Critical Media Studies

In this episode Barry and Mike return to Bernard Steigler’s What Makes Life Worth Living: On Pharmakology.  They tease out Steigler’s terms proletarianism and disintoxification, as well as our possible roles in resisting the poison and fostering the growth of the cure in the pharmakon.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Bernard Steigler’s 2010 book, What Makes Life Worth Living: On Pharmacology.  They reconsider their understanding of the pharmakon from Steigler’s other work and discuss the significance of care in pharmakology. 

In this episode, Barry and Mike finish their discussion of Chayka on Han and Benjamin’s essay, “The Storyteller.”  In teasing out Han and Benjamin’s ideas about the distinction between narration and information, they land on the problem posed by the contemporary digital campfire. 

In this episode, Barry and Mike focus exclusively on the distinction between the storyteller and the novelist as explained in Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay, “The Storyteller.” 

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Kyle Chayka’s assessment of the “Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher,” Byung-Chul Han.  For those unfamiliar with Han's media theory, we encourage you to click the link above and read the Chayka article before listening to the episode.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss the “Sonny Bunch Hosts the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood” episode “The Future of Media is Passive” and the notion of “linear streaming.”  The ponder what it says about our distracted worlds.

In this episode Barry and Mike talk about Andrew Milne’s essay, “Tourists in our own Reality: Susan Sontag’s Photography at 50” in an attempt to update her arguments for the digital age.  They puzzle over what it means to have an authentic relationship to photographs, or to be authentic ourselves. 

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss chapter 2 of of Jonathan Crary’s “Scorched Earth.”   They focus on social media as a pharmacological problem within the Internet Complex. 

Barry and Mike discuss Jonathan Crary’s critique of the “internet complex” and what it means.

Barry and Mike discuss Siegfried Kracauer's 1926 essay "Cult of Distraction: On Berlin's Picture Palaces." Written nearly 100 years ago, the essay is strangely relevant to our current political landscape. We pay special attention to Kracauer's unique notion of distraction, which contra Stiegler, Kracauer views as a stimulus to thought.