Emancipations Podcast

My guest Yanis Iqbal is the author of The Sword and the Neck, a militant work of philosophy that insists Gaza must be approached not as a humanitarian "exception," but as a primary terrain of proletarian and anti-colonial struggle. Iqbal develops an incisive critique of contemporary leftwing philosophers Slavoj Žižek, Ètienne Balibar and the wider tradition of post-colonial thought in the wake of October 7th and the subsequent genocide in Gaza. In this interview we discuss Iqbal's core ideas, the limits of post-colonial thought and the role of Marxist practice in the Palestinian liberation struggle. I encourage everyone to purchase Yanis Iqba's book The Sword and the Neck, published in 2025 with Iskra Books. If you download the PDF for free, please make a contribution to Iskra as gratitude for their work. I wrote the Preface to this very fine work where I address a number of important questions that the book raises. Yanis Iqbal is studying political science at Aligarh Muslim University, India. He is the author of the book 'Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia' and 'The Sword and the Neck.' -- If you find my work valuable, please become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: www.patreon.com/emancipations 

We discuss the roots of anti-intellectualism in American life for the first episode in a four-part series co-created and presented with C. Derick Varn, "The Problem of Intellectuals." Learn more about C. Derick Varn by checking out his show "VarnVlog" https://www.patreon.com/c/varnvlog/posts  These are the primary readings we discuss:  Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter The American Intellectual Elite by Charles Kadushin  The New Radicalism in America: The Intellectual as Social Type by Christopher Lasch The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class by Alvin Gouldner "The Missing Generation: Academics and the Communist Party from the Depression to the Cold War" by Ellen Schrecker   

I am joined by Dr. Josef Gregory Mahoney, Professor of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University and Concurrent Professor of Marxism with Jiangsu’s top thinktank—the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a critical discussion and analysis of Marxism in China and the tradition of Chinese Marxism. We examine the ideological differences within the Chinese Communist Party from the time of Mao to the present, the main differences between Soviet and Chinese forms of Marxism, the core of Xi Jinping's thought, the impact of the "reform and opening up" period since Deng Xiaoping, to the status of class struggle in contemporary China. Dr. Josef Gregory Mahoney is Professor of Politics and International Relations and Doctoral Supervisor (政治与国际关系教授、博士生导师) at East China Normal University (ECNU/华东师范大学); Founder and Director of the Center for Ecological Civilization (主任, 政治与国际关系学院生态文明研究中心); Vice Dean for the Institute of Singularity Politics (奇点政治研究院副院长); Associate Editor, US-based Journal of Chinese Political Science (SSCI and ranked first in the field according to JCR); and Co-Editor, ECNU Review. He also serves as a Concurrent Professor of Marxism (马克思主义兼职教授) and Senior Research Fellow (资深研究员) with Jiangsu’s top thinktank—the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (中国特色社会主义发展研究院)—based at Southeast University (东南大学) in Nanjing. He’s consulted regularly on matters related to governance and international affairs by the China’s central government, the Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu governments, and foreign diplomats. One of China’s most-recognized international key opinion leaders, Dr. Mahoney has more 200 publications and appears frequently on global broadcasts (1000+), including Xinhua, CGTN, CCTV, BBC, RT International and TRT World, and is a regular contributor to China Radio International’s The Beijing Hour and The World Today and RTHK’s Backchat (Hong Kong). He writes, produces and performs high-level documentaries for BRTV, one winning First Prize (一等奖 in the category of International Communication (等奖, 国际传播) per the 第35届中国新闻奖 (2025). He frequently publishes in the South China Morning Post, China Daily, Beijing Review, and writes for the CPC Central Committee’s foreign policy platform, China Diplomacy, among others. Previously he was a member of the Chinese team that translated Jiang Zemin’s Selected Works into English and subsequently a Senior Researcher with Beijing’s leading think-tank, the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (中共中央编译局), under the CPC Central Committee. -- Please consider becoming a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: www.patreon.com/emancipations 

