Thinking With... A Rhetorical Theory Podcast: Recent Episodes
Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street
“Thinking With..." is a pedagogical experiment that serves as an invitation to think along with the text, with us, and with each other. We are three academics who specialize in Rhetorical Theory: Nate DeProspo (ABD at the University of South Carolina), John Muckelbauer (Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina), and Nathaniel Street (Assistant Professor at Mount Saint Vincent University).
In this ep, we discuss Derrida's "White Mythology."
Some themes and talking points:
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metaphor as an organizing principle of philosophy
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how to ground or "unground" a philosophical system
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catachresis vs metaphor
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Hegel vs Derrida
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Heidegger's nostalgia
In this special episode, Dr. Brooke Rollins, an Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University, joins the Thinking With crew to discuss Derrida's "Nietzsche and the Machine" interview, as well as Brooke's research in risk, gambling, analytics (in sports and in life), and rhetorical theory.
In this ep, we talk through Derrida's essay, "From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism Without Reserve." Much of this episode is dedicated to teasing the orientational differences between Hegel and Derrida, as well as the difficulties and affordances, generally, of the post-Hegelian project.
In this episode, we discuss Derrida's essay, "Structure, Sign, and Play."
Topics covered include:
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the relationship between ethnocentrism and metaphysics
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our culpability in metaphysical structures of engagement
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Derrida’s version of rigor in critical theory
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Derrida’s treatment of Levi Strauss
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the limits of deconstruction
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the bricoleur vs engineer
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the relation between contingency and universality
In this episode, we talk through Derrida's "Signature Event Context," which is primarily a reading and extension of J.L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words. Our conversation covers, among other things, Derrida's notion of iterability, Austin's concepts of performativity and illocutionary force, the Searle vs. Derrida exchange, and the desire for truth and certainty in philosophy.
First ep of 2023! We took a lil break for the holidays. In this ep, we're talking about Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy" again, among other things. Good episode -- no effort in the episode description.
In this episode, Nathaniel, John, and Nate talk through the first half of Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy."
In this episode, we talk through the first 25 pages of Derrida's Of Grammatology:
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the primacy of writing
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embeddedness of metaphysics
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who needs Saussure anymore?
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signifiers, signifieds, and signifier/signifieds
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writing instruction as constitutively theological
We cover a lot of ground in this episode, but not a lot of this ground is tied directly to Derrida. In the beginning of the episode, we talk about the dynamics of appropriation, math, physics, the terminology of becoming, and Heraclitus. Towards the middle and end, we discuss the brevity of history, how Hollywood must save us, and the genius of the Matrix.
Thinking With... is back! This season, we cover a variety of Derrida's texts, including "Différance," Of Grammatology, "Plato's Pharmacy," "Signature Event Context," "From General to Restricted Economy," "Nietzsche and the Machine," and "White Mythology."
In this episode, we do a short intro where we discuss the details of this season as well as the new intro music.
In the episode, proper, we discuss Derrida's "Différance," the various components of Derrida's central (non)concept, the differences between Heidegger and Derrida, the dynamics of contemporary theory, among other things.
Sampled conversations from previously recorded episodes on Heidegger that did not make the cut (but are still potentially worth your time).
0:00-16:00
- as thinkers of movement, why don’t Hegel and Heidegger use the term, “becoming”?
- Heidegger’s celebrating of ancient Greek thought
- the duality of “Being” and “being”
- the performative undercurrent of representational thinking
16:00-29:00
- H’s fetishizing and essentializing of Greek thinking
- essence for Heidegger vs. essence for Nietzsche
- trying to think the problematic of representationalism
- H’s seeming obsession with origins vs. Nietzsche’s disinterest in origins
29:00-41:00
- what counts as philosophy for Heidegger
- the ambiguity and fundamentality of the “Being” vs. “being” dualism
- how the opposition functions in Heidegger
41:00-end
- H’s emphasis on the verb (as a constitutive linguistic-ontological element)
- H’s weird example of “blossoming”
- the simultaneity of difference and identity
0:00-13:00
- thinking as perceiving
- dwelling in the problematic
- slogans in philosophy
- H’s notion that philosophical questions cannot (structurally) have answers
13:00-19:00
- thinking the movement of thinking
- rendering the unthought thinkable
- Heidegger’s ambitions as a philosopher
19:00-31:00
- essence as ambiguity
- Heidegger’s fetishizing of ambiguity
- the problem of common speech and language
31:00-40:00
- calcification as a way of enabling difference and complexity
- how posing a definitive answer to a philosophical question is not inherently reductive or restricting
- why representational thinking is “too advanced” for Heidegger
40:00-end
- the anti- or post-Hegelian project
- why is Nate bringing up Hegel again?
