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Theory Underground

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5 snips
Jan 16, 2025 • 1h 32min

EMSTU ep. Nina Power on The Good, Social Media Use, and The No of restraint and Prohibition

Nina Power, a philosopher known for her insights on nature and social media, explores fascinating themes in this discussion. She delves into the duality of nature and societal progress, critiquing capitalism and emphasizing the need for dialogue across diverse perspectives. Nina also tackles modern masculinity, highlighting anxieties around identity and purpose. Parenting amid societal pressures and the consequences of a hyper-sexualized culture are critically examined, fostering a call for reevaluation of values in contemporary society. A thought-provoking conversation!
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Jan 13, 2025 • 1h 6min

The Philosophy of Nature course at Theory Underground | Nina Power

Theory Underground exists to create the conditions necessary for rigorous thinking about the problems we face as humans. If you're serious about doing theory, making art, and living well, we invite you to join us. https://theoryunderground.com/subscribe   If you subscribe at theoryunderground.com, you'll get access to a package of courses, including:   12 Essential Concepts with social theorist David McKerracher The Fault-Line Theory with philosopher Michael Downs 12 Essential Political Theorists with political theorist Benjamin Studebaker The Philosophy of Nature with philosopher Nina Power    You'll also get access to the seminars of McKerracher, Downs, and Studebaker, where we'll interface with each other's theories and work toward sharpening one another's understandings.   If you subscribe at higher levels and support our work, we'll support your development with bespoke teaching. At plus, you'll be invited to participate in discussions. At premium, we'll invite you to submit essays for detailed, comprehensive feedback.   Alone and unaided, we struggle to grasp our situation in its fullness and formulate a meaningful response. By working together and pooling our energies, we can do better. Join us, and together we'll try to do the best we can. https://theoryunderground.com/subscribe   —   ABOUT / GET INVOLVED Looking to accelerate your way into a fresh understanding of our current situation? That’s what Theory Underground is all about. We are a seminar, lecture, and book publishing organism for workers with earbuds and professionals who see no hope in existing institutions. We're here to lay the conditions for doing theory and making art and having a life worth living in the 21st Century. If you don't know what it is already, then good luck! We're sure you'll figure it out if you're worth having around. In the meantime, enjoy this free content, all thanks to our patrons. You can always fund the free content at Patreon, but if you want to get involved at TU, then check out the membership tiers. And don't ask questions or make requests or give us advice, please. Take it or leave it. We guarantee our product meets a quality assurance check that none of your other content is capable of achieving, but you won't be able to tell the difference for a while. What we are rolling out in 2025 is a series of courses and ongoing seminars. Base subscribers at TU get access to the most essential of all that. The three tiers of membership grant certain very special privileges, most of which are not on the menu but you'll find out about. What IS on the menu though, for 2025, is a course on The Philosophy of Nature by Nina Power, 12 Essential Political Theorists with Benjamin Studebaker, The Fault-Line Theory with Michael Downs, and what I, the author of this copy, founder of this org, and main labor force for everything (production, socials, business, research, teaching, I'm a busy guy, guys) am coming out with a special series of Public seminars and Private seminars, as well as special introductory and deep dive courses. Never mind wading through the last two years of content. I'm here to be your tour guide through the most essential problems, concepts, and questions at Theory Underground. We're going to be talking about the method we've been developing between dialectics, phenomenology, and socioanalysis, in dialogue with Marxism, psychoanalysis, and French fried German theory (the fun pomo shit). Anyway, if you want to access all of that you better just subscribe right now: https://theoryunderground.com/subscribe MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk TU owns the rights to us the What's Left theme, thanks to its creator, Adam Leher. Thanks!
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Jan 6, 2025 • 1h 57min