My guests Mikey Downs, Nance‪‬ and Grady Page are all accelerationists. We discuss the curious return of accelerationism in today's political moment and what it signals. We debate the politics in the philosophy of Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin. My guests find Land's thought to be generative and important, and they insist that Land is not a fascist thinker. We debate that precise point and dive into the core of what my guests find so incisive in the wider accelerationist movement. -- If you benefit from my work please consider a donation: paypal.me/danieltutt1 You can also become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: www.patreon.com/emancipations

With guest co-host Benji Schoendorff, I sit down with Dr. Ali Kadri, a leading Marxist political economist and scholar of the Arab world to discuss his important new book The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction (2023). In this interview we discuss Kadri's critique of Western Marxism, the question of revolutionary consciousness today, class issues, imperialism and its status and dynamics, the role of the anti-imperialist struggle and Dr. Kadri discusses his influences in contemporary Marxism. In his book The Accumulation of Waste, Kadri traces how capitalism, especially in the Global South, increasingly accumulates waste not only in discarded commodities, but in wasted lives, labor, and entire nations rendered disposable by imperial extraction. Through his incisive critique of “Western Marxism” and its retreat from anti-imperialist struggle, Kadri argues that Marxism today must re-anchor itself in the lived realities of colonial domination, military intervention, and financial subjugation. This conversation explores why imperialism remains central to capitalist reproduction and why any Marxism that cannot think anti-imperialism is destined to fail politically and theoretically. Co-host Benji Schoendorff is a clinical psychologist and podcast host of "Resistance is Fertile" (https://bit.ly/3KIRiGH).

Grady Page joins me for a philosophy salon on how accelerationist ideas influence contemporary struggles over technology, capitalism & the left. Read this Substack about the event: https://revolpress.substack.com/cp/180530252 If you benefit from my work please consider a donation: paypal.me/danieltutt1 You can also become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: www.patreon.com/emancipations

I'm joined by Tony Chamas, aka "Tony of ‪@1Dimee‬" for a discussion on the philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa's theory of liberalism. Liberalism requires a unity between its economic and its cultural imperatives in order to remain intact as a ruling political ideology. What role does the left play in keeping this unity intact? We will argue that when the left becomes the stewards of cultural liberalism they participate in the pacification of class struggle politics and this prevents the left from remaining true to a socialist vision of politics. We discuss and debate how to best address this fundamental double bind, how it might be overcome and what the prospects are for socialist politics once this hostage situation is undone. Tony Chamas is a political theorist and author of the forthcoming book "Freedom to Change Nothing: The Spectrum of Managed Democracy and What Makes the US Different." Chamas is also a video essayist known for his YouTube channel, 1Dime and his podcast, 1Dime Radio. His most notable videos include "The Deficit Myth" and "China's Cultural Revolution: The Full Story" (Documentary).

I am joined by Lacanian philosophers Nadia Bou Ali and Surti Singh to discuss the concept of "Extimacy" in the work of Jacques Lacan. In 1960, Lacan coined the neologism extimité (extimacy) to denote a structure of subjectivity in which the most intimate, internal core is already external, thus complicating the traditional philosophical dualisms and binaries that have informed traditional notions of subjectivity. We discuss what this idea helps us to think in terms of philosophy, culture and politics. This conversation is based on a new collection of essays co-edited by Nadia and Surti entitled Extimacy, a book that is the first sustained interrogation of the concept.  Nadia Bou Ali is an associate professor and director of the Critical Humanities Program for the Liberal Arts at the American University of Beirut. She is the coeditor of Lacan contra Foucault: Subjectivity, Sex, and Politics and the author of Hall of Mirrors: Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic. Bou Ali is a candidate analyst at the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis in the Bay Area. Surti Singh is an associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University.

