29:43 i dont think its p.168. Maybe 138? (Sheridan translation)

Marvelous interpretation of Sigmund Freudian powerful groundbreaking monograph ! THANK YOU FOR SHARING !

Beyond questions concerning syntax and literalism, I have heard said that newer translations of Hegel are preferable due to excising an underlying 'mysticism' within the context of which Hegel wrote. I believe that this reduces the accuracy of Hegel because he *was* 'mystical', and that this prejudice towards the 'mysticism' present in Hegel is due to illiteracy towards pre-Kantian metaphysics, which, after Aristotle, usually presented itself in a 'mystical' manner due to the reason that metaphysicians and dialecticians of the time were dressed under a religious contingency, thus granting them that 'mysticism' that is perceived in no other way than ending in dismissal due to modern standards of philosophy. What do you think?

Speaking of finding something valuable in things you dislike, I guess this quote from big bang theory is kinda true then: "Need I remind you not a lot of scientific discoveries were made by people having a good time?" (Of course the genius is having a good time in their own way)

Really good convo, I like this tarrying with the sometimes stagnant concept of genius.

Is it reasonable to say that the qualitative aspescts of the thing emerge from a quantitative explosion. It's like saying logic comes before... Works for stainer but I'm doubtful.

I think genius is just someone with exceptional intelligence and intelligence is just computational efficiency. Intelligence is just how efficiently you process information. Its hardware whereas sublimation is software. Sublimation is a specific program you run to analyze data. And your hardware (intelligence) is how efficiently and effectively you can run that program.

the part about benjamin and adornos correspondence is absolutely hilarious, wb was too real for that. also the point really does hit home for me which is that how prolific one is does not necessarily bear on the quality of what one is doing. really ties in nicely with this larger theme i pick up within the limited hegelian psychoanalysis i’ve taken in of rejecting the super-egoic imperative of our times. also edit: the part about the grand canyon is so incisive and i think for me me highlights this troubling tendency or confusion i see in our times of overemphasizing the positive aspects of something in our mental conception of it and therefore in doing so diminish the full reality of it. this is true of nature of course, and i don’t mean this in like the stupid anti-environmental sense, but i think this glorified picture of nature causes us to lose reverence for it and idealize/diminish it in its full complexity and what living in communion with it on a micro-macro level may require or demand. but also this is why pathologically positive people in the public sphere can kinda irc me specifically because i consider them really well intentioned. i’m thinking of hank green if you know him, science communicator who i really like but will occasionally talks about politics and it just rubs me the wrong way in the way liberals can often - but i think liberal in the way i’m using it here is really this broader thing than that which really kinda invades all of our subjectivities , liberal consciousness i suppose , that undermines the value of the negative and not necessarily in a way that is explicitly harmful but i think implicitly degrading to our confronting the other. i think we haven’t made peace with our yin, shadow, whatever you wanna call it if that makes sense. edit no.2: it’s so interesting you disliked the film oppenheimer, would love to know why or be directed somewhere to you explaining your ‘take’ cause i recently had the thought watching it for the second time several months back that it was my favorite nolan film specifically for the reason daniel points about about how it romanticizes the collective scientific creative process (score is ill) so brilliantly and also shows how dumb mccarthy was plus i just like historical fiction hence me liking it maybe more than his other works. and for a hist-fic film to be that huge? kinda wild. i’ve been thinking about rewatching memento and the magic one but idk i’d rather watch sum old shit i haven’t seen than rewatch nolan lol.

I recently told a friend that Todd might be an emissary of the big Other. My friend told me that I’d been duped: Todd signified nothing. Whatever the case, I can’t figure out what he wants from me!

Can you drop a link for that hoodie?

So what I got out of it is that genius, like most things, comes down to retention of one’s precious bodily fluids.

im genuis

Zero, NaN, Null. In that order.

Having trouble finding Why Theory! Help me, Todd!

Great accompanying material to the show, after listening to the relevant episodes and getting the broader context this video serves as a convenient condensation to reinforce some of the structure. Seems exhausting, thanks

What's the opening music?

Read Doestoyevsky"s The Brothers Karamazov.

I'm curious what you would think about following this line of thought in terms of politics related to categories like gender, race and sexuality. For example, if we take the notion of the "chilly climate" expressed by feminist scholars, one could follow the idea of alienation as you're presenting and suggest that such claims do not require any adjustments at all: it is simply the claimant projecting their lack onto the identity "woman". From a mainstream feminist perspective, this would simply be a form of "gaslighting" of sorts. And we can make similar examples from other categories as well. I'm curious how you would address this. One way to approach this is to say you recognize your alienation only by first attempting to rectify it with symbolic identities. But this cannot be exhausted because there are always more identities to reconcile (this is pointed out in response to a question about how we are told to constantly re-invent ourselves today). But the other problem with this approach is it suggests some identities are more conducive to recognition of the relationship between one's subjectivity and alienation: in an American context say, a white heterosexual male would be in a more conducive position to recognize this because there is "nowhere else to climb up", so to speak (this contradicts with the previous problem, but here I'm skeptical there is actually a demand to reinvent our identities among major categories like race and sex). But the point is: the discourse then reproduces certain dominant/privileged identity categories as "more enlightened" or at least with more proximity to it, than the more oppressed categories and what you said about Marcuse tallies with this line of thinking it seems.

wheres the transcript

18:51 why would we prefer group with feminine subjectivity than male since they prone to breaking up? as an Anarchist I like it but otherwise it doesn't make sense. Can you kindly explain that professors?

this Ding of ours

prof. I think you might enjoy Lev Shestov's apotheosis of groundlessness..or also known as all things are possible.