- Karen Barad’s orientation
- negotiating intellectual subject positions
- the violence of subjectivity
0:00-13:00
- teaching deconstructive moves in the classroom
- meta-reflection
- Nathaniel’s exploratory essay assignment
13:00-27:00
- AF / AM critical discourse
- Teaching Ta Nehisi Coates
- an argument in favor of difficult writing
27:00-46:00
- Heidegger’s mysticism / nostalgia
- the ambiguity of H’s notion of authenticity
46:00-end
- H’s etymological linking of “thinking” and “thanking”
- human being’s indebtedness to the other
0:00-16:00
- Heidegger’s central question
- diagnosing representational thinking
- propriety / purity in Heidegger
- the fascism built into the text
16:00-38:00
- Heidegger’s disdain for commonness and traditional thinking
- differences between Heidegger and Hegel
- social constructionism
- difficulties with language and representation
38:00-end
- the functions/effects of education
- fear of death
- provisional thinking
The Heidegger Files: What is Called Thinking? By Martin Heidegger Lecture X
With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street
- Time Complicates Being, Eternal Return of the Same, Deliverance from Revenge, Let Will ~~be~~ Will (Start-11:55)
- Why does the “same” return?; what’s up with the “eternal”?; this is why no one writes about time anymore; linear time, blurred (12:00-21:50)
- Dasein and the pros and cons of representational thinking; time, history, eternity; perspectivalism, epistemological or ontological?; (22:00-29:30)
- Cosmological Eternal Return; What’s up with eternity?; Eternity of being/will/presence; how does the will will itself? (30:00-40:20)
- Nathaniel resurfaces; Eternal will, willing itself; it’s okay Nathaniel, we already figured it out; (40:30-47:50)
- Misreadings of the Eternal Return; how to not engage/think; contingency of essence and destiny (48:00-end)
0:00-13:00
- teaching on zoom
- unpacking theory for students
- lectures 9 and 10
- what makes Heidegger and this text so compelling
- how Heidegger rehabilitates Nietzsche
13:00-24:00
- the “treasure of metaphysics” for Heidegger
- how Heidegger and Derrida relate to metaphysics
- the relative inescapability of metaphysical thinking
24:00-43:00
- the eternal return
- overcoming the will’s desire for revenge
- representational thinking as a way of enacting revenge on difference
- Hegel’s Aufhebung vs. Nietzsche’s transformation via overman
43:00-
- more on sublation in Hegel
- transition of last man to overman
- what is involved in the negation of negation of Absolute Spirit
0:00-4:00
- Nate trying to learn the game, “Go”
- John’s golf game
4:00-20:00
- instinct or “feel” vs analysis / cognition
- Heidegger’s commitment to authenticity (and to pluralism / becoming)
- Heidegger’s strange etymological interpretation of “blinking”
20:00-33:00
- the importance of Nietzsche for Heidegger’s thinking (and post-structuralist thinking)
- Heidegger’s attempt to surpass Nietzsche
- Heidegger’s slowness
33:00-end
- the “superman” or “overman”
- the characteristics of the overman and the last man
0:00-4:00
- The therapeutics of reading philosophy
4:00-9:00
- Heidegger’s pace and style
- preliminary reflections on H’s notion of authenticity
- essences of being and thinking
9:00-23:00
- critique of representational or technological language
- abbreviations, acronyms, etc.
- styles and tones of thinking (Heidegger and Nietzsche)
23:00-39:00
- overman
- being “in the zone”
- how might one channel the overman?
