cultural thought? In Parascientific Revolutions: The Science and Culture of the Paranormal, Derek Lee traces the evolution of psi epistemologies and uncovers how these ideas have migrated into scientific fields such as quantum physics and neurology, as well as diverse literary genres including science fiction, ethnic literature, and even government training manuals. Here, Lee is joined in conversation with Alicia Puglionesi.

Derek Lee is author of Parascientific Revolutions: The Science and Culture of the Paranormal and assistant professor of literature at Wake Forest University.

Alicia Puglionesi is a lecturer in the medicine, science, and humanities program at Johns Hopkins University and is author of Common Phantoms and In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire and Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science.

REFERENCES:

Society for Psychical Research

Roger Luckhurst

Stargate Project

Ingo Swann

Star Fire / Ingo Swann

Psitron

Adrian Dobbs

Philip K. Dick

William Butler Yeats

Joseph E. Uscinski

Praise for the book:

“Derek Lee engages the ‘pseudoscience’ moniker, that ultimate rhetorical insult, and seeks to replace it with a more accurate ‘parascience’—a place where science and that which is other than science meet and express themselves in literally global pathways as distinct as pulp and science fiction, environmental thought, Asian and Indigenous ways of knowing, U.S. secret espionage, and ethnic fiction. Lee shows all of this with consummate skill and rigor, pushing us beyond our present impasses. This thing is not going away. This is a revolution.”

—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of How to Think Impossibly

“Derek Lee delves into the rich history of the paranormal to instigate a captivating discussion of its influence on literature and science into the twenty-first century through SF and ethnic fictions with the unproven concepts of parascience—precognition, telekinesis, clairvoyance, spectral communication, and telepathy. A classic in the making!”

—Isiah Lavender III, author of Afrofuturism Rising

Parascientific Revolutions: The Science and Culture of the Paranormal by Derek Lee is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

Sasha Davis, an activist and scholar of radical environmental advocacy, brings new hope for social justice movements by looking to progressive campaigns that have found success by unconventional means. From contesting environmental abuse to reasserting Indigenous sovereignty, these movements demonstrate how people can collectively wrest control over their communities from oppressive governments and manage them with a more egalitarian ethics of care. The work is exciting, it’s messy, and it seeks to change the world. Here, Davis joins Laurel Mei-Singh and Khury Petersen-Smith in conversation about his new book, Replace the State: How to Change the World When Elections and Protests Fail.

Sasha Davis is an activist and professor in the Department of Environmental and Sustainability Studies at Keene State College in New Hampshire. He is author of Replace the State: How to Change the World When Elections and Protests Fail; Islands and Oceans: Reimagining Sovereignty and Social Change; and The Empires’ Edge: Militarization, Resistance, and Transcending Hegemony in the Pacific.

Laurel Mei-Singh is assistant professor of geography and Asian American studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow and the Co-Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

REFERENCES:

J. K. Gibson-Graham

Haunani-Kay Trask

Military Geographies / Rachel Woodward

Cooperation Jackson

Michel Foucault / biopower

Praise for the book:

“As the United States is being destroyed, millions of spaces are opening up for something new to emerge. Offering urgent lessons and insights, Replace the State explores relational governance as an alternative to systems that no longer serve. Sasha Davis shows how we can move forward to create and claim a truly inclusive, sustainable world.”

—Lisa Fithian, author of Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance

Replace the State: How to Change the World When Elections and Protests Fail by Sasha Davis is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

From Get Out to The Babadook to Saint Maud: In his new book, Josh Gooch uses the horror film genre to expose the hostile conditions of life under capitalism, drawing connections between Marxist theory and contemporary narratives of psychological unease. Here, Gooch is joined in conversation with Jo Isaacson. This episode contains spoilers for multiple films (list below).

Joshua Gooch is professor of English at D’Youville University in Buffalo, New York. He is author of Capitalism Hates You: Marxism and the New Horror Film; Dickensian Affects: Charles Dickens and Feelings of Precarity and The Victorian Novel, Service Work, and the Nineteenth-Century Economy.