I've have hosted a number of interviews, symposiums, lectures and study groups this year. This is a Q & A session where I answer questions from patrons, listeners and supporters. If you benefit from my work please consider a donation to help defray the costs of organizing all of these events: paypal.me/danieltutt1 You can also become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations 

In our latest episode of The Archimedean Point, we turn to Edward Said's theory of Orientalism and address its shortcomings from a Marxist perspective. We focus on Disney's Aladdin from the early 1990s as an example of pop-Orientalism, and we argue that Aladdin offers an allegory for the remaking of Middle Eastern society by capitalism. -- If you benefit from my work please consider a donation: paypal.me/danieltutt1 You can also become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: www.patreon.com/emancipations

We are joined by philosopher Cadell Last, the host of ‪Philosophy Portal‬ to discuss his new article "No Marxism Without Žižek", (https://bit.ly/46c4gnj) a review of Flowers for Marx.

I am joined by philosopher Alex Taek-Gwang Lee for a critical analysis and discussion on the legacy of Gilles Deleuze's thought, its influence on the existing left and the ways that the concepts Deleuze developed have interacted with the wider Marxist tradition. This conversation will consider Dr. Lee's recent book Communism After Deleuze, published with Bloomsbury https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/communism-after-deleuze-9781350474048.  Please support me on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations 

My guest is Ross Wolfe, a socialist historian and writer. In a recently published three-part essay entitled, "Against Losurdo" (https://newintermag.com/against-losurdo) Wolfe argues that Losurdo's work represents the re-introduction of Stalinism in contemporary Marxism. We discuss and debate Losurdo's work, with a focus on his book Western Marxism and his works on Hegel and Nietzsche. To watch the study sessions we hosted on Losurdo's Western Marxism, please go here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE03jn2k3GYCRd7dnBOAKBN-H-F-wGzYa&si=zkRb8GeYoi_Nc2Gv  Support my work on Patreon by becoming a paid member: https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations 

I am joined by political theorist Benjamin Studebaker to discuss the retreat of the political and the concomitant rise in despair. How do we theorize this despair, and how does it differ from spiritual despair? Please read Studebaker's article which is the focus of this discussion: "Political Despair and Moral Injunctions" https://bit.ly/469EqkQ

My guest is Michael C. Behrent, a historian of French intellectual history and a leading scholar of Michel Foucault. Behrent has been at the forefront of an important debate about the legacy of Foucault's thought, and specifically his political influence on the contemporary left and the rise of neoliberalism. Behrent is also working on the thought of Michel Clouscard, the most important French Marxist from the 20th century you have likely never heard about. The second half of this conversation is a discussion on Clouscard's work, his critique of the wider ecosystem of French philosophy from the 60s and 70s and specifically his analysis of the ideology of "liberal libertarianism."  Michael C. Behrent is a professor of History at Appalachian State University. His scholarship has sought to historicize the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. This work evaluates the political significance of Foucault's reflections on free-market economics by situating his work in the shifting ideological landscape of France in the 1970s. And his current project seeks to show how Foucault’s thought was (to a significant degree) rooted in his upbringing in Poitiers, France from the 1920s to the 1940s. Behrent is also developing a project that seeks to reconstruct the thought of the “young Foucault” (spanning 1949 through to the mid-1960s). Behrent also writes about American politics and culture for several French publications, notably Esprit as well as Dissent, Foreign Policy, and Oxford University Press blog. Read his article on Michel Clouscard here, "Michel Clouscard vs. the Hipster Left" https://bit.ly/3Kn6jO0

I am joined by philosopher and scholar Zahi Zalloua to discuss the politics of resentment, and how to theorize the problematic concept of "ressentiment" and whether this concept can be applied to emancipatory ends. Is ressentiment a political affect that can be harnessed for revolutionary action? We discuss Zalloua's recent works: Fanon, Žižek, and Violence of Resistance and The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment. Zahi Zalloua is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature and a professor of Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies at Whitman College and Editor of The Comparatist. His most recent work includes Fanon, Žižek, and Violence of Resistance (2025), The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment (2024), Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality (2023), Being Posthuman: Ontologies of the Future (2021), Žižek on Race: Toward an Anti-Racist Future (2020), Theory’s Autoimmunity: Skepticism, Literature, and Philosophy (2018), and Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question: Beyond the Jew and the Greek (2017).