- some necessary basketball talk in here
39:00-49:00
- what disposition is Heidegger attempting to cultivate?
- ways of inhabiting language, texts, life
- Heidegger’s anthropocentrism
49:00-end
- Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity
- the ontological conditions (and ethical implications) of Heideggerrian thought
- being grounded in groundlessness
The Heidegger Files Focus: What is Called Thinking? By Martin Heidegger Lectures I, II, III With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street Opening Gambit: Thinking is not simply a mental event but always emerges in-relation; the irksome problem of essences; antagonistic progressivism (Start–11:00) Heidegger’s Pedagogy, teaching, learning, thinking; example of the wordworker, authenticity and pluralism; involvement vs confrontation; Externality and Simulacrum vs Internality and Authenticity; Tuna Production (11:10–27:15) Pluralizing disclosures; the luxury of authenticity (27:20–32:30) The intimacy of reading and thinking – questions: answers and responses; Socrates’ orientation to questions and responses, the dialectic; what is called thinking – "was heißt" vs "was ist"); “one track thinking” – it’s not laziness, it’s the essence of technology; Heidegger+ now with 10% more Performativity (affirmative reading required) (27:25–53:05) Posthumanism + Nostalgia = ??; Confrontation and Affirmation; Rerouting ruts; Challenging the forms that slumber within (53:10-1:03:35) Woodworking and Nathaniel’s secret Heideggerianism (seriously, he’s hand-making hammers now); Authenticity vs Difference; Nate’s construction-worker mask; the role of telos in involvement; John’s macro-agoraphobia (1:03:40–1:13:10) Thinking as the becoming-molecular of the molar (or the deconstruction of the model); the therapeutic value of the molar (thinking as the becoming-molar of the molecular?); Vertigo; thinking is only thinking in relation – should philosophy incorporate the biography of thinking?; Illustration vs Reflection (serial connection vs general/particular) (1:13:15-end)
In the season finale of Deleuzecast, we talk through the appendix of Deleuze’s Logic of Sense: "The Simulacrum and Ancient Philosophy." 0:00-14:00
difference and identity atomism clinamen
14:00-23:00
color and perception color as object or as relation species differences limits of perspectivism
23:00-30:00
eternal return of the same Deleuzian repetition
30:00-45:00
evolution error and mutation / the Deleuzian complication to this logic of error and development sexual reproduction / diversity the conjunctive “nature” of nature the orchid and the wasp differential pedagogy
45:00-1:00:00
reversal of platonism absolute difference and absolute sameness back to the eternal return the molar and molecular theology as a tendency or form of thinking
1:00:00-end
the issue of “fragmented” ontologies and certain theories of difference advocating difference over identity, or fragmentation over unity, or the molecular over the molar the posthuman subject the nietzschean version of posthumanism the overman how the prescriptive, or policy-writing, dulls theory the need to have deliverables in scholarship / theory application
Focus The Logic of Sense “Twenty-Sixth Series of Language,” “Thirty-Third Series of Alice’s Adventures” and “Thirty-Fourth Series of Primary Order and Secondary Organization” With: “Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street Nathaniel’s excellent sense of “the cool” (Start-1:35) Reflection on Logic of Sense as a whole; Re-Intuiting Representation; John’s Resistances to Psychoanalysis; Deleuze’s Engagement with Psychoanalysis; (1:40-17:00) Hegel and Concrete Universality; Structuralism and Psychoanalysis; Psychic-Policing; Lacan’s Domineering Tone; Super-Zizek saves Hegel and Lacan; Voluptuous Vitriol for Derrida; Derrida doesn’t save Nietzsche; Allen Iverson is the Answer (17:10-30:15) Humor, Satire, Irony; Irony and Community; Satire and Stephen Colbert (30:25-39:50) Life is Like a Sit-Com; Topological Free Radicals; Community again; Hey we should watch Bo Burnham (40:00-48:20) Re-Intuiting Representation; Being/Becoming; Representation≠Capture; Representations are Productions; Potential and Constraint; (48:25-End)
Focus The Logic of Sense “Twenty-Fourth Series of the Communication of Events” With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street
