Hotel Bar Sessions

Can queer theory overcome its ties to sexuality?Toward the end of the 20th Century, French Philosopher Michel Foucault called into question the ways in which a variety of practices, relations, institutions, and discourses came to be organized under the concept of "sexuality." The construction of sexuality as a thing, as a category, as a concept that seemingly identifies something crucial about us, operates as a way to make certain individuals, practices, and relations visible: scientifically, institutionally, juridically, and politically. There is, of course, a danger with this visibility, as it brings into the open and identifies individuals so that they can become subject to regimes of power. Queer theory, and queerness itself, seems inextricably tied to the notion of sexuality: how can some one or some thing be queer if we give up the concept of sexuality? On the other hand, the very notion of sexuality sexualizes everything it touches and thereby reduces the possibilities of queerness itself. Can we think queer without sexuality? Why should we think queer without sexuality? What possibilities are opened by queer thought once it is not longer bound by the image of sexuality?This week, we are joined by Dr. Nir Kedem, author of A Deleuzian Critique of Queer Thought: Overcoming Sexuality (Edinburgh UP, 2024) to talk about how Deleuze might aide us in the project of liberating queer theory from sexuality.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-147-overcoming-sexuality-with-nir-kedem-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The hosts dive into the controversies surrounding academic peer review, revealing inconsistencies that undermine research quality. They examine biases among reviewers and the implications for academic integrity. Discussion includes the current retraction crisis and challenges faced in specialized fields. The conversation also tackles the pros and cons of double-blind reviews, exploring the need for accountability and transparency. They emphasize reforms to enhance scientific integrity and ponder the future of the peer review process.

Dr. William Clare Roberts, an associate professor of political science at McGill University, dives into the nuances of ideology and self-emancipation. He discusses how ideology has evolved over two centuries, from a science of ideas to a tool of liberation and oppression. The conversation also touches on the intersection of identity, collective struggles, and environmental activism. Roberts argues that understanding ideological influences is crucial for navigating personal and societal freedom, making the case for a broader view of universal emancipation.

The ocean and space and "Ode to Joy" are sublime, of course... but what about an excellent lentil soup?In a confusing twist of etymology, where one would expect "sub" to mean "below," in the word "sublime" it indicates something above or even beyond. We use it as a superlative, but a superlative of what?Edmund Burke argues that the experience of sublimity is related to fear in the extreme, even terror-- and  Immanuel Kant's not far from this understanding-- so when someone says the lentil soup they're eating is "sublime," are they just making a category mistake? This week, the HBS hosts dig into the concept of the sublime, and test the limits of not only our imagination and understanding, but also language itself.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-144-the-sublime-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What motivates people to live off-grid in the 21st C? And how hard is it to survive out there?This week, the HBS hosts are joined by journalist and co-host of the Our Uncertain Future podcast Eric Mack, who decided in 2020 to move his family "off-grid." Currently residing in a 100% water- and energy-independent compound in the New Mexico desert, Eric chats with us not only about the skills and resources necessary for making a home off the grid, but also his (and others') philosophical reasons for doing so. Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-143-off-grid-living-with-eric-mack-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What, if anything, is the difference between having ideological commitments and belonging to a "cult"? This week's episode is a "deep dive" into the very deep waters of ideology and ideological commitments. A couple of important notes for listeners: first, this episode was recorded the day before William Clare-Roberts' excellent essay "Ideology and Emancipation: Voluntary Servitude, False Consciousness, and the Career of Critical Social Theory" was published. (We promise to do our level best to get him on the podcast for a Part 2 of this "Ideology" series!)  Second,  we are VERY excited to announce our new partnership with Edinburgh University Press, which is not only sponsoring this episode, but a number of other HBS episodes this season!  EUP has generously offered our listeners a discount on their current catalog, so be sure to enter the discount code "HBS" when you buy books on their website! Full episode notes (and they are HEFTY) available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-142-ideology-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts wonder whether ChatGPT is the least of our worries. Generative Ai is a still new and emergent technology capable of producing not only text that could be mistaken as human-generated, but also images, video, music, and "voice." For all of the amazing opportunities opened up by generative AI, however, it does not come without its own risks. Secondary and post-secondary education, for example, was thrown into crisis in late 2022 when ChatGPT was released, and is still weathering that storm. Meanwhile, other AI models, known as "diffusion models" (which generate audio, images and video) have also been getting more sophisticated at a lightning pace. Yet, the average internet user has very little knowledge of how generative AI works, and far less the skills to distinguish its outputs from human-generated content.Especially in an election year, should we worry about the circulation of products that generative AI models generate? What are the implications of the rapid and wide-spread proliferation of fake news and deepfakes? How do we guard against the "feedback loop" problem in generative AI learning models?This week, we try to explain and de-mystify generative AI  in order to get to the root of what we should be concerned about and what we shouldn't.Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-141-generative-ai-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts are not here to make friends. They’re here to WIN.We all have our low-brow guilty pleasures and, for millions of Americans, one of those is reality TV. Only a few months ago, amidst a war raging in the Ukraine, a new regent being crowned in the U.K., and reproductive rights being stripped from women here in the U.S., the whole of the internet was talking about only one thing: “Scandoval.” “Scandoval” (a portmanteau cleverly combining the  name of its chief ne’er-do-well perpetrator, Tom Sandoval, and the “scandal” his infidelity initiated) mostly involved a garden-variety boyfriend/girlfriend breakup between two of the main characters on the Bravo series Vanderpump Rules, a reality television show about garden-variety Los Angeles bartenders and waitstaff and their garden-variety attempts to be more than just garden-variety bartenders and waitstaff. … which leads one to wonder: how in the world did this become the single most trending topic on social media for more than 3 months?Today, we’re going to get our noses out of the clouds and take seriously what is probably one of the most influential pop culture products of the 21st century. Is “reality television” really “real”? Are the lives we see on the screen distillations of authentic human experience, or carefully crafted narratives that invite us to indulge in voyeuristic schadenfreude? Might there be something deeper and more meaningful to be found in these simulations of “reality”?Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-140-reality-tv/-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts discuss how friendships are forged, maintained, and sometimes broken. In The Politics of Friendship, Jacques Derrida invokes a statement originally attributed to Aristotle: “My Friends, there are no friends," capturing something that seems to be fundamental about friendship. Friendship is essential to human thriving, but also difficult, if not impossible, to attain and maintain. We make all sorts of fine distinctions between friends, "best" friends, acquaintances, colleagues or "work" friends, etc. But what makes someone that you know a "friend" vs. an acquaintance or a colleague? Is that a permanent condition? What do we owe to a friend, and what do they ow us? Is there a political dimension to friendship? This week, friends of the podcast, we're talking about friendship: how it's forged, how it is nurtured and sustained, and how it is broken.Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-139-friendship-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What is a person? What is a thing? And what difference does that difference make? Although we tend to use the terms "person" and "human being" interchangeably, it hasn't always been the case that all human beings were considered (moral or legal) persons, nor is the case today that all persons are human beings. Here in the United States, corporations are considered legal persons, and in several countries across the world, natural beings (like rivers, lakes, and ecosystems) have also been granted "personhood" status. Many people treat their pets as moral persons. Even when we don't call out cats and dogs "persons," we certainly distinguish them from other things (like a toaster!).Social robots and generative AI have only amplified our confusion about "personhood" recently. Do we need more categories to adequately distinguish our moral and legal obligations to the beings with which we share our world?Full episode notes available at this link: https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-138-personhood-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★