Why Left - Intro to Political Theory and Core Concepts at TU

ABOUT / GET INVOLVED Looking to accelerate your way into a fresh understanding of our current situation? That’s what Theory Underground is all about. We are a seminar, lecture, and book publishing organism for workers with earbuds and professionals who see no hope in existing institutions. We're here to lay the conditions for doing theory and making art and having a life worth living in the 21st Century. If you don't know what it is already, then good luck! We're sure you'll figure it out if you're worth having around. In the meantime, enjoy this free content, all thanks to our patrons. You can always fund the free content at Patreon, but if you want to get involved at TU, then check out the membership tiers. And don't ask questions or make requests or give us advice, please. Take it or leave it. We guarantee our product meets a quality assurance check that none of your other content is capable of achieving, but you won't be able to tell the difference for a while. What we are rolling out in 2025 is a series of courses and ongoing seminars. Base subscribers at TU get access to the most essential of all that. The three tiers of membership grant certain very special privileges, most of which are not on the menu but you'll find out about. What IS on the menu though, for 2025, is a course on The Philosophy of Nature by Nina Power, 12 Essential Political Theorists with Benjamin Studebaker, The Fault-Line Theory with Michael Downs, and what I, the author of this copy, founder of this org, and main labor force for everything (production, socials, business, research, teaching, I'm a busy guy, guys) am coming out with a special series of Public seminars and Private seminars, as well as special introductory and deep dive courses. Never mind wading through the last two years of content. I'm here to be your tour guide through the most essential problems, concepts, and questions at Theory Underground. We're going to be talking about the method we've been developing between dialectics, phenomenology, and socioanalysis, in dialogue with Marxism, psychoanalysis, and French fried German theory (the fun pomo shit). Anyway, if you want to access all of that you better just subscribe right now: https://theoryunderground.com/subscribe MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk Shout out to Adam - thanks for the What's Left song it's the coolest thing ever and having the rights to use this is both a privilege and now our property because I guess music works that way for now.
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Jan 3, 2025 • 2h 28min

Bob Dylan's death drive - Plato and Lacan vs. Deleuze - Benjamin Studebaker and Michael Downs

Benjamin's piece: https://substack.com/home/post/p-153650327   ABOUT / GET INVOLVED Looking to accelerate your way into a fresh understanding of our current situation? That’s what Theory Underground is all about. We are a seminar, lecture, and book publishing organism for workers with earbuds and professionals who see no hope in existing institutions. We're here to lay the conditions for doing theory and making art and having a life worth living in the 21st Century. If you don't know what it is already, then good luck! We're sure you'll figure it out if you're worth having around. In the meantime, enjoy this free content, all thanks to our patrons. You can always fund the free content at Patreon, but if you want to get involved at TU, then check out the membership tiers. And don't ask questions or make requests or give us advice, please. Take it or leave it. We guarantee our product meets a quality assurance check that none of your other content is capable of achieving, but you won't be able to tell the difference for a while. What we are rolling out in 2025 is a series of courses and ongoing seminars. Base subscribers at TU get access to the most essential of all that. The three tiers of membership grant certain very special privileges, most of which are not on the menu but you'll find out about. What IS on the menu though, for 2025, is a course on The Philosophy of Nature by Nina Power, 12 Essential Political Theorists with Benjamin Studebaker, The Fault-Line Theory with Michael Downs, and what I, the author of this copy, founder of this org, and main labor force for everything (production, socials, business, research, teaching, I'm a busy guy, guys) am coming out with a special series of Public seminars and Private seminars, as well as special introductory and deep dive courses. Never mind wading through the last two years of content. I'm here to be your tour guide through the most essential problems, concepts, and questions at Theory Underground. We're going to be talking about the method we've been developing between dialectics, phenomenology, and socioanalysis, in dialogue with Marxism, psychoanalysis, and French fried German theory (the fun pomo shit). Anyway, if you want to access all of that you better just subscribe right now: https://theoryunderground.com/subscribe     MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk Shout out to Adam - thanks for the What's Left song it's the coolest thing ever and having the rights to use this is both a privilege and now our property because I guess music works that way for now.
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Dec 24, 2024 • 1h 37min

Why Left? How the Left STOLE Christmas (And the philosophy of LOVE)

A Christmas Special http://theoryunderground.com/
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Dec 15, 2024 • 1h 25min

No, you cannot have your money back (and we play guess the book)

