Culture, Power and Politics » Podcast

https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/can-you-feel-it.mp3   Can you Feel it? Once upon a time, Cultural Studies was basically about looking at everything as if it were a language: fashion, advertising, music and journalism were understood as different ways in which people ‘make meanings’. A lot of cultural studies still is like that – it’s a very useful and productive way of looking at things. But what about those aspects of our lives which are not easy to translate into ‘meanings’?  What about feelings? What about the sounds of music, the colours of paintings, the physical thrill of watching a movie? These issues aren’t just important for thinking about art and music – they’re also crucial to understanding what motivates people politically and socially. We’ll  explore these issues and try to get inside one of the most difficult but rewarding bodies of 20th century theory: the ‘schizoanalysis’ of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I’m going to stick my neck out and say that if there’s one pair of thinkers from the past hundred years who offer uniquely insightful ways of thinking about all of these issues, about the nature of power and the nature of change, and about the very question of what it means to be alive, then I think it’s Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Deleuze was arguably the most influential French philosopher of the late 20th century. Guattari was a militant psychotherapist, an early advocate of ‘queer’ politics’, a key figure in the run-up to the events of May 1968, a widely innovative thinker who ended up running as a Green candidate in regional elections shortly before his death in the early 90s. D&Gs work is very difficult to read for the uninitiated because it draws on an obscure and idiosyncratic set of sources, and it has become normal in both the French and English-speaking worlds for it to become largely the preserve of academics and aesthetes. This is a shame, because once you get past the unique terminology (or rather, start to become accustomed to it), this really is one of the most powerful bodies of thought around for thinking about politics on every scale – the result of one of the most ambitious attempts to date to think about the relationships between psychic, the social, the physical and the political aspects of human (and non-human) experience. In particular D&G have been taken up in various areas of the humanities and social sciences in recent years as theorists of ‘affect’ – of the emotional and bodily aspects of communication and social relationships. Again – this is a really important issue when thinking about all forms of political communication. When focus groups in Nuneaton say that they don’t like Corbyn because he just sort of looks and sounds wrong, they are not primarily responding to the things that he says, but in the way that he says them, in the tone of his voice and the way he seems to carry himself. This is all a question of ‘affect’ as much as it is a question of ‘framing’ or ‘meaning’. So…a lot to think about!

https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/multitude-metropolis-and-mayor.mp3 A discussion of the ideas of Hardt & Negri and others in the Autonomist tradition, followed by a discussion of the ‘Take Back the City’ campaign for a people’s London, with two of its founders.    

https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/queer-as-folk.mp3 Another huge cultural and political change of recent years has been the transformation in social attitudes towards same-sex relationships. It’s hard to believe now that both advocates and opponents of ‘gay liberation’ once thought that capitalism itself simply could not tolerate open same-sex relationships, and would be fatally undermined by any attempt to validate them. At the same time sexuality remains a highly charged political issue in many complex ways, and the broad field of ‘queer theory’ has been one of the most productive and contentious areas of cultural studies. Stephen Maddison was supposed to lead this session but he was ill :(.  Jeremy covered it at the last minutes using OSE Queer as folk. There was a pretty good discussion so we’re making the recording available despite the inevitable shortcomings.

https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/feminism-ose.mp3 If historians of the future remember our era for anything, it is probably going to be the unprecedented revolution in the social status of women that we have lived through, and are living through.  But the movement which made that change possible is still derided and feared, often seemingly unpopular with the very generations of young women who have benefited from it. At the same time it has raised a question which cultural and social theory is still struggling to answer – what is gender? Is it a social construct or a biological fact, or both, or neither? What does it mean to be a feminist today? Where does masculinity fit into all this? What are ‘performativity’ and ‘intersectionality’ when they’re at home?

http://www.culturalstudies.org.uk/Neoliberalism%20OSE.mp3   “There’s no such thing as society: only individuals (and their families)”. This was perhaps Margaret Thatcher’s most notorious public pronouncement. It was also one of the few moments when she made explicit her commitment to the ideals and assumptions of ‘neoliberalism’: the individualistic political philosophy that has come to dominate our politics, our culture and our lives.  After the 2008 crash, and the rise of Corbynism, we’re hearing a lot of discussion these days about the problems with neoliberal economics, which basically wants to privatise everything, drive down wages and cut taxes for the rich. We don’t hear so much about neoliberalism as a cultural ideology, promoting individualism, competition and greed in every area of life, from the nursery to the hospice. But without understanding this, we can’t understand how  ruling elites have got away with imposing such an unpopular programme for so long.   Slides can be found HERE

  Computer World   March 8th 2016 ‘Computer World’ is the title of Kraftwerk’s best album (yes it is). At just around the time they recorded it, economists, philosophers and social theorists were predicting that the ‘computerisation’ of society would change everything, creating a world of infinite information, without stable values, in which the very idea of being ‘modern’ would come to seem out of date.  Were they right? The technological changes of the past few decades have radically changed how capitalism works – but is it still fundamentally the same old system? HERE ARE THE SLIDES FROM THE LECTURE HERE IS THE RECORDING OF THE LECTURE  (Unfortunately we can’t get it to upload to the podcast feed for some reason)  

https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/we-are-all-migrants.mp3 This is the recording of the Feb 23rd 2016 lecture / discussion ‘We Are All Migrants’, given by Jeremy Gilbert, covering issues around the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. This lecture is part of a series ‘Introduction to Cultural Studies: Culture, Technology, Power’ hosted at Open School East, which has merged with the ‘Culture, Power, Politics’ series for the time being. For more details see https://culturepowerpolitics.org/introduction-to-cultural-studies-culture-technology-power/. The session starts a little slow because Jeremy had a heavy cold, but the discussion is very wide-ranging. The slides for this lecture can be found at https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/migration-ose-slides.pdf

This was the second session of an afternoon symposium on Podemos and radical democracy,  jointly convened by the Culture, Power and Politics seminar series and by the Department of Politics Theory Lab at Queen Mary, University of London (who really did all the work). It features Sirio Canós Donnay, Dan Hancox and Jeremy Gilbert https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/podemos-session-2.mp3

This was the first session of an afternoon symposium on Podemos and radical democracy,  jointly convened by the Culture, Power and Politics seminar series and by the Department of Politics Theory Lab at Queen Mary, University of London (who really did all the work). It features  Carlos Delclós, Emmy Eklundh, Paul Kennedy and Lasse Thomassen   https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/podemos-session-1.mp3

The third session deals with some of the political insights than be drawn from the psychoanalytic tradition, and from some radical critiques of it. https://culturepowerpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/politics-of-the-unconscious.mp3