Shows
Bungacast/518/ We Have Never Been Postmodern ft. Geoff ShullenbergerOn free speech, the tech right, and politicisation.
Geoff Shullenberger, managing editor at Compact, joins Alex and George to talk about Peter Thiel, René Girard, victimhood and the antichrist.
Does it make sense to talk of "right-wing cancel culture"? Is it different from the left's?
Is countercultural trolling in tension with "defending Western civilisation"?
What does René Girard argue about mimesis and scapegoating? Why have his theories become popular?
Is right-populism still politicising? How does it relate to libertarian anti-politics and hard-right militarisation?
How has Silicon Valley li...
2025-10-3143 min
Blame TheoryThe Crisis of Liberalism (Part 7): Nick Land’s Paleoliberal AccelerationismGeoff Shullenberger and Ashley Frawley discuss the career and thought of the philosopher Nick Land, accelerationist, neoreactionary, and advocate of “paleo-liberalism.” Read Geoff’s recent profile of Land here.This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2025-10-211h 54
Blame TheoryThe Crisis of Liberalism (Part 6): The Persistence of EugenicsAshley Frawley and Geoff Shullenberger discuss the long afterlife of eugenics, from sociobiology and The Bell Curve to today's online right.This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2025-09-221h 31
Wisdom of CrowdsThe Return of the AssassinThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveToday’s guest is Geoff Shullenberger, the managing editor of Compact and a writer whose articles and reviews have appeared in American Affairs, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Atlantis, UnHerd, and more. Last week, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Geoff wrote an incisive piece titled, “The Return of the Assassin.” In it, he observes that the nature of violence has shifted in recent years, away from the mass shooting and towards the targeted political assassination. Why this is the case...
2025-09-2146 min
Blame TheoryThe Crisis of Liberalism (Part 5): The Origins of EugenicsIn conversation with Geoff Shullenberger, Ashley Frawley explains how eugenic thinking and practices emerge out of the crisis of liberalism. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2025-07-221h 22
Ryan Research PodcastTrump's Economic Masterplan - Pub Talk - Ryan Research Podcast Ep. 21Ryan Research Pub Talk are conversations that took place on live-streamed Twitter Spaces. The host Peter Ryan is joined by Juan David Rojas, Alex Bronzini-Vender, Geoff Shullenberger, Theo McDonald, Michael Cuenco, and other impromptu speakers.We discussed Yanis Varoufakis' UnHerd essay "Donald Trump’s economic masterplan". He defined his view of Trump's masterplan as the following Trump combining the incompatible goals of 1.) a hegemonic dollar and low-yielding US Treasuries with 2.) a depreciated dollar and more domestic manufacturing through the shock therapy of tariffs as a stick to hit foreign central banks with. The essay link:ht...
2025-06-232h 24
Blame TheoryThe Crisis of Liberalism (Part 4): The End of Woke?Geoff Shullenberger and Ashley Frawley discuss Andrew Doyle’s new book The End of Woke, which Ashley reviewed in Compact. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2025-06-021h 14
Blame TheoryThe Crisis of Liberalism (Part 3): The Trans-ing of the Political SubjectAshley Frawley joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss her Compact column, "How Society Got a Sex Change," and its relevance to the evolution of liberalism. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2025-05-151h 15
From the New WorldGeoff Shullenberger: Foucault in AmericaGeoff Shullenberger is managing editor of Compact and co-host of the Blame Theory podcast.Find Geoff:https://x.com/g_shullenbergerhttps://www.compactmag.com/contributor/geoff-shullenberger/Mentioned in the episode:https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/https://www.amazon.com/United-States-Paranoia-Conspiracy-Theory/dp/0062135554https://www.amazon.com/Birth-Biopolitics-Lectures-Coll%C3%A8ge-1978-1979/dp/0312203411http://home.lu.lv/~ruben/Deleuze%20-%20Postscript%20On%20The%20Societies%20Of%20Control.pdf This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers...
2025-03-241h 10
Blame TheoryThe Crisis of Liberalism (Part 2)Geoff Shullenberger and Ashley Frawley continue to explore the crisis of liberalism. They begin by discussing recent reversals around free-speech debates in the United States and the odd fact that ostensible post- and anti-liberals have often positioned themselves as defenders of a central liberal value: free speech. They then begin to explore the postliberal critique and other blame narratives that have arisen around liberalism in recent years and ask whether the problem with liberalism is that it grants too much freedom, or too little. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with...
2025-03-171h 08
Blame TheoryThe Crisis of Liberalism (Part 1)Liberalism is in crisis. Its parties and institutions are suffering one setback after another across the West, and forces described as “illiberal” are on the rise globally. But when did this crisis begin? Was liberalism ever not in crisis? Is liberalism itself a kind of crisis? In the first episode of a longer series on the meanings and legacies of liberalism, Ashley Frawley and Geoff Shullenberger lay out the themes and questions that will inform their exploration of an ideology that has received plenty of blame from both the right and the left—in part because it has been the do...
2025-03-071h 15
Cracks in PostmodernityPost Election Post Mortem: How Mass Media Shapes Your Mind w/ Geoff ShullenbergerThanks to the exponential growth of mass media over the last few decades, we find ourselves bombarded with information that is presented to us through a variety of framings.
Whose narrative is most accurate? Which sources, if any, can we trust? Join Stephen G. Adubato and Geoff Shullenberger for a discussion on how mass media shapes the way we take in information.
Thanks to Interintellect for hosting our salon!
2025-02-061h 01
Blame TheoryBlaming Men, Blaming Women (Part 1)Geoff and Ashley discuss the online war of the sexes prompted by a recent mass shooting, which Ashley wrote about last month. They then explore the deeper roots of the gendered blame game that often defines our online culture wars. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2025-01-171h 09
Eminent AmericansWhat Was the Post-Left?My guest on the show today is Geoff Shullenberger, managing editor of Compact magazine and host of their Blame Theory podcast. Geoff emailed me a few months back, after a post of mine that touched on the the risks of hitching one’s identity too thoroughly to hating on the left. What do I think, he asked, about the “post-left.”To which my answer was, “What’s that?”That’s the topic of much of this episode of the podcast. One answer comes from a piece on the phenomenon that Park MacDougald wrote a few years ag...
2024-12-171h 37
Blame TheoryThe Age of EmotionAshley Frawley, Compact’s new senior editor as well as a new co-host of Blame Theory, joins Geoff Shullenberger to explore how collective social and political problems have been blamed on individual psychic and emotional defects. We discuss her two books on this subject, examine the history of therapeutic culture, and explore to what extent particular thinkers—Pareto? Freud?—bear some of the blame for this set of developments. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2024-12-151h 07
Blame TheoryWho Is to Blame for Wokeness?Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss his new book We Have Never Been Woke. A great deal of discussion of wokeness attempts to trace it to the influence of certain thinkers and ideas: Foucault, Critical Race Theory, and so on. Al-Gharbi offers a different approach, focusing on the social stratum in which woke ideas became salient—that of "symbolic capitalists"—and how ideas function as a currency of social legitimation and status competition. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compa...
