You're for thinking before responding in this critique of Twitter and yet you're for the quilting point (and the Lacanian variable session, I suppose)?

Great episode! You could take the formal approach even further than the software level and make the same argument on a hardware level. There are whole communities of forum users and bloggers who lament the transition from desktop to smartphone internet usage. The idea is that desktop computer usage is intentional, measured, the keyboard allows for longer messages, etc, whereas smartphone usage is incidental, sporadic, touchscreen typing promotes shorter messages, less nuance etc. You could even say desktop computers are left wing and smartphones are right wing! (With laptops reserved for liberals) haha

"As Wittgenstein remarks somewhere: if there is such a thing as eternal life, it must be here and now. It is the present moment which is an image of eternity, not an infinite succession of such moments." (Eagleton 2007, p. 101)

Ryans terrible slip. Return of the repressed, unspeakable truth of the neolib left (B.J.)

Ryan and Todd delve into Freud's late essay "Analysis Terminable and Interminable." They focus on the role that the death drive plays in this essay and in Freud's later thought. They view this through the lens of Freud's claim in this essay that psychoanalysis represents one of the three impossible professions.

Analysis Terminable & Interminable

Ryan and Todd lay out the key points in Jean-Paul Sartre's vast attempt to marry existentialism and Marxism--The Critique of Dialectical Reason. They discuss the best moments of this work and then attempt to clarify how it goes awry. Its huge unspoken influence on more recent French thought is also a topic.

Critique of Dialectical Reason

In their second episode devoted to the classical Hollywood genres, Ryan and Todd explore the western by focusing on some of the most popular and some of the most theoretically compelling. They discuss directors John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Anthony Mann, as well as devoting time to the western 3:10 to Yuma. Their theorization of the western stresses the way that the genre lays out the social antagonism between law and lawlessness, in which the western hero functions as a vanishing mediator.

Western

Ryan and Todd delve into the western in its most radical manifestation, but they use as a starting point, the paradigmatic western Shane. They then examine more contemporary films that turn from the individual hero into a collective one.

The Radical Western

Ryan and Todd delve into the formal limitations that define the medium of Twitter. They analyze the politics of Twitter and the impact of the takeover by Elon Musk. 

Ryan's article cited in the episode is available here: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol24/iss4/

Twitter

Ryan and Todd explore the important ideas from Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, focusing especially on Nietzche's historical critique of morality, his perspectivalism, and his notion of the will to power. They situate Nietzsche's breakthrough in relation to Freud's.

Beyond Good and Evil

Ryan and Todd explore the concept of the bottle episode from the production and analysis of television. They discuss a variety of its manifestations along with its theoretical importance as a form. 

Ryan's article:
https://www.academia.edu/82724525/The_Limitation_of_the_Bottle_Episode_Hegel_in_Community_preprint_

Bottle Episode

Ryan and Todd analyze the recently concluded television series Succession. They discuss it in terms of capitalist subjectivity, tragedy, the death drive, and the ideology of the family. There are spoilers at every point in this discussion.

Succession

Ryan and Todd analyze Freud's essay "Creative Writings and Daydreaming." They look first at the theory of fantasy that Freud develops in this essay and then turn to his conception of what generates the work of art, discussing it in terms of the current strike in Hollywood. In their concluding remarks, they deal with problems that Freud runs into in his theorizing here.

Creative Writers & Daydreaming

Ryan and Todd interpret the film Barbie while responding to both leftist and rightist critiques of the film. They discuss the film's exploration of fantasy, its highlighting of contradiction, and its emphasis on the role of desire in politics.

Barbie

Ryan and Todd unpack Marx's concept of surplus value and explore its fundamental role in the interpretation of capitalist society. They discuss the relationship between surplus value and profit, while considering how we should think about the drive to amass surplus value.

Surplus Value

Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.

Twitter

Why Theory

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