  ABOUT Theory Underground is a research, publishing, and lecture institute. TU exists to develop the concept of timenergy in the context of critical social theory (CST). To get basically situated in this field you will have to know a handful of important figures from a bunch of areas of the humanities and social sciences. That would be a lot of work for you if not for the fact that Dave, Ann, and Mikey are consolidating hundreds of thousands of hours of effort into a pirate TV-radio-press that goes on tours and throws conferences and stuff. Enjoy a ton of its content here for free or get involved to access courses and the ongoing research seminars.  GET INVOLVED or SUPPORT  Join live sessions and unlock past courses and forums on the TU Discord by becoming a member via the monthly subscription! It’s the hands-down best way to get the most out of the content if you are excited to learn the field and become a thinker in the milieu: https://theoryunderground.com/products/tu-subscription-tiers Pledge support to the production of the free content on YouTube and Podcast https://www.patreon.com/TheoryUnderground Fund the publishing work via the TU Substack, where original works by the TU writers is featured alongside original works by Slavoj Zizek, Todd McGowan, Chris Cutrone, Nina Power, Alenka Zupancic, et al. https://theoryunderground.substack.com/ Get TU books at a discount: https://theoryunderground.com/publications CREDITS / LINKS Missed a course at Theory Underground? Wrong! Courses at Theory Underground are available after the fact on demand via the membership. https://theoryunderground.com/courses If you want to help TU in a totally gratuitous way, or support, here is a way to buy something concrete and immediately useful https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2MAWFYUJQIM58? Buy Dave and Ann a coffee date: https://www.venmo.com/u/theoryunderground  https://paypal.me/theorypleeb If Theory Underground has helped you see that text-to-speech technologies are a useful way of supplementing one’s reading while living a busy life, if you want to be able to listen to PDFs for yourself, then Speechify is recommended. Use the link below and Theory Underground gets credit! https://share.speechify.com/mzwBHEB  Follow Theory Underground on Duolingo: https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKTP747NSNMAOYEI  See Theory Underground memes and get occasional updates or thoughts via the Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/theory_underground MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk  
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Dec 13, 2024 • 1h 28min

The Natural, Normal, and Good | Capital, Church, and State | Guest: Daniel Garner

Critical theory can challenge what gets normalized as seemingly natural and good, but these things are not the same, nor are they "things," so how do we talk about them?   ABOUT Theory Underground is a research, publishing, and lecture institute. TU exists to develop the concept of timenergy in the context of critical social theory (CST). To get basically situated in this field you will have to know a handful of important figures from a bunch of areas of the humanities and social sciences. That would be a lot of work for you if not for the fact that Dave, Ann, and Mikey are consolidating hundreds of thousands of hours of effort into a pirate TV-radio-press that goes on tours and throws conferences and stuff. Enjoy a ton of its content here for free or get involved to access courses and the ongoing research seminars.  GET INVOLVED or SUPPORT  Join live sessions and unlock past courses and forums on the TU Discord by becoming a member via the monthly subscription! It’s the hands-down best way to get the most out of the content if you are excited to learn the field and become a thinker in the milieu: https://theoryunderground.com/products/tu-subscription-tiers Pledge support to the production of the free content on YouTube and Podcast https://www.patreon.com/TheoryUnderground Fund the publishing work via the TU Substack, where original works by the TU writers is featured alongside original works by Slavoj Zizek, Todd McGowan, Chris Cutrone, Nina Power, Alenka Zupancic, et al. https://theoryunderground.substack.com/ Get TU books at a discount: https://theoryunderground.com/publications CREDITS / LINKS Missed a course at Theory Underground? Wrong! Courses at Theory Underground are available after the fact on demand via the membership. https://theoryunderground.com/courses If you want to help TU in a totally gratuitous way, or support, here is a way to buy something concrete and immediately useful https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2MAWFYUJQIM58? Buy Dave and Ann a coffee date: https://www.venmo.com/u/theoryunderground  https://paypal.me/theorypleeb If Theory Underground has helped you see that text-to-speech technologies are a useful way of supplementing one’s reading while living a busy life, if you want to be able to listen to PDFs for yourself, then Speechify is recommended. Use the link below and Theory Underground gets credit! https://share.speechify.com/mzwBHEB  Follow Theory Underground on Duolingo: https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKTP747NSNMAOYEI  See Theory Underground memes and get occasional updates or thoughts via the Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/theory_underground MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk  
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Dec 1, 2024 • 2h 60min

Episode 2 of THE SELF-LEGITIMATING JOHNSONS - Dave and Nance are Pierre Bourdieu's Classification Struggles