My guest is the political economist Adam Hanieh, a foremost expert on the political economy of the Middle East, fossil capitalism and imperialism. We discuss the war on Gaza, the prospects of Palestinian statehood, the dominance of Gulf oil and how it shapes the ruling classes in the region and the status of labor struggles across the wider Middle East. Professor Adam Hanieh is the author of six books including the most recent Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine with co-authors Robert Knox and Rafeef Ziadah as well as Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market and Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and thePolitical Economy of the Contemporary Middle East which was awarded the 2019 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize. Please support us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations

I am joined by Alan M. Wald to discuss his extensive work on the literary left and the history of intellectuals and the communist movement in America. We discuss Wald's new book of essays called "Bohemian Bolsheviks: Dispatches from the Culture and History of the Left" which features a number of Wald's more recent essays and interventions on the history of US communism, including essays that touch on Richard Wright, James T. Farrell, Mike Gold, Agnes Smedley, John Steinbeck, Lorraine Hansberry and many other writers who incorporated a commitment to the class struggle in their writing, and who were influential propagating socialist and communist ideals. In this interview, we discuss the meaning of "realism" and why it is important to socialist writers, the founding of the communist party of America, the role of Trotskyism on US left intellectuals, the role of Browderism on the cultural development of the communist party in America, the legacy of The Romance of American Communism by Vivian Gornick, Wald's methodology as a researcher and writer, African American literature, the New Left and various individual authors. Alan Maynard Wald is an American professor emeritus of English Literature and American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and writer of 20th-century American literature who focuses on Communist writers; he is an expert on the American 20th-Century "Literary Left." Wald's subjects have included: 20th Century United States Literature; Realism, Naturalism, Modernism in Mid-20th Century U.S. Literature; Literary Radicalism in the United States; Marxism and U.S. Cultural Studies; African American Writers on the Left; Modernist Poetry and the Left; the 1930s (Literature); New York Jewish Writers and Intellectuals; 20th-Century History of Socialist, Communist, Trotskyist and New Left Movements in the U.S.; the 1960s Politics and Culture; Cold War Culture and Resistance; Old Left/New Left in U.S. Politics and Culture; and Film Noir and the Left. Please join our Patreon to get early access to all interviews and to participate in our study groups https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations

My guest is art historian and Marxist thinker Angela Harutyunyan, who has joined us to discus the work of the Marxist philosopher Mikhail Lifshits. Lifshits was an important Soviet Marxist thinker who developed a theory of aesthetics that remained committed to the proposition that communism entails the overcoming of alienation. Lifshits offers a critique of modernism and theories on classicism and socialist realism that are deeply relevant to today's time. We discuss Lifshits's major works, key concepts and his wider philosophy of art and aesthetics. We also discuss an important debate on the concept of the ideal that occurred between Lifshits and Soviet Marxist Evald Ilyenkov.  Dr. Angela Harutyunyan is a founding editor of ARTMargins published by MIT Press and has published extensively on post-Soviet art, Marxist aesthetics, and curatorial theory. She is the author of "The Political Aesthetics of the Armenian Avant-garde: The Journey of the \'Painterly Real\'" and co-author of "After Revolution: Historical Presentism and the Political Eclipse of Postmodernity". Harutyunyan has taught at the American University of Beirut and the American University in Cairo. She is currently based at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Please join our Patreon to support our efforts https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations

C. Derick Varn, host of the ‪Varn Vlog‬ is a Marxist theorist, poet and political commentator. Varn joins our show to discuss the protests and riots against ICE in Los Angeles and across the country that popped off in late spring and early summer 2025. We examine the history of riots in the US, the role of the left in the context of a second Trump presidency, how Marxists have theorized the return of riots and uprisings in our time (with a focus on communization theory) and what we might expect moving forward. Please support our work by becoming a Patreon member https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations