Critique of the Podcast Form

In this episode, our islamogauchist subset discusses Ernst Bloch's gripping work Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left. On Bloch's account, the history of materialism inherits a problem from Aristotle out of which two opposing lineages emerge: a clerical right-wing that weaponizes the afterlife against feudal European class-society, and a left-wing inaugurated by Islamic Enlightenment figures Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. Why should Marxists care? Does naturalism make us better communists? How can historical materialism account for hope? Let us leave you with a Maoist proverb: There's chaos under the heavens, the situation is excellent!Episode reading:Ernst Bloch. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left. Translated by Loren Goldman and Peter Thompson. Columbia University Press, 2019.Recommend readings:Cat Moir. Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism: Ontology, Epistemology, Politics. Historical Materialism Book Series 202. Brill, 2019.Charles T Wolfe., and John Symons. The History and Philosophy of Materialism. Rewriting the History of Philosophy. Routledge, 2025.Henk de Berg and Cat Moir, eds. Rethinking Ernst Bloch. Historical Materialism Book Series, volume 300. Brill, 2024.Karam AbuSehly. “Avicenna on Matter: Implications for Ernst Bloch’s Marxist Aesthetics.” ReOrient 3, no. 1 (2017): 4–22. Tapji Garba. 2020. “Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left, by Ernest Bloch, Trans. Loren Goldman and Peter Thompson”. Arc: The Journal of the School of Religious Studies 48 (December):149–152If you want to support the show, donate to our Patreon, and visit our website for writing and updatesFollow our socials: Twitter | @crit_theory_grpBluesky | @crittheoryworkgrp.bsky.socialInstagram | @criticaltheoryworkinggroupPatreon | https://www.patreon.com/crittheoryworkgroup

Critics & theorists, this is a bonus episode containing a recording of the presentation and discussion of “Excavations,” the second volume of our E-Journal Margin Notes: A Journal of Critical Theory, which took place on zoom on the 19th of September, 2026.The link to the journal: https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/projects/3_project/If you want to support the show, donate to our Patreon, and visit our website for writing and updatesFollow our socials:Twitter | @crit_theory_grpBluesky | @crittheoryworkgrp.bsky.socialInstagram | @criticaltheoryworkinggroup

The CTWG Marxist science subcommittee returns! In this episode, we discuss Pietro Daniel Omodeo’s Political Epistemology, which develops the Berlin school of historical epistemology (discussed in episode 19!). We examine Omodeo’s enlarged conception of ideology as the dialectic of identity and position as applied to science studies broadly construed, what political epistemology even is, and how action, understood as the unity of praxis and poiesis, mediates history, the middle term between the polis and episteme.Episode reading:Pietro Daniel Omodeo. Political Epistemology: The Problem of Ideology in Science Studies. Springer, 2019.Recommend readings:Lukas Meisner and Pietro Daniel Omodeo. “Beyond Facticity and Post-Truth: Towards a Marxist Political Epistemology.” Historical Materialism 33, no. 1 (2025): 88–118.Helen Eleonora. “On the Falsity of Prevailing Ideas: The Concept of Ideology in Early Critical Theory.” Margin Notes 1 (2024), 84–126.Wolfgang Lefèvre. Theory of Nature and Mode of Production: The Genesis of Modern Science in Materialist Perspective. Political Epistemology. Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025.Jürgen Renn. The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. Princeton University Press, 2020.Peter Osborne. “The Planet as Political Subject?” New Left Review, no. 145 (March 2024): 103–16.For a good constructive critique of Boris Hessen, see: Ioannis Trisokkas. “Boris Hessen and Newton’s God.” Society and Politics 13, no. 1 (2019): 64–86.If you want to support the show, donate to our Patreon, and visit our website for writing and updatesFollow our socials:Twitter | @crit_theory_grpBluesky | @crittheoryworkgrp.bsky.socialInstagram | @criticaltheoryworkinggroup

Nora and Imogen are joined by Billie to discuss her forthcoming essay 'Charaktermasken: Value, Relation and Performance in Marx's Critique of Political Economy' in which she traces the history of Marx's concept of the Charaktermasken.. With excursions into Goethe's Faust, the critique of Marx brought to bear by Black radical thinkers (namely Sylvia Wynter and Fred Moten), the antinomies of the structuralist reading of Capital and the comedy of the Rosean recovery of speculative thought, the three consider the Charaktermaske first as tragedy and again as farce.Donate to Billie's FFS fund! https://gofund.me/0a72791c1 Billie's Acid Horizon Course on the Commodity, starting September 8: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses/p/the-commodity-appearance-reification-and-practice-from-karl-marx-to-sylvia-wynterTexts mentioned:• Louis Althusser (1963) 'The ‘Piccolo Teatro’: Bertolazzi and Brecht - Notes on a Materialist Theatre' in: For Marx•Theodor S. Adorno (1966) 'Negative Dialectics'•Gillian Rose (1978) 'The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno'• Fred Moten (2003) 'The Resistance of the Object' I&II in: 'In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition'•Sylvia Wynter (unpublished) 'Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World'

Resident CTWG Infantiles Morrain and Cam meet CTWGs resident Marxist Unity Group member Mac, with backup from NYCDSA MUG member Ben, to get to the bottom of what the heck this renegade Kautsky guy is all about and why today's hot TV stars such as Bill Maher can't get enough of him. In play is Lars Lih's book Lenin Rediscovered, as well asRevolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917) by Eric BlancRevolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the challenge of left unity by Mike Macnairhttps://prometheus-mag.com/2026/07/29/a-short-course-on-the-history-of-the-marxist-unity-group-part-one-background-and-foundation/https://prometheus-mag.com/2026/07/30/a-short-course-on-the-history-of-the-marxist-unity-group-part-two-partyism-in-practice/https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/nov/13.htm