Theory Underground

Theory Underground is a lecture course and publishing platform for working class autodidacts and intellectual malcontents of various and diverse stripes. Most of what happens at TU is in relatively small and focused lecture-driven courses, however, there are a lot of public-facing dialogues with colleagues, fellow travelers, co-instructors, and ultimately whatever I want to do. Hi, I’m David McKerracher, and the reason this podcast exists is because I want the stuff I’m putting out there to be more widely accessible for people who don’t wanna pay for YT premium. I assume an audience of workers with earbuds, even though most of them are, at this point, post grads from Europe who have given up on existing movements, parties, ideologies, and who, ultimately, want to understand the situation we are in. THE CONTENT YOU WILL FIND HERE IS GOING TO BE WEIRD in a few important ways: 1st. Though I do want to be reachable by the kinds of workers, like me, who want this content, it is extremely niche and not very algorithm friendly. Which results in, 2nd, these episodes are ALL variable -length and unedited. This is because, 3, we are using the medium against its intended purposes. That is why you will find a kind of quality in this content that is not to be found elsewhere. Some of the time I will be posting older content, that is ”canon” in a very serious sense. Other times I will be posting livestreams from the current week. Whereas most ”streamers” broadcast with their live audience primarily in mind, everything I do prioritizes future listeners, and repeat listeners. If you dig what’s going on here and want to support, there are a variety of ways to do that. Patrons just give me money to keep doing what I do best. Subscribers get all kinds of access to past, ongoing, and upcoming closed-courses and monthly seminars. As things progress I will release my audiobook chapters and past courses to the podcast as well. Think of it as a kind of buffet. If you wanna binge all the delicious dishes, then hell yeah, but if you are just here for the interviews, lectures, or Capital Mondays sessions, for instance, then that’s cool too. JUST KNOW that everything here is produced for posterity, i.e. future you, future me, future others who will engage with this material more like texts than as one-off streams. We’re not just talking to ourselves, but fostering a specific kind of future... one with humans still in it. To do that we must foster the conditions to go beyond the current theory scene and develop a robust and dynamic working class intellectual and creative milieu that paves the way for the only thing that gives me a shred of hope, i.e. the future intellectual vanguard that’s needed. Needed for what? Find out here.

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Why Left - Intro to Political Theory and Core Concepts at TU

ABOUT / GET INVOLVED Looking to accelerate your way into a fresh understanding of our current situation? That’s what Theory Underground is all about. We are a seminar, lecture, and book publishing organism for workers with earbuds and professionals who see no hope in existing institutions. We're here to lay the conditions for doing theory and making art and having a life worth living in the 21st Century. If you don't know what it is already, then good luck! We're sure you'll figure it out if you're worth having around. In the meantime, enjoy this free content, all thanks to our patrons. You can always fund the free content at Patreon, but if you want to get involved at TU, then check out the membership tiers. And don't ask questions or make requests or give us advice, please. Take it or leave it. We guarantee our product meets a quality assurance check that none of your other content is capable of achieving, but you won't be able to tell the difference for a while. What we are rolling out in 2025 is a series of courses and ongoing seminars. Base subscribers at TU get access to the most essential of all that. The three tiers of membership grant certain very special privileges, most of which are not on the menu but you'll find out about. What IS on the menu though, for 2025, is a course on The Philosophy of Nature by Nina Power, 12 Essential Political Theorists with Benjamin Studebaker, The Fault-Line Theory with Michael Downs, and what I, the author of this copy, founder of this org, and main labor force for everything (production, socials, business, research, teaching, I'm a busy guy, guys) am coming out with a special series of Public seminars and Private seminars, as well as special introductory and deep dive courses. Never mind wading through the last two years of content. I'm here to be your tour guide through the most essential problems, concepts, and questions at Theory Underground. We're going to be talking about the method we've been developing between dialectics, phenomenology, and socioanalysis, in dialogue with Marxism, psychoanalysis, and French fried German theory (the fun pomo shit). Anyway, if you want to access all of that you better just subscribe right now: https://theoryunderground.com/subscribe MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk Shout out to Adam - thanks for the What's Left song it's the coolest thing ever and having the rights to use this is both a privilege and now our property because I guess music works that way for now.

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