Peter Rollins - The Archive

This is the first talk from Wake 2021 in which I explore the nature of trauma and the trauma that is the Death of God.

Every month on Patreon there is a movie discussion group called Exposure. Exposure is a monthly film club where we use movies as a lens through which we can look at some important but difficult concepts from philosophy, theology and psychoanalysis. This month Peter Rollins talks about the movie Pig, directed by Michael Sarnoski and staring Nicolas Cage, through the lens of Levi-Strauss' famous work on myth. He argues that Pig offers us one of the best cinematic examples of a 'complete' narrative arc. It is a story that revolves around the question of mourning; offering an answer through a ‘double twist’ in which the problem itself is not overcome, but integrated.

The Profane Temple by Peter Rollins

The Four Discourses by Peter Rollins

The Real by Peter Rollins

My Truth or The Truth | The Stoic, the Skeptic and the Sinner in Hegel by Peter Rollins

How (Not) to Speak of God | Deconstruction Vs. Denomination by Peter Rollins

From Enemy to Neighbor by Peter Rollins

As Claude Lévi-Strauss famously demonstrated in his seminal essay ‘Do Duel Organizations Exist?’, one of the issues that faces a society involves the fact that different groups map social conflict in radically different ways. It’s not the case that opposing political groups agree about the basic issues that face the world they inhabit, then line up on different sides; rather they inhabit different worlds. Worlds that are incommensurable in regards to the other. The result is constant misunderstanding and misrecognition that generates little more than a cottage industry of Youtube videos where different representatives of a group claim to ‘own’ the other. One of the areas where there is a fundamental disconnect relates to questions concerned with racism. In this pop-up seminar, I want to introduce a basic matrix that might help us begin to understand why the political discourse around race is so divisive. I’ll be concentrating on the two forms that racism takes - Supremacy and Orientalism - showing how these both feed on each other and how they misunderstand each other. In doing so, I’ll attempt to show how their relationship mimics the complex relationship that exists between Sadism and Masochism.

In this talk from Revolution I explore the dangers - and possibilities - located within the new Purity Culture.