2024-10-081h 55
Blame TheoryBlame Marx?Compact's Sohrab Ahmari joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss one of the most widely blamed thinkers of all time: Karl Marx. We consider why Republicans, all the way up to Donald Trump, are reviving anti-communist rhetoric during the 2024 presidential campaign, to what extent Marx can be blamed for the crimes of regimes inspired by his theories, why Marxism is so appealing to intellectuals, what we can still learn from Capital today, and more. Listen either here on Substack or on your preferred podcast app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this wi...
2024-09-271h 15
Blame TheoryBlame Postmodernists?Writer David Shields joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss his new book and documentary How We Got Here. We ask whether postmodernists are to blame for our post-truth predicament and explore Trump's instinctive postmodernism, the propaganda techniques of Putin adviser Vladislav Surkov, and David's own theories on reality and (non-)fiction.Listen either here on Substack or on your preferred podcast app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2024-08-281h 27
Blame TheoryBlame Foucault? (Part 3)David Dudrick, professor of philosophy at Colgate University, joins Geoff to discuss his recent Compact essay "Why Foucault Couldn't Kill Sexuality." They discuss the misunderstandings around Foucault's History of Sexuality and the persistence of what he called the "repressive hypothesis," even among those who might claim to be his followers. Listen either here on Substack or on your preferred podcast app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2024-07-301h 14
Blame TheoryBlame Foucault? (Part 2)Compact founding editor Sohrab Ahmari joins Geoff and Nina in this episode to examine Michel Foucault’s later work on biopolitics, governmentality, and economics. Did Foucault predict or even contribute to the dominance of neoliberalism? To what extent was Foucault ever left-wing? Can we reconcile the brilliance of his thought with the moral and ontological absence at the core of his work? Listen either here on Substack or on your preferred podcast app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit co...
2024-06-211h 08
Blame TheoryBlame Foucault? (Part 1)This episode examines Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, vol. 1 and asks to what extent Foucault is to blame for contemporary progressive dogmas about sex, gender, and power.Listen either here on Substack or on your preferred podcast app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
2024-05-171h 05
Blame TheoryBlame the Greeks? (Part 1)Anchored by our own Nina Power and Geoff Shullenberger, Blame Theory takes a seriously playful look at the ideas that have shaped our minds and our world, to ask: How have we ended up here, and whom or what can we blame? Plato? Hegel? Marx? Nominalism? Gnosticism? Feminism? Postmodernism? Critical theory?This episode takes a page out of Nietzsche’s writings and asks whether we should blame the Greeks for society’s woes. Geoff and Nina discuss Geoff’s review of Brandes and Høffding’s book The Great Debate: Nietzsche, Culture, and the Scandinavian Welfare Society, published l...
2024-04-151h 10
Blame TheoryBlame Butler?This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit compactmag.substack.comAnchored by our own Nina Power and Geoff Shullenberger, Blame Theory takes a seriously playful look at the ideas that have shaped our minds and our world, to ask: How have we ended up here, and whom or what can we blame? Plato? Hegel? Marx? Nominalism? Gnosticism? Feminism? Postmodernism? Critical theory?This episode asks whether we should blame Judith …
2024-03-2204 min
Blame TheoryBlame Deconstruction?This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit compactmag.substack.comAnchored by our own Nina Power and Geoff Shullenberger, Blame Theory takes a seriously playful look at the ideas that have shaped our minds and our world, to ask: How have we ended up here, and whom or what can we blame? Plato? Hegel? Marx? Nominalism? Gnosticism? Feminism? Postmodernism? Critical theory?The debut episode—“Blame Deconstruction?”—was recorded live at KGB Bar, featuring Avital Ronell, University Professor of German and Comparative Literature at NYU and author of The Telephone Book and Comp...
2024-03-141h 03
Compact PodcastCompact Conversations: Geoff ShullenbergerGeoff Shullenberger joins Sohrab Ahmari to discuss his essay "The Poverty of Anti-Wokeness." Compact Magazine is reader-supported. Become a member and gain unlimited access. https://compactmag.com/subscribe
2024-01-0937 min
The Lee ShowGeoff Shullenberger on Rene Girard and the New RightGeoff Shullenberger is back for another fantastic episode. Geoff is one of the leading scholars on French philosopher Rene Girard. For this episode, we explore Girard's ideas and why they are important. We discuss the implications for the "New Right"; how Girard's ideas are becoming more popular; religion mapping to Girard's ideas; Christianity, Judaism, and Violence; growing out of your Ayn Rand phase, and much more.
Geoff is the Managing Editor of Compact Magazine, a teacher, a thinker, and an important influence on many leading figures in Silicon Valley and beyond.
During the discussion we...
2023-12-0653 min
Psyop CinemaHalloween (2018), Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends, with Geoff ShullenbergerGeoff Shullenberger joins us for an analysis of the recent David Gordon Green Halloween trilogy. He discuses a Girardian reading of Halloween Ends as well the "lab leak theory of Michael Myers." Is the 2018 film correctly read as based and right-wing, or is it more of the same MK-culture fetishization of trauma? Why is Halloween Kills so terrible? And does Halloween Ends present a cringe lib approach to evil or a positive subversion of typical Hollywood incel revenge fantasies?https://outsidertheory.com/https://twitter.com/g_shullenbergerhttps://compactmag.com/https://twitter.com...
2023-10-312h 00
Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise PerryThe Philosophy of Bronze Age Pervert - Geoff Shullenberger | Maiden Mother Matriarch 35This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.louiseperry.co.ukMy guest today is Geoff Shullenberger, an academic and managing editor at Compact Magazine. On the podcast we discussed Geoff’s essay about Bronze Age Pervert (BAP), a pseudonym internet personality associated with the manosphere. In the extended episode we discussed BAP’s writing on race, intelligence and sexual politics. You can find extended episodes, bonus episodes and the MMM chat community on louiseperry.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2023-10-151h 03
Compact PodcastCompact Conversations: Geoff ShullenbergerGeoff Shullenberger joins Matthew Schmitz to discuss his latest Compact contribution "What BAP Learned From Feminism." Support Independent Journalism: Compact Magazine is reader-supported. Become a member and gain unlimited access. https://compactmag.com/subscribe Topics Discussed In This Episode: [00:00] Why read BAP (Bronze Age Pervert)? [03:10] BAP's thesis: Philosophy is born from eugenics – what does this mean and what is the appeal of his writing? [07:43] BAP adopts the feminist viewpoint of history and transvaluates it to advocate for elitist patriarchy [12:03] Is BAP corre...
2023-09-2435 min
Outsider TheoryLockdown Literature with Tim AbrahamsLockdown diaries became a literary fad in 2020, but few if any were memorable. What if the real literature of lockdown was written over a century ago? This is the hypothesis behind "The Machine Book of Weird," an anthology of fiction from the late 19th and early 20th century that explores isolation, domestic confinement, and the uncanniness of home. Publisher Tim Abrahams joins me to discuss this project, plus Freud, Mark Fisher, and more.