John Discovers Conditioner (Start–2:20) Deleuze Contra Hegel; Productivity of Distance (2:25–18:10) Idioms and Defense Mechanisms; Social Media, Narcissism, and Community Production (18:15–23:40) In/Compossibility, Leibniz, and Disjunction/Conjunction (23:45–35:20) Infinitives; Expressions – “To Butterfly”; the Place and Function of Logic (35:30–45:25) Do we “do” affirmation?; First Philosophy: Ontology or Ethics? (43:35–51:16) Hegel and the Unity of Opposites; The Eternal Return… of the same or difference?; Logic at the Level of the Event; The Town within the Town; Im/Material Expressionism (51:28–!:07:55) Limits of Human Consciousness; Overcoming the Human; The (Meta)Consciousness-Zone; Make More Towns (1:08:05–End)
Focus: Logic of Sense “22nd Series – Porcelain and Volcano” and “23rd Series of the Aion” With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street Hard Times with Time (Start – 5:45) Derrida and the Deconstructed Present; Vulgar Time (6:00-11:48) Kant, Time/Space, Faculties; Heidegger and the relationship of change to bodies (12:00-25:40) Deleuze’s book on Kant; Sublime: Limits of Representation, “'God', for example” (25:50-33:30) (Failed) Representation: What’s the point of language?; Freedom, choice, and self-transformation; Events and Spacing (33:40-43:05) "Crossing the Rubicon," for example; Language – Container or Modulator?; (43:15-51:40) Emergence of Language; Wait, is language a thing? Do we have it? Do we speak it?; Molar, Molecular, the Trope (51:50-1:07:08) Burping and Talking; The Logic of Sense and the Sense of Logic; (1:07:15-end)
Focus: Logic of Sense "Twentieth Series on the Moral Problem in Stoic Philosophy" and "Twenty-First Series of the Event" With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street
hair / beard care pedagogical approaches to intro classes / infusing theory in the classroom interpretive lenses Deleuze’s ethics “not to be unworthy of what happens to us” “getting in the zone” affirmation of becoming
Focus: The Logic of Sense – "Seventeenth Series of the Static Logical Genesis," Eighteenth Series of the Three Images of Philosophers," and "Nineteenth Series of Humor" With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street Teaching the Enthymeme (Start-4:30) Taste, Enthymemes, and Disrupting Subjectivity (4:30-5:30) Enthymeme and the Syllogism (5:30-7:50) Socratic Irony, Mania, Pedagogy of the Dialogue (8:00-15:45) Romantic Irony; Humor; Individual and Personal; (15:50-37:35) Masters of Ironic Comedy; Vagabond Humorists; Feminism and Bodies (37:40 - 45:00) Heights, Depths, and Surfaces; Ticks (45:05-49:50) Fogged Up Window Panes; Two Ways of Unravelling String; Ticks, again (50:00-57:10) More Ticks; Diogenes; Lines, Planes, and thickness; a Platonism of Surfaces?; Groundlessness of the Surface (57:15-1:09:25) Problems, True and False (1:09:30-1:22:00)
Focus: Not Deleuze With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street
Superfans; Calcifying/Undoing Mimetic Rhythms; Nietzche’s Mustache Oil; Impossibility of Non-Individuation (Start-16:45) Podcast Pedagogy; Instructional Tidiness; Heuristics of Learning; Narcissism and the Undoing of the Ego, Borges and Epochs of Reading One’s Own Writing (17:00-33:00) Course Design, Lecture/Seminar; Pacing Course Reading; Degrees of Structure; Teaching Derrida, Performativity, Phaedrus and other Theory Stuff; Jeffrey Nealon gets Plugged (33:00-44:30) No Deleuze (44:30-End)
Focus: Logic of Sense "Sixteenth Series of the Static Ontological Genesis" With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street - on being lost when reading Deleuze - an attempt at an intro to Leibniz - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - immanence / transcendence - 3 images of philosophy: heights / depths / surfaces - Nathaniel's version of Plato's Phaedrus - analogies of philosophies to music - calcification of styles (and why bones aren't your enemy) - diagnosis itself is not transcendent (nor is critique)
For this special episode, Nate, Nathaniel, and John are joined by Caroline Wigmore, and the group riffs in response to Bo Burnham's recent Netflix comedy special Inside. We discuss different styles of contemporary comedy, the role of self-awareness in critique, the dynamics of cancel culture, branding, and many more concepts that Burnham's provocative special engages.
