Theory Talk

Joe and Taylor are back to talk about the future: the inchoate science of the mind; presently-untheorized forms of social organization; transcendental computation. The discussion begins with Laruelle and the belligerence of philosophy.

Joe and Taylor are back for more than two hours of Theory Talk. In the first session: writing and philosophy; the citational nexus between Deleuze, Guattari, Laruelle and Badiou. In the second session, some meditations on the ancient world with Homer and Socrates.

Come along on a voyage to where no philosopher has gone before! (Okay, maybe they've gone there.) A brief analysis of the Greek word "nomos" introduces a critical discussion of Star Trek, specifically TOS and TNG, which is the material we are most familiar with. Spatiality and strategy; aesthetics and social transformation; becoming-child, utopian ethics and the absolute. Join Taylor and Joe on a journey to the edge of metaphysical space! Theory Talk is a weird and wonderful philosophy podcast produced by Joseph Weissman and Taylor Adkins. Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/theory_talk. Subscribe for exclusive content at patreon.com/theorytalk. Cover photo is "Trouble Light" (1977), Joseph Nechvatal.

Laruelle's nonstandard philosophy. Suspension in Laruelle and Kierkegaard; superposition and aufhebung; philosophy, religion and tyranny; the ethics of decision; inclusivity and futural thought-amplitudes.

Dr. David John Roden, philosopher and author of Posthuman Life. Come explore the edges of the human with us! Speculative and critical posthumanisms; the transhuman problematic; ethics and filters; hyperplastics and dark phenomena.

Joe and Taylor are back to talk philosophy (of) cybernetics: Turing and Chomsky; general intelligence and stratification; the infinity of the dictionary (and of other regimes of signification); teleology and transformation; language and world-modeling.

Joe and Taylor converse about dreams: language and the unconscious; stratification and associative lines; deep time and disconnection; industrial civilization and dreaming-machines; the social function of dreaming. Recommended Reading: The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula le Guin The Book of Chang-Tzu Fragments, Heraclitus Daybreak, Nietzsche

Join Joe and Taylor for a conversation about language with Guattari and Chomsky. Wiener and Simondon; transcendental utopianism; antiproduction; pragmatics and diagrams; the political economy of language. Recommended Reading: Recursivity and Contingency (Yuk Hui) "Introduction: Rhizome" from A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari) The Machinic Unconscious (Felix Guattari, tr. Taylor Adkins!)

Join Taylor and Joe as they explore the vital individuations of the living form. Zarathustra’s sympathy for unfortunate exceptions and transitional forms; zoological creativity and imagination; natural languages and organic programs; society and animality: the imprinting of an ecology on the individual and the transcoding of living forms between species; life as experimental technology; from morality to ethico-aesthetics. Recommended Reading: “Pure Variation and Organic Stratification” (Jérôme Rosanvallon) Perspectives on Organisms (Longo and Montevil) Nietzsche and the Becoming of Life (Vanessa Lemm) The Form of Becoming (Janina Wellman) Support Theory Talk: https://patreon.com/theorytalk

Joe and Taylor talk about Taylor and Rocco Gangle's forthcoming translation of "Non-standard Philosophy" by François Laruelle: superpositions; speculative supercolliders; amplitudes of thought; fluctuations of the soul; practical utopia. Support Theory Talk on Patreon today: go ahead, take a second right now and subscribe -- https://patreon.com/theorytalk Thanks so much to all our listeners and supporters. You make the show possible!

Taylor shares some thoughts about his new translation of Simondon's doctoral thesis ("Individuation in the Light of the Notions of Form and Information".) The individuation of thinking; the aesthetics of subjectivity; the dialectic of society and technology; the political ramifications of artificial intelligence. Support Theory Talk on Patreon: https://patreon.com/theorytalk Follow @theory_talk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theory_talk

Listen all the way to the second half for a discussion about Laruelle and Levinas with Matt Rosen! But first, Joe and Taylor begin exploring the philosophy of mathematics with Serres and Bachelard: the uncanny power of deduction; grounding formal systems; measurement schemes; the geometry of black holes. Recommended Reading "Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics", Francisco Zalamea "The Birth of Physics", Michel Serres Support Theory Talk on Patreon: https://patreon.com/theorytalk Follow Theory Talk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theory_talk

Joe and Taylor are back to talk philosophy! Laruelle and Simondon; structuralism and relativity; identities and individuations; languages and ideas. In the second part, a pre-hiatus discussion of Anti-Oedipus. Support Theory Talk on Patreon: https://patreon.com/theorytalk Follow @theory_talk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theory_talk

Join Joe and Taylor as they study the Phaedrus together. Madness and love; philosophy and psychoanalysis; trees and forests; writing well. Recommended Reading: "Phaedrus" by Plato "The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond" by Jacques Derrida

In this episode, Joe and Taylor dig into psychoanalysis and Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". A lot of ground is covered: the death drive; repetition; automatism; the performative and speculative merits of psychoanalysis. What is the value that analysis adds to our lives? (Phaedrus looms here in the background as well, and the status of paranoia...) Recommended Reading: "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", Sigmund Freud "Phaedrus" by Plato See also Joe's "Phaedrus Beyond": https://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2018/09/22/phaedrus-beyond

On the occasion of Joe's new essay on Sophocles and the Theban Plays, come along with us as we explore the ancient drama, with the help of Freud, Nietzsche, Socrates, Derrida, Deleuze and Laruelle. Recommended Reading: "Oedipus, Narcissus, Odysseus: Notes Towards a Theory of Temporal Structure in Homer and Sophocles" (https://fractalontology.wordpress.com/oedipus-narcissus-odysseus/)

We are very pleased to present this discussion on Girard and Laruelle with Joevenn Neo, a philosophy Ph.D. student and translator of "Philosophic Scripts" by Anne-Francois Schmid. In our roundtable on the victim, we begin with an exposition of Girard's theory of mimesis and the victimage mechanism, and then weave our way around to Laruelle and Guattari through the lens of the victim. Afterwards, a little discussion between Joe and Taylor on similar themes recorded a week later. Recommended Reading: "Philosophy and Non-Philosophy" by Francois Laruelle "Theory of Identities" by Francois Laruelle "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World" by Rene Girard

Joe and Taylor discuss the Stoics and the Cynics, and in particular the role of "cynicism" in modern thought; justice and the law; the interface between Hellenism and Judaism. Recommended Reading "The Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza" by Alexandre Lefebvre "The Pre-Platonic Philosophers" by Friedrich Nietzsche

Joe and Taylor conduct a philosophical thought experiment into the essence of the world, inspired by the thought and literature of new realism (see readings below.) In our second conversation (36:40), we return once again to Ionia and the Odyssey. Recommended Reading “The World Goes On”, László Krasnahorkai “The World Does Not Exist”, Markus Gabriel

Joe and Taylor return to Difference and Repetition for an hour of discussion about the image of thought. Then, return to Ionia in an excerpt from our conversation about Homer's Odyssey -- available in full to our patrons. (Thank you!) Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/theorytalk Follow @theory_talk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theory_talk Read Fractal Ontology: http://ontology.io Recommended Reading: - "Image of Thought", ch. 3 of Difference and Repetition (Gilles Deleuze) - Isonomia: The Origins of Philosophy (Kojin Karatani)