Johanna Isaacson is professor of English at Modesto Junior College and author of Stepford Daughters: Weapons for Feminists in Contemporary Horror.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Sianne Ngai

Michael Löwy / “critical irrealism”

Linda Williams on Psycho, essay in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: A Casebook

Søren Mau

Nancy Fraser

Mariarosa Dalla Costa

Silvia Federici

Amitav Ghosh

Kim Stanley Robinson

Jason W. Moore

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Sophie Lewis

M. E. O’Brien

Kathi Weeks

Lauren Berlant

FILMS DISCUSSED:

Psycho

Dracula

Nosferatu

Candyman

Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell

Joe Lynch’s Mayhem

Robert Eggers’s The Witch

Gillian Wallace Horvat’s I Blame Society

Rose Glass’s Saint Maud

Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook

Ari Aster’s Hereditary

Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Jordan Peele’s Get Out

Jordan Peele’s Us

Mariame Diallo’s Master

Tim Story’s The Blackening

Timothy Covell’s Blood Conscious

Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance

Romero’s Night of the Living Dead
Lamberti Bava’s Demons

The Ring

Jeremy Saulnier’s Murder Party

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

Praise for the book:
"Fiercely smart." —Annie McClanahan, author of Dead Pledges

"This is a book not just for fans of horror but for everyone interested in the ways films embed and communicate values, judgments, and affects." —Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, author of Gothic Things

Capitalism Hates You: Marxism and the New Horror Film by Joshua Gooch is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

Between the World Wars, ideas about meaning, truth, and the ethics of persuasion informed newly articulated principles for combining word and image. The young field of graphic design developed quickly during this period, and photography played a central role as a visual language of modern life. The concept Typophoto was coined by Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy and played a foundational role in the modernist graphic design movement known as the New Typography. Here, Jessica D. Brier, author of Typophoto: New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography, joins Ellen Lupton in conversation about this fascinating period in design history.

Jessica D. Brier is curator of photography at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. She is author of Typophoto: New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography, editor of On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print and coeditor of Making a Life in Photography: Rollie McKenna.

Ellen Lupton is a graphic designer, writer, and curator who has authored many books about design, including Thinking with Type and Extra Bold, and teaches design theory at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

REFERENCES:

Painting, Photography, Film / László Moholy-Nagy

Jan Tschichold

Walter Benjamin

El Lissitzky

Never Use Futura / Douglas Thomas

Paul Renner

Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker

Bauhaus

Praise for the book:

“A novel interplay between text and image, Typophoto fused—as Jessica D. Brier demonstrates in this insightful account—the interests of advertisers with those of the avant-garde, thus instigating a process that ultimately resulted in the ubiquitous pixelated imagery of our own day.

—Kathleen James-Chakraborty, author of Modernism as Memory

“Deeply researched . . . highlights the ways new print technologies enabled photography to become the central medium of modernist visual culture. “
—Paul Stirton, author of Jan Tschichold and the New Typography

Typophoto: New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography by Jessica D. Brier is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

From Plato and Derrida to anti-aging treatments, cryogenics, cloning, and whole-brain uploads, the dream of indefinite life is technological and, as Adam Rosenthal shows in Prosthetic Immortalities: a matter of prosthesis, the transformation of the original being. There can be no certainty of immortality and yet, the problem of immortality continues to haunt the soul. Rosenthal engages David Wills and Deborah Goldgaber in a conversation that touches on philosophy, transhumanism, biopolitics, Dolly the sheep and the return of the dire wolf, what it means to extend life or, ultimately, to extend death.

Adam R. Rosenthal is associate professor of French and global studies at Texas A&M University. Rosenthal is author of Prosthetic Immortalities: Biology, Transhumanism, and the Search for Indefinite Life and Poetics and the Gift: Reading Poetry from Homer to Derrida.

David Wills is professor of French studies at Brown University and author of Prosthesis.

Deborah Goldgaber is assistant professor of philosophy at Louisiana State University and author of Speculative Grammatology: Deconstruction and the New Materialism.

REFERENCES:

Plato

Homer

Descartes

Heidegger (the Dasein)

Derrida

Geoffrey Hinton

Hegel

Nick Bostrum

Dolly the sheep

David Chalmers

Aubrey de Grey

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Praise for the book:

“Rigorous, compelling, and beautifully written, Prosthetic Immortalities is at the vanguard of the new wave in Derrida studies.”

—Nicole Anderson, founding editor, Derrida Today Journal

“Adam R. Rosenthal conjures up the ghosts of metaphysics that return today through the promises of indefinite life from medical science and transhumanist speculations, moving brilliantly between science and science fiction.”

—Francesco Vitale, author of Biodeconstruction: Jacques Derrida and the Life Sciences

Prosthetic Immortalities: Biology, Transhumanism, and the Search for Indefinite Life by Adam R. Rosenthal, with foreword by David Wills, is available from University of Minneota Press. Thank you for listening.