You can donate to the project's Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mbow/machine-book-of-weird
2023-05-101h 00Psyop CinemaThe Thing and Other Carpenter Films, with Geoff Shullenberger and James EllisThomas is joined by two returning guests, James Ellis of Hermitix and Geoff Shullenberger of Outsider Theory, to discuss several John Carpenter films. We talk about the struggle against paranoia and inhuman monstrosity in The Thing, Gnostic-Catholic conspiracies and pop-science in Prince of Darkness, the insights and shortcomings of They Live's critique of consumer capitalism, and we disagree about whether there's anything of cinematic and thematic value in Vampires. Overall, we come to a mixed assessment of Carpenter's work, appreciating some pro-human notes despite his darkly apocalyptic and boomer liberal tendencies. Geoff and James also offer some bonus thoughts on...
2023-04-252h 46
Outsider TheoryDisabling Medicine: Daniel Hadas with Medical NemesisIn this special episode, guest host Daniel Hadas interviews Medical Nemesis on covid, Illich, industrialized medicine and thought, and more.
https://twitter.com/DanielHadas2
https://twitter.com/Medical_Nemesis
https://medicalnemesis.substack.com/
2023-04-141h 20
Outsider TheoryThe Psychopolitics of Masturbation with Matthew CrawfordMatthew Crawford joins me to discuss his essay, "Was the Sexual Revolution a Government Psy-Op?," the politics of masturbation, Wilhelm Reich, the Frankfurt School, masculinity, the therapeutic state, and more.
https://unherd.com/2022/12/the-politics-of-masturbation/
https://mcrawford.substack.com/
2023-03-041h 37
Outsider TheoryThe Automation of Midwittery with Brian ChauBrian Chau returns to Outsider Theory to discuss ChatGPT's woke catechism.
https://cactus.substack.com/
2023-02-031h 02
Outsider TheoryExiting the Vampires' Campus with Blaise BaynoBlaise Bayno (@urgurlblaise), former critical theory PhD student and co-organizer of the conference "Society Must Be Inoculated," joins me to discuss how critical theory became uncritical cheerleading for biopolitical authoritarianism, academic labor issues, the history of the UC Santa Cruz History of Consciousness program, and more.
2022-12-261h 19Psyop CinemaThe Da Vinci Code and Dan Brown, with Geoff ShullenbergerGeoff Shullenberger returns to Psyop Cinema, this time discussing the novels of Dan Brown and their trilogy of film adaptations (the subject of Geoff's recent essay for American Affairs). He and Thomas talk about the strange prescience of Brown's novels, in his early work's treatment of the deep state, surveillance, and encryption and his later work's promotion of transhumanism and depopulation. They cover The Da Vinci Code's defense of elite sex rituals, Angels and Demons' weak approach to the reconciliation of science and religion, Inferno's portrayal of a virus meant to depopulate the world, Brown's consistent themes of reproduction and...
2022-12-082h 32
Psyop CinemaUniversal Basic MKUltra (On Outsider Theory)Our appearance on recurring Psyop Cinema guest Geoff Shullenberger's Outsider Theory podcast, discussing our overall approach to cultural engineering, the Hollywood psyop, and low-intensity MKUltra. The conversation covers the ideological history of conspiracy theory, the overlap between academic theory and cultural engineering analysis, CIA involvement in Hollywood, and much more.https://outsidertheory.com/https://twitter.com/g_shullenbergerhttps://twitter.com/CinemaPsyophttps://www.patreon.com/PsyopCinemahttps://linktr.ee/psyopcinemathomas-psyopcinema@protonmail.combrett-psyopcinema@protonmail.com
2022-10-251h 40
Outsider TheoryUniversal Basic MKUltra with Psyop CinemaThomas and Brett from Psyop Cinema join me to discuss Hollywood and cultural engineering.
Psyop Cinema: https://www.spreaker.com/show/psyop-cinema
My Psyop Cinema episodes on Roland Emmerich:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/15144188/shullenberger-interview
https://www.spreaker.com/user/15144188/geoff-shullenberger-2
2022-10-251h 40Psyop CinemaStargate, Moonfall, The Thirteenth Floor, and Anonymous, with Geoff ShullenbergerGeoff Shullenberger returns to Psyop Cinema, continuing his conversation with Thomas about Roland Emmerich. Having previously covered the depopulation themes of Emmerich's disaster trilogy, Geoff and Thomas first consider the unabashed elitism and glorification of the manipulative artist found in Anonymous, before looking at how Stargate, The Thirteenth Floor, and Moonfall portray gnosticism, AI, ancient astronaut theory, and the simulation hypothesis. Emmerich's filmmaking quality may be uneven, but he couldn't be more consistent about his message that humanity needs to hand over control to an overclass of artistic geniuses and technical managers whose knowledge makes them worthy to rule the...
2022-10-061h 55Psyop CinemaGeoff Shullenberger on the Limits of the Red Pill and Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012Thomas talks with Geoff Shullenberger, managing editor of Compact Magazine and host of the Outsider Theory podcast. They discuss how the regime benefits from over-simplified understandings of the red and blue pills as well as from certain blends of conspiracy theory with pop-spirituality. Roland Emmerich's "disaster trilogy" (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012) is also discussed, revealed as blatant propaganda for depopulation and globalist technocracy. https://outsidertheory.com/https://compactmag.com/https://twitter.com/daily_barbarianhttps://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/redpilling-and-the-regimehttps://compactmag.com/article/alex-jones-crusader-and-clownhttps://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/06...
2022-09-061h 53
Outsider TheoryThe Rule of Midwits with Brian ChauBrian Chau (Cactus Chu on Substack, @psychosort on Twitter) joins me to discuss institutions and why midwits rule them, decentralization, sorting mechanisms, right-wing aesthetics, Curtis Yarvin, William F. Buckley, and more.
https://cactus.substack.com/
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/rule-of-midwits
2022-08-311h 41
Outsider TheoryRIP Reality with Jon AskonasJon Askonas joins me to discuss his ongoing series of essays in The New Atlantis, "Reality: A Post-Mortem."
Read the series here:
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/collections/reality-a-post-mortem
2022-07-181h 35
ex.haustEpisode 85: School Shooters, Nihilism, and Child Sacrifice ft. Geoff Shullenberger and Default FriendEmmet sits Geoff Shullenberger and Default Friend to talk about their respective articles on the Uvalde shooting, school shootings in general, "zeitgeist killers," the spiritual hole in our society, and more!
"The Faith of Mass Shooters" by Geoff Shullenberger, Compact Magazine.
"Mass Shootings and the World Liberalism Made," by Katherine Dee, Contra
Closing Song: Lowered by Greg Puciato ft. Reba Meyers.
