Emancipations Podcast

We welcome the poet laureate of Vermont, Bianca Stone to the show for a conversation on poetry and psychoanalysis. In recent years, Bianca has turned to psychoanalysis as a way to teach poetry and as a method to better understand the process of writing poetry. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss how poetry relates to philosophy and politics, how to interpret poems, what the process of writing a poem is for Bianca, and much more! John Ashbery has said that Bianca Stone is "a brilliant transcriber of her generation’s emerging pathology and sensibility" and her work has been featured in numerous publications, from the New Yorker to Poetry Magazine, and her poems have been featured in numerous literary magazines. She is the Director of the Ruth Stone House up in Vermont, check it out: https://ruthstonehouse.org.

We are joined by political theorist Benjamin Studebaker to discuss his book, The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut, a sharp and accessible work on the political deadlocks of our present. The American economic system is slowly subjecting Americans to enormous amounts of stress, and the United States lacks the state capacity required to alleviate this stress. The elites and oligarchs have created a system that encourages citizens to blame each other. The crisis cannot be solved, the economy cannot be set right, and democracy cannot be saved. But American democracy cannot be killed, either. In this conversation, we discuss how professionals can incorporate political rhetoric that does not alienate workers or pander to them as they seek to develop practical strategies for political change. We discuss the idea of the revolutionary subject and its viability today; why economic egalitarianism is seemingly impossible to advocate in the current system; the meaning of the subaltern (in Gramsci's sense) and how we can understand the disempowering effects of our system as one in which more and more people are made into subalterns and deprived of full citizenship. We also debate the role of the Gaza conflict and the student protests.

We are joined by writer and literary scholar Tyler Austin Harper, whose writing in The Atlantic and New York Times has raised debates on class, race and the meaning of the left in ideologically turbulent times. In this conversation, we discuss the meaning of the left, how Marxism is to be interpreted in terms of class analysis, the merits of different interpretive models of class power and ideology, the professional or "New Class" problem which arose after the Second World War, and what is now referred to as the "PMC problem." We also discuss psychoanalysis and the theme of subjective limits and why Freud and Lacan are important for politics. To learn more about Tyler's work, please visit (https://www.bates.edu/faculty-expertise/profile/tyler-a-harper/). 

We are joined by historian Gabriel Raeburn to discuss the thought of Eugene Genovese, a firebrand Marxist historian who fundamentally transformed the academic study of slavery in the United States and who, with Christopher Lasch, attempted to launch Marxist Perspectives, a serious Marxist-centered journal that brought together the entirety of the global intellectual literati and leading Marxist scholars of the time. With the backing of the most prominent Marxists of the time, from E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Frederic Jameson and with support from young scholars such as Barbara Fields, the journal promised to usher in a new era of Marxist intellectual output that aimed to crossover to the public. But the journal soon dissolved after only two years. With C. Derick Varn of @VarnVlog we discuss the dynamics of what led to the dissolution of this journal and what these lessons can teach us today as we aim to infuse Marxist thinking and scholarship beyond the academy. We also discuss the thought of Eugene Genovese and Christopher Lasch, the two primary scholars behind Marxist Perspectives. To learn more about Gabriel Raeburn and to be in touch with him should you have access to any letters of Genovese for his ongoing research, please find his bio here.

We are pleased to welcome longtime friend of the show Scribe Wolf, aka A. H. Ra. In this discussion we focus on the book Noise: The Political Economy of Music by theorist Jacques Attali, a highly influential work that crosses disciplinary borders from history, music, to critical theory and Marxism. This is a wide-ranging and improvisational conversation. Definitely not to be missed. Includes a surprise new song!  Scribe Wolf is an Appalachia-based alt-country musician who describes his project as a "folk-form residing in the punctuated stitching-through of classical technique in avant-garde substrates." Along with his musical work—which additionally spans industrial roles as a classically trained composer and an audio engineer—​Ra comes to the program with a background in Marxist, psychoanalytic, and medievalist scholarship, as well as a history of Leninist organizing.  His new avant-metal band Lunafaction is a collaboration with Portland-based Jacob Schulte of black metal project Yfelsian; their debut single The Augury will be out on Bandcamp Friday, April 5, 2024: https://lunafaction.bandcamp.com/  Music video for "Possible Steps through a Moribund Arbor": https://youtu.be/i81XBcJJrpE?si=zYwi7-Qc3llELIQk 

We welcome Dr. Mohammed Sulaiman for a follow-up interview on the situation in Gaza where as of the time of recording (March 13, 2024) Israel has killed over 30,000 Palestinians. Building off our first discussion, this interview explores a number of questions listeners have wanted to raise with Mohammed about the war on Gaza. We discuss the legacy of Mohammed's teacher, Dr. Refaat Alareer who was murdered on December 6, 2023, what the future may hold for Hamas and the role of secularism in Palestinian struggle for freedom. Please join our Patreon if you enjoyed this conversation to help support us https://www.patreon.com/torsiongroups

We welcome Marxist scholars Sara Nadal-Melsió & Eduardo Cadava for a discussion on their new book "Politically Red". If as Brecht said "reading is class struggle" what does that mean for us as Marxists? How are we to orient ourselves in reading groups? How is reading political? Politically Red focuses on the work of Walter Benjamin, Frederic Jameson, Rosa Luxembourg, W.E.B. DuBois and we discuss some of the key ideas of this new book. Check it Politically Red here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047807/politically-red 

We welcome philosopher Carlos Garrido for a conversation on the theoretical and practical challenges facing the left in America. Garrido is the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism and he specializes in Marxist theory, the history of socialism in America and pragmatist philosophy. He is a director and philosopher at the @MidwesternMarx think tank and media organization. In this conversation we discuss the concept of the purity fetish, the variations within Western Marxism and we move to discuss the practical challenges facing the American left. We also analyze the best accounts of why socialism has never happened in America. Please check out Carlos's work https://www.midwesternmarx.com

I'm joined by Sudip Bhattacharya for a discussion on how to navigate debates on identity politics and class on the left. What are the best ways for socialists to engage in these debates without risking they end up in unproductive division and hostility? This is a productive conversation full of helpful social and political analysis. Sudip Bhattacharya is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Rutgers University. You can find his work at outlets like Protean magazine, Jacobin, Current Affairs, Black Agenda Report, among others.

We are joined by scholar Benjamin Fong to discuss his excellent new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge. We discuss the history of drug policy, the role of the state in enforcing and distributing drugs, and we focus on the history of alcohol, opioids, psychedelics and marijuana. We conclude with a conversation on how psychoanalytic theory can help explain drug use. Benjamin Y. Fong is Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett, the Honors College and Associate Director of the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University. He is the author of Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge (Verso 2023). He is also the co-editor (with Craig Calhoun) of The Green New Deal and the Future of Work (Columbia, 2022) and the author of Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism (Columbia, 2016).