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Excerpt: /325/ Reading Club: Freedom (1) Feb 28, 2023

Show notes

On Martin Hägglund's This Life.

We begin the 2023 Reading Club with the theme of FREEDOM. In this episode, we examine Martin Hägglund's arguments for secular faith presented in the first half of his book. Is Hagglund right in arguing that much of religious belief, especially in relation to morality, is actually motivated by secular faith?
Hägglund's enemy is not so much religion as the "Stoic" attempt to withdraw and detach from the temporal world. Instead we should be engaged and committed to the persons and projects we care about in this life. But does Hägglund underestimate alienation? Is his approach overly demanding?
And what about disenchantment? How would we go about re-enchanting the secular world?

For local Reading Clubs, email info@bungacast.com
Readings:

This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free, Martin Hägglund, Profile Books ––Introduction; Chapter 1 (Sections 2, 3, 4); Chapter 2 (Sections 2, 4, 6)
From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism, Slavoj Zizek, Cabinet Magazine
Vulnerability as Ideology, Peter Ramsay, The Northern Star

/324/ Reifying Race ft. Kenan Malik Feb 28, 2023

Show notes

On the mainstreaming of racial thinking.

We welcome back author and broadcaster Kenan Malik to talk about his new book, Not So Black and White. The book presents a historical account of how racial thinking has accompanied the spread of notions of equality and common humanity. How is it that many supposed humanitarians in the past were often racists?

And how have we reached a point where today, many liberals and supposed anti-racists sustain racial thinking? How have notions of global whiteness/blackness come to dominate the discourse?

We also discuss the 'post-liberal' critics of wokeness and their shortcomings, and whether the far right is gaining from the reification of race.

Want more? Subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Excerpt: /323/ Tasty Frictionless Convenience Feb 21, 2023

Show notes

On the app economy. [Patreon Exclusive] Delivery apps have taken the world by storm, and the pandemic only deepened our dependence on them. What is the price of convenience – and is there anything wrong with wanting ease? Capitalist keep propping up these money-losing enterprises – why? And can they survive the end of cheap money? Is the app economy just a battering ram against labour rights? Are delivery apps out to kill off traditional restaurants? And should we defend the petite bourgeoisie and independent bars and pubs? And does the dream of freedom sold by apps to workers, of being your own boss, work as a legitimating ideology? Reading:

Farewell to the servant economy, FT
Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, Adam Greenfield, Verso
Delivering Restaurants to Wall Street, Alex Park, Compact
5 Reasons Marxism Has Nothing To Offer Millennials, Austrian Economics Center

Links:

/321/ Covid Dissensus ft. Toby Green & Thomas Fazi Feb 14, 2023

Show notes

On The Covid Consensus. We're joined by two authors whose new book asks why lockdowns were adopted almost universally. National and transnational health authorities dropped pre-pandemic plans in favour of open-ended nationwide lockdowns which were to remain in place until vaccines were developed. Why this course of action? And how to account for the unprecedented level of policy alignment across the majority of countries: was it coordination, imitation, or coercion? In part two of the interview, we discuss the devastating impact of lockdowns on poor and middle-income countries where the informal economy is the norm. For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast Links:

The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left, Toby Green & Thomas Fazi
/213/ The Leopard Lockdown ft. Adam Tooze
/38/ The Economics of Exit ft. Thomas Fazi

Excerpt: /320/ Aufhebonus Bonus (Feb 2023) Feb 07, 2023

Show notes

[Patreon Exclusive] On your questions and criticisms. A bumper episode as we respond to your points from December through to the end of January. We discuss 'political capitalism', where the left is today, atomisation, degrowth, disciplining the working class, critical cinema, and family abolition.

/318/ The Dead Left ft. Steve Hall & Simon Winlow Jan 31, 2023

Show notes

On the death of the left. We talk to Steve Hall and Simon Winlow, social scientists in the northeast of England, about their new book, The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin From the Beginning Again. Is the left indeed dead, and what killed it? The turn to culture undoubtedly plays a part, but was the left wrong to turn to liberty, as Hall & Winlow argue? How can we turn back to political economy and what would that politics look like? And if there is to be a future radical movement for and by the working class, would social democracy be its lodestar? Part two of the interview and the After Party are available at patreon.com/bungacast Links:

/316/ From Emergency to Emergency: 2022 Review, ft. Ashley Frawley Jan 24, 2023

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On the key events and developments in 2022. We look back at how the world transitioned from the pandemic to war over the past year, and what the socio-political fallouts have been. Is everything "better than expected"? Has managerial technocracy been rejuvenated? We discuss whether we're in a Third World War, how the US empire is strengthening its grip on Europe, and how cultural populists are taking over from economic populists. Part two is available at patreon.com/bungacast

/314/ Shallow & Wrongheaded Filmic Squabbles ft. Maren Thom & Alex Dale Jan 17, 2023

Show notes

On aesthetic criticism & performance.

The hosts of a new podcast on film, Performance Anxiety, join us to talk about how a focus on performance can break through endless squabbles over wokeness and representation in film.

We also discuss our best and worst films of 2022.

Part two of this episode is at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Performance Anxiety podcast
The Greatest Films of All Time, Sight & Sound, BFI
The Radicalization of the Film Canon, Adrian Nguyen, Quillette

/312/ Consolation-Prize Marxism & the Bunga-Bunga State ft. Dylan Riley Jan 10, 2023

Show notes

On the achievement of democracy and the 'impartial' state.
We speak to sociologist Dylan Riley about his new book Microverses, a series of aphorisms on social theory and politics.
The rational-legal state seems to be under threat by politicians who have no sense of the division between public and private – patrimonialists like Donald Trump, or Silvio Berlusconi. What are we to make of this attack on the notion of office?
Anti-corruption politics is often the response, but what happens when the left positions itself as the defender of the 'impartial' bourgeois state – rather than its overthrower? And was democratic capitalism the achievement of a militant working class – or a concession made after the working class had already been disciplined by fascism and war?
The second half of the interview, and our After-Party, is available at patreon.com/bungacast
Readings:

Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, Dylan Riley, Verso Books
Seven Theses on American Politics, Dylan Riley & Robert Brenner, NLR
Inflection Point (podcast), Dylan Riley & Robert Brenner, UC Berkley
Safe Substitutes for Posting: review of Microverses, Harold Florida, Damage

Excerpt: /311/ Reading Club: The Precariat Jan 06, 2023

Show notes

Is there a new 'transformative' class?

[Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive]

We close of the 2022 Reading Club, and the final section on 'Neo-Feudalism', by discussing how class is changing. Through readings by Guy Standing and Ruy Braga, we ask if the precariat are the new serfs in a supposed feudal-ish social formation.

It's clear the old Fordist arrangements have broken down, so what does the working class look like today? Is it still a class in the old sense? Braga argues we are witnessing 'class struggle without class'. But why then do the precariat's revolts only target state political authority, and not property relations?

Readings:

A return of class struggle without class? Moral economy and popular resistance in Brasil, south Africa and Portugal, Ruy Braga, Sociologia & Antropologia
The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class?, Guy Standing, GTI

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