2022-06-301h 06
Conservative Conversations with ISIGeoff Shullenberger on Spiritual Decay, School Shootings, and René Girard’s MimesisConservative Conversations Episode 46—Geoff Shullenberger on Spiritual Decay, School Shootings, and René Girard’s MimesisIn this episode:Geoff Shullenberger, a clinical associate professor at New York University and a columnist at Compact, discusses the phenomenon of the school shooter in America after the tragedy in TexasHow René Girard’s mimetic theory can explain violent behaviorThe religious and social dimensions of mass shootings and human sacrificeTexts Mentioned:The Faith of Mass Shooters by Geoff ShullenbergerHuman Sacrifice and the Digital Business Model by Geoff ShullenbergerThresholds of Violence by Malcolm GladwellBecome a part of...
2022-06-1444 min
The Lee ShowThe New Right with Geoff ShullenbergerOn this week’s podcast, I had the privilege of speaking with Geoff Shullenberger. Geoff is a teacher at NYU and an accomplished author and thinker. He is one of the world’s leading experts on the work of Rene Girard. We had a far-ranging discussion covering:
What is the new right? What does conservatism mean now?
Ayn Rand as the intellectual ancestor of everyone on the “new right”.
The David Pogue article in Vanity Fair – it’s a very important piece.
JD Vance and compassionate individualism
Christopher Rufo and his anti-CRT crusade
Anti-partisanship
The firing of Felicia Sonmez at th...
2022-06-131h 02
Outsider TheoryThe Great Debasement with Alice GribbinEssayist and poet Alice Gribbin joins me to discuss her recent essay in Tablet, "The Great Debasement," on the ideological transformation of museums and other cultural institutions into propaganda organs; the utilitarian attitude to art; the continued relevance of John Berger's "Ways of Seeing"; and more.
https://substack.com/profile/5192682-alice-gribbin
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/great-debasement-art
https://quillette.com/2021/06/05/the-artist-and-the-censor/
2022-06-102h 05Bungacast/268/ Emergency vs Emergency ft. Geoff Shullenberger[Live events in Germany: Berlin / Munich]
On emergency politics today.
We talk to Geoff Shullenberger about competing emergency politics, left and right. Should politics be enjoyable and provide a frisson of transgression, or not? Is bare life all that's on offer? And is declaring the predominance of 'emergency politics' itself an emergency a problem?
Readings:
How We Forgot Foucault, American Affairs
The Crisis of the Crisis, The New Atlantis
2022-06-071h 10
Outsider TheoryRight Critical Theory with Jacob SiegelTablet senior writer Jacob Siegel joins me to discuss the rightward trajectory of certain insights of Frankfurt School-derived critical theory, especially in light of the history of the journal Telos and its founder and editor, Paul Piccone. We also discuss Piccone's friend Paul Gottfried, the continued relevance of Herbert Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance," the Thiel-affiliated New Right's cultivation of a counter-elite, the recent Vanity Fair profile of the Thielverse, and more.
Telos
http://www.telospress.com/
Jacob's work
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/elon-vs-obama
https://www.tabletmag.com/s...
2022-05-091h 45
ex.haust[teaser] Don't Say Disney ft. Geoff ShullenbergerGeoff came onto the pod to talk about what's going on with conservatives and Disney, though it's really a conversation about cultural power, Lasch, the family, ideology, political anemia, and more.
We're going on hiatus until July.
Geoff's piece for Unherd: https://unherd.com/2022/04/disney-has-always-spread-propaganda/
2022-04-3011 min
Outsider TheoryTheorizing the Culture War with Michael CuencoWriter and policy researcher Michael Cuenco joins me to discuss his recent American Affairs essay "'Victory is not Possible': a Theory of the Culture War," and two related essays on post-material politics and post-literate epistemology:
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/02/victory-is-not-possible-a-theory-of-the-culture-war/
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/immigration-and-citizenship-the-canadian-model-and-the-american-dream/
https://palladiummag.com/2021/04/17/americas-new-post-literate-epistemology/
2022-04-251h 50
Outsider TheorySubversive Mobility vs Academic Orthodoxy with Jacob ShellJacob Shell is Associate Professor of Geography at Temple University and the author of Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants (2019) and Transportation and Revolt: Pigeons, Mules, Canals, and the Vanishing Geographies of Subversive Mobility (2015). He joins me to share his insights into the Canadian trucker convoy, the congealment of radical theories into stale academic orthodoxies and establishment aplogias, the blind spots of environmentalism, plus Ivan Illich, de-growth, elephants, and more.
https://liberalarts.temple.edu/academics/faculty/shell-jacob
https://twitter.com/JacobAShell
2022-04-042h 19
Outsider TheoryA Critique of "The Dawn of Everything" with Sam BiagettiSam Biagetti of Historiansplaining podcast joins me to discuss what's good, what's bad, and what's ugly in David Graber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything." We begin with an appreciative account of their dismantling of deterministic accounts of human social evolution, and then turn to a critical assessment of their theoretical assumption, their peculiar revisionist account of the Enlightenment, and their undervaluing of myth, ritual, and transcendence.
The Dawn of Everything: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverything
Listen to and support Historiansplaining here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632
Sam's cross-post of...
2022-03-213h 03
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrongDissecting the "Dawn of Everything" -- A Conversation with Geoff ShullenbergerI join with Geoff Shullenberger of "Outsider Theory" to discuss the sweeping and challenging new book, "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. We consider the book's marshalling of new archaeological evidence to debunk mechanistic and deterministic assumptions about the rise of civilization, its deep rejection of Marxism, and its insistence on the human ability to imagine and create an infinite range of social and political futures. We examine the weaknesses and limitations of the book, including its over-emphasis on personal freedom, its gross inaccuracy with regard to the eighteenth century, and...
2022-03-192h 47
Outsider TheoryThe Invention of Symbology; or, Dan Brown, Part 2 (Angels and Demons & The Da Vinci Code) with Pseud Dionysius MPHWith the 2001 publication of Angels and Demons, Dan Brown shifted away from his early focus on the US security state and its post-Cold War identity crisis and introduced a new protagonist: Harvard professor of "Religious Symbology" Robert Langdon. This improbable hero's first two adventures transport him to the Old World and entangle him with a secretive institution far more ancient than the American deep state: the Roman Catholic Church. Curiously, the rise of Langdon signals Brown's turn away from the national security preoccupations of his early writing just as the 9/11 era brought the challenges facing the US state to t...
2022-02-283h 06
Outsider TheoryThe Road to Wigan Pier with Angela NagleGeorge Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier" begins as a report on life in the depressed coal and industrial region of Northern England and expands into an ambivalent critique of socialism and progress. It's a book that belongs to its era – which saw the Great Depression, the peak of industrialism in the capitalist core countries, the rise of both communist and fascist challenges to the interwar liberal order – but also speaks in interesting ways to ours. Angela Nagle returns to Outsider Theory for an appreciative discussion of Orwell's book and its relationship to her longstanding interests.