Focus: Logic of Sense "Fourteenth Series of Double Causality" and "Fifteenth Series of Singularities" With: Caddie Alford, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street
Focus: The Logic of Sense "Twelfth Series of the Paradox" and "Thirteenth Series of the Schizophrenic and the Little Girl" With: Caddie Alford, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street 0:00-16:00
the metaphorics of the schizophrenic Alice in Wonderland Deleuze’s style of reading / diagnostics
16:00-28:00
the “meta” move the tendency to romanticize becoming (vs being) in philosophy or theory the simultaneity of identity and difference
28:00-46:00
how to live in the face of deterritorialization the terror of becoming the conceptual assumptions that are necessary for survival the necessity/impossibility of categories
46:00-end
the quasi cause / double causality how doxa are engendered provisionality vs transcendence
Focus: The Logic of Sense "Tenth Series of the Ideal Game" and "Eleventh Series of Nonsense" With: Caddie Alford, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street
0:00-15:00
Deleuze’s concept of time kairos and chronos the challenge of not thinking linearly time vs relationality
15:00-32:00
Kant’s concept of time chance good or common sense attending to sense in its complexity
32:00-50:00
paradox and doxa the paradoxes of thinking thinking as irreducible to consciousness
50:00 - end
sense as both structure and event thinking relationality outside of the categories of identity making relations into a new object or foundation of a philosophical system
Focus: The Logic of Sense "Seventh Series of Esoteric Words," "Eighth Series of Structure," and "Ninth Series of the Problematic" With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, Brooke Rollins, and Nathaniel Street
What are the stakes of Deleuze’s project? (Start) Structure/Event and Series Langue & Parole Logic of Serial Invention
Methodology (10:15) Literary Methods Barthes’ “Order of the Known” Differential Ontology Place of “Sense” in all of this Displacement on the Flat Plane Reflection without eHeight
What the Hell is Sense? (17:00) Seriously, what the fuck is going on? Alexius Meinong
Flattening Out the Plane (31:30) Ideational Material Problems & Solutions E.G. Pandemic
Early vs Late Deleuze (43:10) Methodology for Reading
Structure of Invention (56:30) Chance and the Random
Focus: The Logic of Sense "Fourth Series of Duality," "Fifth Series of Sense," and "Sixth Series on Serialization" With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street
0:00-15:00 - the word "sense" - Deleuze on Carroll (vs. Derrida on Austin) - selective reading 15:00-25:00 - denotation (against formal logic) - subjectivity and non-subjective desire 25:00-44:00 - summarizing vs. intervening - subjective unity/failure to totalize (refrain) - causality vs association 44:00-55:00 - parataxis vs. hypotaxis - what teaching is - imposter syndrome and expertise 55:00-end - Isocrates - corporate "thinking outside the box"
Focus: Logic of Sense "First Series of Paradoxes of Pure Becoming" and "Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Events" With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street
0:00-8:00 - why we each want to read Deleuze 8:00-13:00 - Deleuze vs Hegel's writing style 13:00-16:00 - Deleuze's Body 16:00-24:00 - our reading speeds - Caddie's current book project - start book with bi-directionality of sense 24:00-34:00 - The task of rethinking Plato for our field - Nathaniel's current essay on Plato's Phaedrus 40:00-60:00 - Who is "Plato?" - What is the "field" of rhetoric? -demagoguery - self-awareness / against self-awareness 60:00-end - Why the stoics are important to Deleuze - Hegel (success/error); totality
In this brief episode, Nathaniel and Nate preview the forthcoming second season of the podcast, in which we dive into Gilles Deleuze's The Logic of Sense. We also discuss the neuroses of the writing process and finish with some NBA talk. When season 2 releases in a week, Nathaniel, Nate, and John will be joined by Dr. Caddie Alford, an assistant professor at VCU.
0-6 philosophy as "bad writing" 7-13 the case of Judith Butler 14-19 thinking and emotions (scapegoating) 19-24 developmental writing/from simplicty to complexity 24-36 the impact of grammar on thinking 37-42 beyond representing/universals 43-49 animals 50-54 writing that is "messy" v "clean" 54-70 violence 71-72 and contingency 72-76 Theory as therapy in this political climate
0:00-11:00
- the Understanding vs Self-Consciousness
- the shape of knowledge in Hegel
- progress and teleology
11:00-20:00
- the logic of the proposition
- essentiality vs performativity
- the “real” as mobile rather than static
20:00-29:00
- failure and lack vs multiplicity
- fear of error; dread
22:05 - a transformer explodes on John’s street
- the taming function of the Understanding
29:00 - end
- Hegel’s ethics
- Hegel’s theism
- immersion in complexity
- the “should” claims or policy claims in Hegel
- virtue theory
Hegel’s Authoritative Tone (start)
Post-Human Idealism (6:00)
Inversion of Plato’s Idealism (10:15)
¶56 and the Shame of Learning (20:53)
Demand of Metareflection (25:43)
Imperiousness of the Text (34:48)
Textual Auto-Deconstruction (40:44)
Hegel’s Argument about Arguments (47:00)
Difficulty of Philosophical Writing (54:13)
0:00-8:16
- john’s turning point on reading Hegel
- Hegel as a thinker of movement
- dialectical monism
8:16-18:40
- paragraph 46 of the preface
- Bridging Deleuze and Hegel... both thinkers of movement, both critics of representational thinking
- the problem with mathematical thinking
18:40-30:30
- math and philosophy
- the complex function of the Understanding
30:30-49:00
- “team” affirmation and “team” negation
- perennial and recurring debates in philosophy
- Hegel’s seriousness and its link to negation
- Nietzsche’s humor / Zizek’s humor
- Hegel’s arrogance
49:00-60:00
- the rarity of thinking in Hegel’s sense
- thinking happens to us
- creativity
60:00-end
- repetition in both Deleuze and Hegel
- repetition as a vehicle for creation
- repetition in nature
- Hegel prefigures quantum physics
- autopoiesis
Why do humans matter? (start) No, seriously, why do humans matter? (8:30) Theological and Anthropological Hegels (16:11) Differentiation on a Flat Ontological Plan (29:24) Monisms and Dualisms (37:15) Living Life on the Flat Plane (43:03) “New forms of fucking life man; that’s what we’re talking about”! (50:10) The Necessity of Lingering (58:08)
Jimmy Butler Works Out Too Hard (Start) Blurring the Production/Consumption Divide (1:10) On Enemies and Indistinction (11:45) On (Meta)Reflection and Decision (22:50) On the Supposed Superiority of the Inside (33:35) Post/Humanism (41:10) The Unavoidability of Invention (55:00) Hey, we read some Hegel! (1:09:50)
0:00-5:00
- basketball talk
5:00-14:00
- talking around paragraph 21 of the preface
- totalizing impulse in Hegel
- maintaining distinctions, identity, branding in scholarship
- Barad and branding in academia
- external pressures, publishing industry
- deconstruction
14:00-23:00
- Deleuze and identity
- Deleuze and Foucault (“anti-dialectical”) vs Hegel
- Why do certain thinkers (such as Deleuze and Foucault) resist Hegel so fiercely?
- the ethics of negation vs the ethics of affirmation
23:00-30:00
- why are we invested, respectively in Hegel and/or Deleuze?
- what does each thinker offer for the rhetorical theorist?
