In this episode, James talks with Dr. Renee Cramer, Associate Professor and Chair of the Law, Politics and Society program at Drake University, about her most recent book, Pregnant with the Stars: Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump (Stanford University Press, 2015). The discussion centers on the fascination and spectacle that is the celebrity baby bump, and how holding the woman’s body as a site of inspection reveals the workings of neoliberal governance. Other topics broached include federal Indian policy and recognition, Yoga mindfulness and contemplative practices as methodologies for critical race theory and feminist positioning, and Renee weighs in on the dream interpretation from the most recent Kara Keeling episode.

INTERVIEW: RENEE CRAMER ON THE CELEBRITY BABY BUMP…AND NEOLIBERALISM – EPISTEMIC UNRULINESS 5

Welcome back Rachel to the podcast by joining us for our reading of Walter Benjamin’s theses on The Concept of History. Moved by our joint out loud reading at the start and end of the podcast, Rachel, John, and B explore the ways that history, for Benjamin, has become a tool of conquerors–a condition that only historical materialism has the ability to articulate. Yet, can historical materialism become an orthodoxy, homogenizing the past it wishes to liberate? And what other kinds of orthodoxies, ways of reading, and disciplinary attitudes foreclose desubjugating the knowledge of history? In the process of thinking through these and other questions, we explore themes and concepts of messianism, temporality, teleology, agency, class struggle, fragmentation and wholeness, redemption, and more; we also touch on queer temporality, Adorno, Foucault, Levinas, Kathi Weeks, and Lukács.

Of course, Our Tumblr Friend from Canada has plenty of questions, and a cameo from Sid Issar, featuring advice on: a pesky roommate tension; how NOT to reproduce power in the pronunciation of proper names; and how being powerful is not, in itself, always already problematic.

EP. 17 – WALTER BENJAMIN ON THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY

Tune in to the Always Already Podcast for indulgent conversations about critical theory (in the broadest read of the term!). Our podcast consists of two episode streams. The first is a discussion of texts spanning critical theory, political theory, social theory, and philosophy. We work through and analyze main ideas, underlying assumptions, connections with other texts and theories, and occasionally delve into the great abyss of free association, ad hoc theory jokes, and makeshift puns. The second stream, entitled Epistemic Unruliness, consists of interviews and discussions with activists, artists, and academics whose “disobedient” work builds upon the themes of that arise in the texts we discuss and in our ongoing podcast conversations. 

Towards the end of our book discussions we also entertain questions from friends and strangers and dole out slapdash advice about everything from massaging a head of Brooklyn kale to sweet talking a nebechy philosopher and dealing with the vagaries of academic life. We also put on our Freud-Klein-Lacan-Irigaray hats as we provide dream analysis to (always already anonymized) listener dreams.

Be a part by sending us text suggestions, interview ideas, advice questions to answer, and dreams to analyze. 

The Always Already Podcast is created by B Aultman, Rachel Brown, Emily Crandall, John McMahon, and James Padilioni, Jr.

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