Follow Angel...
2022-02-141h 45Outsider TheoryHR-Karenism and its Enemies with Malcolm KyeyuneMalcolm Kyeyune (@tinkzorg) joins me to map out the contours of class conflict today. Beginning with a discussion of the Canadian trucker convoy and other recent challenges to biomedical authoritarianism, we explore the managerial class's demand for ever-expanding intermediation (diversity consultants, localized public health bureaucracy, etc) in response to the spectral threats it confronts, from "fascism" to "misinformation." We also examine elite overproduction theory, the crisis of meritocratic ideology, the questionable prospects of the populist right, and much more.
2022-02-062h 31
Outsider TheoryRomancing the Deep State; or, Dan Brown, Part 1 (Origins) with Pseud Dionysius MPHDan Brown is one of the best selling authors of all time; just fifteen years ago, "The Da Vinci Code" was a ubiquitous document of global popular culture. Yet Brown, now immensely wealthy from his novelistic success, is oddly neglected today. Pseud Dionysius MPH returns to the show to investigate the unlikely rise of Brown, his protagonist, Harvard Professor Robert Langdon, and the fictional discipline of "symbology" out of the demise of the cold war techno-thriller and the new threats of the information age. We explore Brown's two lesser known pre-Langdon novels, Digital Fortress and Deception Point, which despite...
2022-01-182h 14
Outsider TheoryHubbard, Burroughs, Foucault with Dr BenwayDr Benway returns to the show to discuss his extensive research on the vast oeuvre of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, as well as William S. Burroughs's prolonged engagement with Hubbard's doctrines and practices and their odd resonances with post-structuralist thought. We examine both the genealogical and analogical relations between Hubbard's thinking and ideas developed in more respectable realms of 20th century ideological life, including psychoanalysis and Foucauldian theories of technologies of the self and technologies of power.
David Wills's "Scientologist!": https://www.google.com/books/edition/Scientologist/k9JtnQEACAAJ?hl=en
https://pioneerworks.org...
2022-01-071h 41
Outsider TheoryPlague and Myth with @fitnessfeelingz@fitnessfeelingz posted a recent Twitter thread arguing that Covid is a modern myth:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1465794640481857542.html
By this he means not that the pathogen SARS-COV-2 is not real, but that the existence of the pathogen does not account for its manifold social and political impacts. To make sense of these, we turn to René Girard's understanding of myth as a social technology that binds societies together in response to a common enemy. We consider how Covid-19 has come to perform this function, and why its limited efficacy in this regard only spurs more r...
2021-12-221h 57
Outsider TheoryMonetary Long Covid with Fabio Vighi"[The pandemic] is a monetary event aimed at prolonging the lifespan of our finance-driven and terminally ill mode of production." This is the provocative thesis of Fabio Vighi, who joins me to discuss the series of recent articles for The Philosophical Salon where he elaborates this argument in full. He explains how Covid has served as a useful crisis, justifying unprecedented and indefinite "monetary doping," keeping finance capital afloat, and why the flipside of this largesse is the increasing regimentation of all facets of human life through digitized biopolitical control.
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-central-bankers-long-covid-emergency-noise-and-conspiracys-best-kept-secret/
https...
2021-12-161h 27
Outsider TheoryThe Very Online Novel with Timothy WilcoxTimothy Wilcox (@PreCursorPoets) is one of my my favorite writers on contemporary literature. He joins me to discuss three very online novels published in the past year or so: Hari Kunzru's Red Pill, Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts, and Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking about This. He shares his thoughts on the genre of internet fiction and the evolving phenomenon of "hyperconnectivity" as manifest in literary texts. We also consider the complicated interaction between the temporality of fiction and the temporality of the internet, the outsized role of Donald Trump in recent internet novels, and recent writers' attempts to...
2021-12-081h 39
DrugCultGang(PREVIEW) Geoff Shullenberger and Adam Lehrer on PSYOPs and Subcultures (Full Episode on Patreon)Get full episode on DCG patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/drugcultgang
In this episode Tony is joined by Geoff Shullenberger and Adam Lehrer and they discuss
The Kyle Rittenhouse Case // Internet Subcultures // Psyops // And much more
2021-12-0752 min
Outsider TheoryDeep Internet History with Default FriendDefault Friend is a writer investigating the deep history of the internet on her substack, Default Wisdom. She joins me to discuss one of our mutual interests: the work of the sociologist Sherry Turkle, and the light her pioneering 1995 study Life on the Screen sheds on the early history of the internet and the way the 90s internet anticipated present realities. We also explore the implications of Turkle's argument that the internet rendered concrete the abstractions of postmodern theory, as well as Default Friend's own work on fandom, Tumblr and other facets of "the millennial internet."
https...
2021-11-241h 26Outsider TheoryThe Paper of Record's Dismal RecordCritics often present recent ideological convulsions at the New York Times as an embarrassing deviation from the paper's illustrious history. Ashley Rindsberg, author of The Gray Lady Winked, joins me to explain why they're wrong. The Times, as he documents, has been plagued by scandal after scandal over the past hundred years, and its journalistic and editorial failures reveal more continuity than declining standards. Rindsberg also explains why the standard critiques of the paper from the right and the left are incomplete: far more than any consistent ideological agenda, the Times pursues the agenda of the powerful dynastic family...
2021-11-181h 19
Outsider TheoryPostmodern Medicine with Dr Benway and Pseud Dionysius, MPHMy pseudonymous native informants from the illustrious realms of Science make the provocative case that medicine has become a quintessentially postmodern field. They attribute this development to the rise of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) in the 1990s in Canada, which has occasioned (as its pioneers intended) a Kuhnian paradigm shift in the field. After surveying the spread and impact of the EBM revolution, we explore its after-effects in the Covid era.
https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5676
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1785467
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0141076816649883
2021-11-111h 29
Outsider TheoryPoetry, Fascism, and Madness: the Fall of the House of Panero with Aaron ShulmanFederico García Lorca is revered as a literary martyr to the barbarity of fascism. His lesser-known friend and contemporary Leopoldo Panero narrowly escaped execution by fascist insurgents around the same time. In a strange twist, Panero later ended up as a fervent supporter of the regime that had killed his friend. Panero's loyalty allowed him to become an influential cultural commisar under Franco's government and placed him and his family at the pinnacle of the Franco-era literary elite. But he died at 52, leaving his brilliant and charismatic wife, Felicidad, and his three sons – all of whom had literary amb...
2021-11-021h 09
This Jungian Life PodcastThe Archetype of the Witch: Dangerous, Denied & DishonoredIt’s witching season, the time when women of all ages embrace a mythical image of unfettered feminine power. The witch may cast spells, seek vengeance, or wreak creative havoc—as she pleases. Flying the night skies of psyche, the witch brings primordial realities into culture’s brittle convictions.Like all aspects of the collective unconscious, the witch lays low when times are fine but rises when times are tense. Her archetypal power then infects humankind, inciting mass hysteria and the horrors of persecutory epidemics. The witch symbolizes our fear and vulnerability to the Great Mother in her da...