- Deleuze’s emphasis on experimentation
- Hegel’s anti-utopianism
- the relentless march of negation
30:00-44:30
- how to read theorists in the field of rhet / comp
- criticism vs response
- inhabiting the text
- endorsements / dogmatisms
44:30-55:00
- “resting” in certain concepts or ontologies
- implicit moralisms in philosophy and theory
- the relentless criticisms of Hegel, Adorno
55:00-67:00
- the potential dangers of Enlightenment thinking
- styles of appropriation
- eating / taste / vulgar “appropriation”
- John doesn’t like beer
67:00-end
- habits, desires
- theory’s discomforts
- the difficulty of “embracing” difference
- facilitating self-consciousness or self-awareness
- various shapes of self-awareness
- “glom on” or “latch on” ?
0:00-5:30
- framework of the podcast
- NBA references
- commentary on academic culture
5:30–18:10
- politics of grading
- grading and teaching styles
18:10-24:30
- institutional ethics
- various institutional contexts and their effects on pedagogy
24:30-29:00
- paragraph 19
- God, divine cognition
- Hegel’s seriousness; his emphasis on suffering, labor, the tragic dimension of life
29:00-36:00
- (lost Nathaniel for a short chunk here)
- Hegel’s ostensible essentialism
- Zizek’s reading style; his reading of Hegel; Catherine Malabou’s reading of Hegel
- John’s suspicions of Zizek’s reading
36:00-45:40
- different valences of negation
- fascism as a component of the dialectic
- Hegel’s anti-humanism
45:40-end
- Hegel’s formalism
- Hegel’s philosophy of immanence
- engine of the dialectic
0:00-5:00
- our particular investments in the text
- affirmation and negation
- Hegel and Deleuze
5:00-22:20
- abyss or multiplicity? void or response?
- self-consciousness as thought through these terms
- meta-reflection
- subjectivity
22:20-34:30
- Hegel and Nietzsche
- will to power
- active and reactive force
- the appeals of their various approaches or dispositions
34:30-51:00
- paragraph 17 of the Preface
- the basic movement of the dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis)
- Hegel’s simultaneous critique of empiricism and subjectivism
- immediacy as mediation
51:00-1:01:00
- paragraph 18
- self-alienation
- teleology and development in the Hegelian system
- positing your own presuppositions
1:01:00-end
- Why does Hegel so forcefully distinguish himself from other philosophers, other systems?
- distinctiveness vs. indistinction
- thinking as the thing-in-itself
The entire episode is engaged in the question of how to read theory, using Hegel as a jumping off point. We discuss philosophy as a matter of "taste" (beginning around minute 5), the "both/and" responses to binaries (around minute 12), as well as the function of critique (what we term "generous reading" vs. "adversarial reading" - around 32). In addition to Hegel, and beginning around 30 minutes in, we use Karen Barad's work and her reception in the field of rhetoric as a recurring example (that concludes around minute 65). We conclude by looking closely at a passage of Hegel that illustrates some of the dynamics we have been discussing throughout (70-end).
0:00-5:00
- shooting the shit
5:00 - 13:00
- styles of reading, styles of teaching
13:00-20:00
- pedagogy, authority, academic types/dispositions
20:30-30:00
-
we get into Hegel and start with paragraph 13 of the preface
-
forms of knowledge: Hegel’s Understanding vs. Self-Consciousness
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the condition of possibility for scientific knowledge
30:00-36:00
- in the shift between theoretical paradigms, are there historical ruptures or stylistic breaks?
36:00-40:00
- the democratic impulse of the text
40:00-49:00
- Hegel’s problems with romanticism, intuitionism
49:00-56:00
- the totalitarian tone of the text; the “appropriation machine”
56:00-1:00
- Hegel’s symptomatology
We talk through the impetus and structure of the podcast: this is not an introduction (or advanced) course on Hegel. We are not Hegel experts. We are not even in philosophy departments. The "Hegel Tapes" takes sections of The Phenomenology of Spirit as touchstones and catalysts for thinking through a range of theoretical questions. "Thinking With..." is a pedagogical experiment that serves as an invitation to think along with the text, with us, and with each other. We are three academics who specialize in Rhetorical Theory: Nate DeProspo (ABD at the University of South Carolina), John Muckelbauer (Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina), and Nathaniel Street (Assistant Professor at Mount Saint Vincent University).