Send us a Text Message.

Widgets are strange, when you're an estranger, people are stranger when you're alone. In this episode we start thinking about death and work a little differently, consider what what work is and why it's a problem under Capitalism, why widgets matter, and what appropriation is... in other words, please welcome Karl Marx and George Bataille to the conversation.

Recommended links:
Ask a Left Nietzschean (Acid Horizon episode)
https://www.youtube.com/live/xZtvocD_ooQ?si=EYs311rESuC0LdkB

Nietzsche symposium at Columbia:
https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/nietzsche1313/
(I misidentified it as 8/13, 8/13 is only one discussion, on Fanon, the Symposium is 13/13).
I highly recommend session 4/13 | Gilles Deleuze, on "The Deleuzian Nietzsche" https://youtu.be/oFFxnf92XqY

Obligatory bibliography, or books you may also want to check out.

Bataille, Georges, and Robert Hurley. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy. 1. New York, NY: Zone Books, 2007
Heidegger, Martin, John Macquarrie, and Edward Robinson. Being and Time. Malden: Blackwell, 2013.
Marx, Karl. Early Writings. Harmondsworth: Penguin in association with New Left Review, 1992.

Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.

Interlude. This week, we take a detour off the road Toward Meaningful Work to examine what exactly Heidegger means by Dasein and Being-toward-death, and why these concepts are relevant to the "turning toward death" I believe is necessary to overcome the "Work Ethic."


Obligatory bibliography, or books you may also want to check out.

Heidegger, Martin, John Macquarrie, and Edward Robinson. Being and Time. Malden: Blackwell, 2013.
Dennis-Tiwary, Tracy. Future tense : why anxiety is good for you (even though it feels bad). New York, NY : Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublilshers, 2022.

Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.

What is labor-time, and what the hell does turning towards death mean? These are the questions. Part 2.

In this episode we start unpacking the strategy of making "work," strange. We start with the psychological weight carried by deeply held beliefs and why a sense of disruption may be necessary before any critical examination of concepts like work. We touch a bit on Freud, Heidegger, and the joys of German compound nouns.

As promised, the link for David McRaney's conversation at Dragoncon 2014:
https://youtu.be/SuPKUXz3edU?si=YwAc3dEZ809HwjVn

Obligatory bibliography, or books you may also want to check out. I've not included links to purchase since, one, I recommend checking your local bookstore or library, and two, Amazon isn't about to go out of business because I didn't send them a few extra clicks.

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Bantam Matrix. 1967
Heidegger, Martin, and David Farrell Krell. "The Question Concerning Technology," in Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008.
Heidegger, Martin, John Macquarrie, and Edward Robinson. Being and Time. Malden: Blackwell, 2013.
McRaney, David. You are not so smart : why you have too many friends on Facebook, why your memory is mostly fiction, and 46 other ways you're deluding yourself. Gotham Books/Penguin Group, New York. 2011

Support the Show.