2021-10-281h 25
Outsider TheorySilent Weapons for Quiet Wars: On Bill Cooper with Mark JacobsonThe author and radio personality William Milton Cooper exercised a remarkably broad influence on conspiracy theory in the United States and beyond in the late 20th century. After his death in a shootout with police at his Arizona compound just months after 9/11, his name passed into legend, but the extent of his influence is often overlooked. Cooper's 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse, which claimed to document the Illuminati's scheme for a New World Order, was often described as a manifesto of the militia movement; it also circulated widely as contraband in prisons, especialy among African Americans, and as a...
2021-10-261h 26
Outsider Theory"In the Stubborn, Bright Sun of Polish Liberty": Foucault in Warsaw with Remigiusz Ryziński and Sean Bye"Foucault in Warsaw," just out in English translation from Open Letter Books, is a fascinating investigation of the time Michel Foucault spent as a cultural attaché in Warsaw in the late 1950s. The book is at once an intellectual biography of the philosopher during the pivotal year when he wrote much of his first major work, "History of Madness," an archival detective story set amidst the records of the Polish secret police, and an oral history of the underground gay community of Communist Poland. Author Remigiusz Ryziński and translator Sean Bye join me for a discussion of the bo...
2021-08-041h 29
Outsider TheoryThe Death and Life of Pagan America: On Dave Hickey, with Daniel OppenheimerWriter Daniel Oppenheimer joins me to discuss his new book on the legendary art critic Dave Hickey, "Far From Respectable." We explore Hickey's case for the continued vitality of beauty as a criterion for thinking about art and culture, his defense of controversial artist Robert Mapplethorpe and simultaneous critique of Mapplethorpe's other defenders, his aesthetic populism, his abandoned project "Pagan America," and the relevance of all of these to the current cultural panorama. We also explore Hickey's critique of institutions alongside the ironic fact that institutions sustained his best work – and what that might mean for current institutional outsiders in...
2021-07-161h 42
Narratives50: Girard, Postmodernism, and Academia with Geoff ShullenbergerIn this episode, Will talks to Geoff Shullenberger about Girard, the premodern/modern/postmodern distinction, academia, christianity and a whole lot more. Link to show notes, video, transcript and more athttps://narrativespodcast.com/2021/07/12/50-girard-postmodernism-and-academia-with-geoff-shullenberger/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willjarvis.substack.com
2021-07-1253 min
Outsider TheoryFukuyama avec Berlusconi with Philip CunliffePhil Cunliffe, co-host of Aufhebunga Bunga and co-author of The End of the End of History, joins Outsider Theory to discuss the shifting co-ordinates of the post-Fukuyamaite world, the rise and fall of left populism, post-politics and anti-politics, the typology of the political outsider, the exemplary career of Silvio Berlusconi, and much more.
The End of the End of History: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/our-books/end-end-history
Aufhebunga Bunga: https://aufhebungabunga.podbean.com/
2021-07-021h 34
System of SystemsFoucault Forgotten (W/ Geoff Shullenberger)Our old pal Geoff Shullenberger, writer and critic extraordinaire, is back on System of Systems to discuss his new piece for American Greatness – 'How We Forgot Foucault.' In it, Geoff describes the irony in Foucault's recent dip in citations and his abandonment as a "hero of the modern left," given that during the pandemic so much of Foucault's theories on biopolitics and biopower have proven to be utterly true. We discuss the aspects of Foucault's ideas that have emerged as inconvenient to a left and liberal establishment all too eager to abandon freedom and civil rights in the na...
2021-06-301h 36Outsider TheoryThe Department of Social Praxis with Sam MunsonWriter Sam Munson joins Outsider Theory to discuss the uncanny relevance of Dog Symphony, his prescient 2018 novel of plague and biopolitics, in which a nebulous entity called the Department of Social Praxis has assumed complete control over a dreamlike Buenos Aires. Other topics include the spectral place of Argentina in the North American imagination, Borges, maps and territories, and the acquiescence of the creative class to state power during the Covid era.
Buy Dog Symphony here: https://www.ndbooks.com/book/dog-symphony/
2021-06-171h 06Outsider TheoryAnaesthetic Aesthetics with Sterling BartlettIllustrator and designer Sterling Bartlett joins Outsider Theory to discuss his comic book "How Did We Get Here?" We explore why recycling is the master metaphor for our cultural predicament, the rise of post-hipster aesthetic of aneasthetized minimalism, why Jordan Peterson and Marie Kondo are two sides of the same coin, and more.
Buy "How Did We Get Here?": https://firsttoknock.com/products/how-did-we-get-here
Follow Sterling on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sterlingbartlett/?hl=en
Sterling's website: https://www.sterlingbartlett.com/
My postmodernism seminar: https://www.speakeasy.com/e/what-is-postmodernism
2021-06-0955 minOutsider Theory"A Thousand Unpieced Suns": On Jameson's Postmodernism, with Emmet PenneyEmmet Penney, writer and co-host of ex.haust podcast, joins Outsider Theory to discuss Fredric Jameson's canonical essay "Postmodernism, or the Culltural Logic of Late Capitalism" and its continued relevance, as well as cultural fragmentation, nostalgia, the return of affect, LA architecture, and other themes.
More info on my June 10/17 seminar on Jameson's Postmodernism and Lyotard's Postmodern Condition:
https://www.speakeasy.com/e/what-is-postmodernism
Exhaust podcast: http://exhaust.fireside.fm/
Emmet's essay on "Lectureporn":
https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/liberals/lectureporn-the-vulgar-art-of-liberal-narcissism/
2021-06-021h 20Outsider TheoryNeither Intellectual, nor Dark, nor a Web? with Oliver TraldiOliver Traldi (@olivertraldi) joins Outsider Theory to answer an important question: is he now or has he ever been a member of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW)? We discuss the latter formation's place within the online culture war dynamics of the past decade, its relation to the more recent controversies around Substack, what its members got right about the coalescence of "successor ideology" orthodoxies and what their analyses lacked.
Finally, I apologize profusely for the poor audio quality of this episode on my end. I made some errors with a new mic setup that I wasn't yet...
2021-05-271h 32Outsider TheoryThe Non-Dupes Err with Tom SyversonTom Syverson (@syvology on Twitter), author of the new book Reality Squared, makes the case for why reality TV is the essential cultural form for grasping our bewildering contemporary panorama. More broadly, we discuss the problem of how to undertake a materialist analysis of culture in the face of an increasingly dematerialized and abstract economic reality, and the related problems confronting materialist politics in the present.
Buy Tom's book:
https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/our-books/reality-squared-reality-tv-left-politics
Read Tom's recent essay on the limitations of materialist politics:
https://www.thebellows.org...
