Conversations on Media, Art and Science
Cultural Technologies Podcast
November 22, 2012
Another Cultural Technologies Bootleg: This episode features German philosopher and social theorist Juergen Habermas's 2010 lecture on "'The Political': The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology" held at NYU. Habermas unpacks the merits and shortcomings of Carl Schmitt's concept of the political and flaws in Schmitt's account of the relation between European secularization and the rise of political liberalism. Excerpted from the website of "The Power of the Relgion in the Public Sphere," where complementary lectures by Cornel West, Charles Taylor, and Judith Butler may also be found. For transcripts of Habermas's talk, get a copy of the published collection of essays based on the conference. Oh, and if you missed the last podcast featuing an interview with John McCormick on "Carl Schmitt and Technology," give it a listen too.
Episodes on Foucault, biopolitics, German media theory, and visual culture coming down the pipe in the next few months. Stay tuned.
And as always--tunes courtesy the good folks at Stereo Total.
John P. McCormick, author of Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology, discusses renowned political theorist and fascist Carl Schmitt's troubling critique of liberal politics. We also discuss technology, Martin Heidegger, the Weimar Republic, Catholicism, Marxism, and why climate change can't be solved by a czar.
I recommend subscribing or dowloading the podcast file via ITUNES or the RSS FEED. Alternately, you can play via the in-screen player below or download the file directly here.
Music courtesy STEREO TOTAL -- creators of a carnivalesque delight for the ears.
Image: Carl Schmitt in 1904. Reprinted in Paul Noack, Carl Schmitt: Eine Biographie, 1993, p. 181
Another Cultural Technologies Bootleg: This episode features a chat among French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, media theorist Mark B. N. Hansen, and literary critic W. J. T. Mitchell on the work of German media theorist Friedrich Kittler, following which Stiegler muses about time, technology, love, and death in the age of electronic media. And Hansen chimes in about Amazon algorithms stalking his desires. (Original recording took place in Mark Hansen's and W. J. T. Mitchell's 2004 media theory course at the University of Chicago.)
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I recommend subscribing or dowloading the podcast file via ITUNES or the RSS FEED. Alternately, click on the in-screen player to the right or download the file directly here.
Music courtesy STEREO TOTAL -- creators of a carnivalesque delight for the ears.
The image is an old school flyer made by Katarzyna Okinczyc on the occasion of a visit by Stiegler to Northwestern University that same year.
Literary critic and theorist of visual culture WJT Mitchell talks to us about his classic book Iconology, as well the fear of images, John Locke, digital media, ideology, the life of images, images as life, and more.
For more on visual culture today, consider checking by the "Now! Visual Culture" conference being held at NYU in late May, where WJT Mitchell, myself, and a variety of scholars and artists will be giving talks. More info here.
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I recommend subscribing or dowloading the podcast file via ITUNES or the RSS FEED. Alternately, you can play via the in-screen player below or download the file directly here.
Music courtesy STEREO TOTAL -- creators of a carnivalesque delight for the ears.
Image lifted from the visual culture folks at IMAGO.
(Note: Audio quality improves after the first few minutes of the lecture!) This podcast features French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux's lecture in English at the Speculative Realism conference held at Goldmiths, University of London in 2007. The recent translation of Meillassoux's "After Finitude" and a spate of interpretations of his work have brought him greater recognition in the English-speaking world. As far as I know this is the only recording of him giving a talk in English, however. The audio quality isn't great but there's a certain merit and attraction in hearing philosophers speak in their own words. The conference was co-organized by Ray Brassier and Alberto Toscano and co-sponsored by the journal Collapse. Thanks to Robin Mackay of Collapse for sharing this recording. Go visit Collapse to learn more about Meillassoux's work, the conference and speculative realism, or get your hands on After Finitude. Due to problems with the recording I strongly recommend consulting the transcripts as you listen.
- Download:
Cult_Tech_Ep004_Harman_Object_Lesson.mp3
Philosopher Graham Harman, one of the major figures in the philosophical movement known as speculative realism, talks about object-oriented philosophy and his book The Quadruple Object. We also chat about Bruno Latour, the Egyptian revolution, Foucault, Freud, animal rights, and whether or not guns kill people.
Preview: As a followup, the next episode will present the original recording of Quentin Meillassoux's 2007 English-language lecture at the Goldsmiths conference on Speculative Realism.
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I recommend subscribing or dowloading the podcast file via ITUNES or the RSS FEED. Alternately, you can play via the in-screen player below or download the file directly here.
Music courtesy STEREO TOTAL. Do yourself a favor, buy an album.
Photo of Graham Harman by Brechtje Keulen.
In this episode dedicated to animals and media, historian Etienne Benson discusses the electronic surveillance of wildlife and media theorist Jussi Parikka talks about insects as technology. We also chat about animal studies, surveillance, biopolitics, Deleuze & Guattari, and why tracking technology isn't so creepy. For more, get a copy of Benson's Wired Wilderness and Parikka's Insect Media.
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I recommend subscribing or dowloading the podcast file via iTunes or the RSS feed. Alternately, you can play or download here or at the in-screen player below.
Music courtesy Stereo Total. Do yourself a favor, buy an album.
- Download: CultTech_Ep002_Zizek_Animals_Final.mp3
Slavoj Žižek gives a lecture entitled “The Animal Doesn't Exist.” He also discusses Lacan, Derrida, Badiou and definitions of the human. This is the first in a two-part podcast on animal studies, as well as our first “bootleg” episode.
Next week I'll post an original conversation with Etienne Benson and Jussi Parikka dedicated to their respective work on media and animals (and my thanks to Etienne for recording this Žižek lecture). Interviews with WJT Mitchell and Graham Harman are in the pipeline too.
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I recommend subscribing or dowloading the podcast file via iTunes or the RSS feed. Alternately, you can play the file online at the link below or download the file to your computer here.
Music: Stereo Total, All Rights Reserved
Introduction to the podcast and a conversation with French philosopher Barbara Cassin about Google, Aristotle, the politics of knowledge, Heidegger and more. For more on her work, see the enclosed PDF featuring Cassin interviewed by Penelope Deutscher.
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(Photo Credit: Image still from "Pour la peau des hommes," YouTube)
I've recently completed interviews with French philosopher Barbara Cassin and American literary theorist WJT Mitchell. When I'm done cleaning up the audio I'll release them as my initial podcasts. Another interview with German media theorist Markus Krajewski is in the pipeline, as is a special episode on "Media Studies and Animal Studies" featuring Etienne Benson and Jussi Parikka. Stay tuned. Or tune in, rather.
Culutral Technologies: Conversations on Media, Art and Science by Bernard Dionysius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.