Classification Struggles - Socioanalysis - Epistemically Rigorous Social Theory - Pierre Bourdieu     ABOUT Theory Underground is a research, publishing, and lecture institute. TU exists to develop the concept of timenergy in the context of critical social theory (CST). To get basically situated in this field you will have to know a handful of important figures from a bunch of areas of the humanities and social sciences. That would be a lot of work for you if not for the fact that Dave, Ann, and Mikey are consolidating hundreds of thousands of hours of effort into a pirate TV-radio-press that goes on tours and throws conferences and stuff. Enjoy a ton of its content here for free or get involved to access courses and the ongoing research seminars.  GET INVOLVED or SUPPORT  Join live sessions and unlock past courses and forums on the TU Discord by becoming a member via the monthly subscription! It’s the hands-down best way to get the most out of the content if you are excited to learn the field and become a thinker in the milieu: https://theoryunderground.com/products/tu-subscription-tiers Pledge support to the production of the free content on YouTube and Podcast https://www.patreon.com/TheoryUnderground Fund the publishing work via the TU Substack, where original works by the TU writers is featured alongside original works by Slavoj Zizek, Todd McGowan, Chris Cutrone, Nina Power, Alenka Zupancic, et al. https://theoryunderground.substack.com/ Get TU books at a discount: https://theoryunderground.com/publications CREDITS / LINKS Missed a course at Theory Underground? Wrong! Courses at Theory Underground are available after the fact on demand via the membership. https://theoryunderground.com/courses If you want to help TU in a totally gratuitous way, or support, here is a way to buy something concrete and immediately useful https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2MAWFYUJQIM58? Buy Dave and Ann a coffee date: https://www.venmo.com/u/theoryunderground  https://paypal.me/theorypleeb If Theory Underground has helped you see that text-to-speech technologies are a useful way of supplementing one’s reading while living a busy life, if you want to be able to listen to PDFs for yourself, then Speechify is recommended. Use the link below and Theory Underground gets credit! https://share.speechify.com/mzwBHEB  Follow Theory Underground on Duolingo: https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKTP747NSNMAOYEI  See Theory Underground memes and get occasional updates or thoughts via the Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/theory_underground MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk  
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Nov 27, 2024 • 2h 33min

MIKEY DRUNK STREAM - Democrats LOSE The Culture War and Nick Land Bros BIG Mad About Deleuze and IQ

David McKerracher, Nance, Michael Downs, and *drum roll* Benjamin Studebaker!!! With friends ABOUT Theory Underground is a research, publishing, and lecture institute. TU exists to develop the concept of timenergy in the context of critical social theory (CST). To get basically situated in this field you will have to know a handful of important figures from a bunch of areas of the humanities and social sciences. That would be a lot of work for you if not for the fact that Dave, Ann, and Mikey are consolidating hundreds of thousands of hours of effort into a pirate TV-radio-press that goes on tours and throws conferences and stuff. Enjoy a ton of its content here for free or get involved to access courses and the ongoing research seminars.  GET INVOLVED or SUPPORT  Join live sessions and unlock past courses and forums on the TU Discord by becoming a member via the monthly subscription! It’s the hands-down best way to get the most out of the content if you are excited to learn the field and become a thinker in the milieu: https://theoryunderground.com/products/tu-subscription-tiers Pledge support to the production of the free content on YouTube and Podcast https://www.patreon.com/TheoryUnderground Fund the publishing work via the TU Substack, where original works by the TU writers is featured alongside original works by Slavoj Zizek, Todd McGowan, Chris Cutrone, Nina Power, Alenka Zupancic, et al. https://theoryunderground.substack.com/ Get TU books at a discount: https://theoryunderground.com/publications CREDITS / LINKS Missed a course at Theory Underground? Wrong! Courses at Theory Underground are available after the fact on demand via the membership. https://theoryunderground.com/courses If you want to help TU in a totally gratuitous way, or support, here is a way to buy something concrete and immediately useful https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2MAWFYUJQIM58? Buy Dave and Ann a coffee date: https://www.venmo.com/u/theoryunderground  https://paypal.me/theorypleeb If Theory Underground has helped you see that text-to-speech technologies are a useful way of supplementing one’s reading while living a busy life, if you want to be able to listen to PDFs for yourself, then Speechify is recommended. Use the link below and Theory Underground gets credit! https://share.speechify.com/mzwBHEB  Follow Theory Underground on Duolingo: https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKTP747NSNMAOYEI  See Theory Underground memes and get occasional updates or thoughts via the Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/theory_underground MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk  
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Nov 25, 2024 • 6h 40min

Episode 1 of THE SELF-LEGITIMATING JOHNSONS | Sides A and B

The guest, Pierre Bourdieu, renowned sociologist, presents lectures that delve into complex social theories. He discusses the significance of socio-analysis and cultural distinctions, unveiling how social capital shapes our identities. Listeners are invited to engage with the new Turn Initiative, promoting community collaboration. Bourdieu humorously critiques societal views on wealth and social class, challenging conventional narratives. The podcast emphasizes language's dual role in education and the importance of nuanced understandings in sociology to navigate modern complexities.

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