2021-05-131h 34Outsider TheoryThe Domestication of the Literary Outsider with Alex PerezFiction writer and cultural critic Alex Perez joins Outsider Theory to discuss a mutual favorite writer, Roberto Bolaño, and in particular his short story "Labyrinth." We also cover the contemporary literary prestige economy, the professionalization of literature, the propagandification of culture in the Trump era, and the prospects for literary outsiders today.
Read Bolaño's "Labyrinth" here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/23/labyrinth-roberto-bolano
https://im1776.com/2021/04/27/the-new-literary-bad-boys/
https://twitter.com/Perez_Writes
https://alexperez.substack.com/p/coming-soon
2021-05-061h 30
Other LifeThe Key Ideas of René Girard: Mimetic Desire, Violence, and Christianity with Geoff ShullenbergerGeoff Shullenberger is a lecturer at NYU. Download his free Girard study guide at GirardCourse.com. Learn more about Geoff Shullenberger✦ Outsider Theory newsletter: OutsiderTheory.com✦ Outsider Theory podcast: OutsiderTheory.fireside.fm✦ Geoff on Twitter: twitter.com/daily_barbarianJoin us for Geoff's 8-week course on René Girard✦ GirardCourse.comWorking on your own research or creative work?✦ Request an invitation to IndieThinkers.orgIn this podcast, we discuss:Week 1: Introduction to Mimetic TheoryWeek 2: Rivalry, Resentment, and ConversionWeek 3: The Founding Murder, the Scapego...
2021-05-031h 08Outsider TheoryDocumenting Countercultures with Alex Lee MoyerDocumentary filmmaker Alex Lee Moyer joins Outsider Theory to discuss her 2020 film TFW No GF and its reception during the year after its release, as well as the film she edited prior to that, The New Radical. We also discuss the broader project of documenting countercultures, the ambivalent role of technology in channeling and enabling the control of oppositional cultural energy, and the prospects for creative work outside of the mainstream today.
TFW No GF is now available on Amazon, iTunes, and YouTube: https://www.tfwnogfthemovie.com/
The New Radical is also available on Amazon...
2021-04-291h 15Outsider TheoryTechnology's Non-Technological Essence with Michal SacasasThe writer Michael Sacasas joins Outsider Theory to discuss what the tech critics pre-Internet generations – especially Jacques Ellul, Marshall McLuhan, Ivan Illich, and Neil Postman – have to say to us today as well as what contemporary tech criticism tends to miss, and how he understands his own critical and philosophical project. We also explore two of his essays from the past year, "Narrative Collapse" and "The Paradox of Control." Michael is one of my favorite contemporary writers on tech, and I hope you find this as rich and stimulating a conversation as I did.
Subscribe to his subs...
2021-04-211h 27
ex.haustEpisode 34: Long Live the New Flesh!: Getting Videodromed with Geoff ShullenbergerEmmet and Geoff Shullenberger talk about a mutual favorite film: Cronenberg's Videodrome. They talk about how it pre-empted our fractured digital lives and the inscrutable, parapolitical world we inhabit.
Join our Patreon for 2 extra episodes a month!
Eratta: Emmet states that Videodrome came out in 1985, but it did not. It came out in 1983.
Bibliography.
Twitter.
Closing Song: "La Flamme dell' Est (Fabio Brienza Remix)" by Lamniformes Special Guest: Geoff Shullenberger .
2021-04-141h 29Outsider TheoryThe Long March Out of the Institutions with Justin MurphyJustin Murphy joins Outsider Theory to discuss leaving academia, his book Based Deleuze, why political correctness is only ones symptom of the real ailments afflicting the contemporary university, what conservatives get wrong about critical theory, and the current prospects of independent intellectual life, especially on the internet.
Justin's projects:
https://otherlife.co/
https://www.indiethinkers.org/
Geoff's course on Foucault: https://www.speakeasy.com/e/biopolitics-covid
2021-04-071h 34Outsider TheoryRETVRN TO FOUCAULT with Blake SmithHistorian and writer Blake Smith joins Outsider Theory to discuss the teaching theory and the formation of elites; the surprising affinities between Strauss and Foucault; the parallel grooming practices of Straussians and Derrideans; the perverse economy of enjoyment in the Trump era; Obama’s failed use of theory as seduction prop; and why Foucault was the original Bronze Age Pervert.
Blake on "Foucault Through Strauss": https://im1776.com/2021/02/19/foucault-through-strauss/
Blake's writing at Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/blake-smith
Geoff's seminar on Foucault and Covid: https://www.speakeasy.com/e/biopolitics-covid
2021-03-311h 24Outsider TheoryMeet the New Paranoia, Same as the Old Paranoia (Mostly) with Jesse WalkerJesse Walker, author of the excellent United States of Paranoia (2013) and books editor at Reason, joins Outsider Theory to revisit his book's arguments in light of Trump era politics. We discuss the Capitol riot and why it reveals not a unified front but a highly fractured right-wing fringe, and the continuities between liberal establishment paranoia of recent years and the militia panic of the 90s. Jesse also makes the case that playful internet conspiracy theorizing is a continuation of the much older "ironic style" of paranoia that originated with figures like Kerry Thornley and Robert Anton Wilson in the 1960...
2021-03-241h 51
PhronesisGilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control"Episode Notes
In this episode, we discuss Gilles Deleuze's "Postscript on the Societies of Control." We were joined by special guest Geoff Shullenberger, who writes at Outsider Theory among other outlets—including Athwart. Additionally, Geoff recently launched an Outsider Theory podcast.
If you liked this episode, please leave us a review! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to us on our website. Or, if you would like to read and listen to more of our work, go to www.athwart.org.
Image of Presidio Modelo in Cuba co...
2021-03-221h 27Outsider TheoryBidencore Hauntology with Biz SherbertBiz Sherbert, a theorist and writer focused on online fashion and Gen Z subcultures, joins Outsider Theory to discuss the current landscape of digital fashion, the shifting nature of subcultures, and the persistence of hauntological nostalgia of contemporary culture. We consider the acceleration of the trend cycle in online spaces and how it dramatizes the evolving relationship between present and past, explore the strange fusion of counterculture with the norms it once rejected in trad, normie, and basic aesthetics, and reflect on the political correlates of this development.
Biz's new podcast is Nymphet Alumni: https://nymphetalumni.transistor...
2021-03-161h 18Outsider TheoryThe Digital Dionysian with Chris GabrielChris Gabriel, creator of the MemeAnalysis Youtube channel, joins Outsider Theory to discuss why memes are now the royal road to the collective unconscious. We also discuss how the internet traps Dionysian energies in an Apollinian dreamworld; why Burroughs's word virus is a better model than Dawkinsian memetics for understanding the meme form; what the most revealing memetic formations of the present are; and why we need mythmaking more than therapy.
MemeAnalysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb4pvsyqNrmBIGJFQxEukUA
Effluvia: https://goddisk.substack.com/
Meme Intelligence Agency: https://open.spotify.com/show/4GPyOdF5...
2021-03-0958 minOutsider TheoryBased and Marxpilled with Adam LehrerAdam Lehrer is a critic and artist, the co-host of System of Systems podcast. His new substack is Safety Propaganda. He joins Outsider Theory to discuss how we got Marxpilled, how Marx got mainstreamed among the professional class in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and why the "ruthless criticism of all that exists" especially means criticism of your own class. We then examine why Marx and Engels loved the reactionary monarchist Balzac, and what comparable value some writers on the right might offer to the critique of contemporary capitalism. From there, we discuss the propagandistic functions served by...
2021-03-031h 10
Outsider TheoryJoker in the Labyrinth with Mónica BelevanOutsider art historian and hypnotist collector Mónica Belevan joins Outsider Theory to discuss her various attempts to track the structures of feeling of the present. We explore the aesthetics and sensibilities of the Baroque and their relevance for grasping the topoi of the Covid era – in particular, the image of the labyinth, the theme of the madness of the world, and the figure of the clown (embodied lately in Joaquin Phoenix's Joker). Finally, we reflect on the awakening of the sacrificial unconscious by the Dionysian onslaught of the plague and the still unfulfilled need for symbolic resolution.
h...
2021-02-211h 21Outsider TheoryMeming Theory and Theorizing Memes with Beyond Woke and ProblematicIn recent years, memes have risen to prominence as a medium for witty, irreverent, surreal engagement with the canon of High Theory. At the speed of the internet, memes now circulate the ideas of thinkers from Deleuze to Dugin, from Land to DeLanda, in humorous and fragmentary forms, instantiating in their mode of dissemination the sorts of positive feedback loops, rhizomatic growth, and strata hopping that some such thinkers have theorized. Beyond Woke and Problematic, a premier poster in the "theorygram" space, joins Outsider Theory to survey the dramatic ascent of the theory meme in the new millennium and...
2021-02-1758 min
Hacking State24: Theory on the Outside with Geoff ShullenbergerGeoff Shullenberger is creator of the Outsider Theory blog and newly launched Outsider Theory podcast, as well as Senior Lecturer at New York University’s Expository Writing Program. We talk about his Outsider Theory project, conspiracy & elite paranoia, our schizophrenizing media complex, Boudrillard and Hyperreality, scapegoating, Marcuse’s concept of Repressive Tolerance, and touching third rails of American politics.You can learn more about the Outsider Theory project on Geoff's blog at: https://outsidertheory.com/Follow Geoff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/daily_barbarian— If you liked this interview and want to hea...
2021-02-151h 47
Outsider TheoryThe Unacceptable Beauty of Erzsébet Báthory with Alex KaschutaThe Hungarian countess Erzsébet Báthory (1560-1610), allegedly one of the most prolific mass murderers ever, occupies the border zone between history and legend. She has become a part of the vampire mythology associated with Southeast Europe as well as a subject of fascination for avant-garde writers and artists and a frequent pop culture reference. Báthory emerges out of the shadowy depths of archaic magic, but also stands as a proto-modern female Faust whose commitment to her own all-consuming violent passions anticipated the visions of the Marquis de Sade. In an age of attenuated taboos, her extreme act...
2021-02-141h 24Outsider TheoryToward a Unified Theory of Contrarian Hunting with Oliver BatemanThe "contrarian" is an outsider on the edge of the inside: attached to a particular group but defiant of its pieties and orthodoxies. Contrarians often seem to be one of the most despised figures in online spaces – yet strategic contrarianism can also be a career-building strategy. Hence, accused contrarians are often accused of "grifting" and similar sins. But are they any worse than more orthodox-minded hustlers? Oliver Bateman, writer for the Ringer, Mel, Splice Today, and many other publications and co-host of What's Left? podcast, joins Outsider Theory to try to make sense of the role of this spectral fi...
2021-02-101h 10Outsider TheoryWorldwide Communist Gangster Computer God with Gio PennachiettiFrancis E. Dec (1926-1996) was a disbarred lawyer who wrote and circulated a series of pamphlets detailing the world's subjugation by the Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God. He was largely ignored for much of his life, but his writings eventually gathered a cult following because of their unique depiction of a theme common both to late twentieth century science fiction and critical theory: the ubiquitous and subtle operation of technological control systems. Artist writer, and gonzo philsopher Gio Pennachietti joins Outsider Theory for a wide-ranging discussion of Dec's work and its connections to an array of other cultural phenomena...
2021-02-071h 33Outsider TheoryThe Reactionary Counterculture with Angela NagleFor the inaugural episode of the Outsider Theory podcast, I speak to Angela Nagle, author of Kill All Normies, about the Capitol riot and what it reveals about the right-wing embrace of transgression and subversion; the shift in the liberal consensus from celebratory views of technology to more censorious attitudes; and the ongoing weaponization of the left's countercultural energies by the neoliberal center. Links:
Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies
Geoff Shullenberger, "Theorycels in Trumpworld"
Geoff Shullenberger, "Goodbye Trump, our carnival king"
2021-01-311h 28
Double VisionCountercultural Inheritance ft. Geoff ShullenbergerIn February 1990, Thomas Pynchon releases Vineland, his first novel since the momentous Gravity's Rainbow 17 years prior. The novel focuses on the teenage daughter of a 1960s counterculture radical, trying to come to understand her parents' past and the world she has inherited amid the relentless pursuit of an FBI agent. Simultaneous with this release, set just down the road, is the film Flashback, in which a legendary hippie has been caught after going underground for twenty years, and the young FBI agent tasked with transporting the man instead has to grapple with the reality of his parents' culture. My...
2021-01-211h 01
Subversive w/Alex KaschutaGeoff Shullenberger - The Spectre of Postmodernism, the return of Lasch and COVID Flexing of PowerGeoff Shullenberger is a senior lecturer at NYU, a self-described marginal academic, and one of the most incisive analysts of the current moment that I've yet to chat to. We discuss his analysis of Postmodernism in the context of the now-famous release of "Cynical Theories" by Lindsay/Pluckrose, the rediscovery of Christopher Lasch & Rene Girard, and how power is flexing its beefy managerial apparatus in this time of *emergency*.
We also cover the recent Mark Crispin Miller thought crime scandal at NYU, where Geoff lectures as well.
Audio isn't ideal but workable. If you want t...
2021-01-201h 33
ex.haustEpisode 12: The Lasch Files: Revolt of the Elites Pt. IV: Black Bloc Patrick Bateman Ft. Geoff ShullenbergerTo conclude our series on Lasch's Revolt of the Elites, we talk to Geoff Shullenberger about his piece on Lasch's book for Wesley Yang's Correspondence Society. We link the 2020 riots to the rich kids of the 1960s New Left, why Lasch's nostalgia for the 19th century yellow journalism doesn't make sense today, and why it is that the elites are not longer seceding as they were in Lasch's 90's, but in open revolt in the boardroom and on the street.
Read his piece here.
Bibliography here.
Complaints Department: ex.haustpodcast [at] gmail [dot...
2020-11-181h 02