Close Up (1990)

Obelisks are linked, to the moon...not penises sicko

You do realise the Jung was a total pervert...dick obsessed

the best video about Lacan i've ever watched

Hello Todd: thanks for this enlightening introduction video for your new book. I just finished reading Zizek's Christian Atheism and I identify with his ideological stance of Death Drive Marxism. This orientation I want to expand upon, to which I will soon begin reading your new alienation book in tandem with Zupancic's new disavowal book, and I look forward to all the knowledge and further self-hystericization I will gain from it

I tried to read Hegel once, and found out that I Lacan, Freud, Socrates, Descartes and Plato.

Identity politics is on the right? Have you not been paying attention for the last ten years!? I really like your work and at this point you’re literally the only leftist I follow. Refreshing to hear an intelligent leftist at least! You could be more generous to the right’s take on ethnic identity and more critical of BLM which has perhaps shown its true colours since time of recording.

This is compelling, and theres certainly something to it and what you have elaborated about enjoyment, but one area where this is defeated by observation is that all of this only ever seems to go in one direction. The working class never get a superegoic drive to attack the capitalists when they have the numbers and certainly the conditions to do so, nor do they ever derive surplus enjoyment from stamping out their uncastrated enjoyment. It only ever seems to flow from the rulers downwards. I would be interested to know if theres any reason for this "inequality".

Or just read the Science of Logic like a non charlatan.

Sooo good.

Hi Sir, I am a Literature Masters student from India, and I would be immensely thankful to you if you could elucidate and elaborate your profound insights into "The Parallax View" by Zizek. He is sometimes dense and all over the place and I resort to intellectuals like you to get under the skin of profound depths of zizek. Thank you in advacne sir.

I am so interesting to hear you. Hope Meet soon from new one❤

Clearly the subject is not the only site of emancipatory politics: Witness, for instance, how group identity is leveraged against the hegemony of atomising liberalism. Presumably for McGowan, the destruction of small scale, localised cultures was a net positive because it liberated these people from ascribed identity and allowed them to confront "the problem that animates us" and fulfil their radical potential.

Re Althusser's theory, I once was 'hailed' by a cop and acted like I did not hear them, when I knew full well they wanted to speak to me. They did not take kindly to my pretending not to hear, or 'being hailed as a subject'.

I’m reminded about a short back and forth you and Ryan had on an episode of Why Theory where you talked about having a college professor who was (symbolically?) misaligned and thus was able to change your mind about some things. I’ve always found this idea interesting but it was never expanded upon. How would this relate to argumentation through/around enjoyment? Does symbolic alignment predispose someone to assuming similar modes of enjoyment?

The Washington Monument took 36 years to erect.

Theory is just entertainment to cope with political impotence in the face of capitalism.

1:00:52 "can you ever do x for x?": purpose without purposiveness. I educate my child to educate my child; I do this free from obligation and opportunity cost. It’s as close to scholé as I can fathom and consequently becomes the means of imagining the end of capitalism without imagining the end of the world.

I hate to read Christianity into everything, I don’t even adhere to a confessional Christianity. But I’m currently reading Simone Weil by way of Peter Rollins, and she talks about time in a very similar fashion. This sounds very much like the project of “Christian atheism” where the Crucifixion is a representation of those moments in time that changes the way we think about the past. Definitely going to listen to this again, and read some of Benjamin’s work. Thanks so much for this!

Great lecture! Thank you

22:28 - Letter "Bet" - *ב‎*

Just looked this up... A "convulsion" typically refers to a sudden, violent movement or disturbance. In a figurative sense, if you say "convulsion of two things," it could imply a tumultuous interaction or clash between two ideas, events, or forces. For example, it might describe a conflict between two opposing viewpoints or the chaotic interplay between two trends in society.

Love you platforming thinkers to your adoring fans man keep it up

Can you have a racist act without a concept of race in the first place? Historically the concept of race first emerged to explain class differences in society and only later became preoccupied with skin colour, particularly during the colonial period. The point is that the concept of race allowed the possibility and justification of discriminatory action.

Trump 2024! Now psychoanalyze me based only on that.

The lack that can never be satisfied: The Book of Ecclesiastes comes to mind.

Is there a connection to the Being - Nothing - Becoming in the early part of the Science of Logic ?

I was able to correct the joke along with you at the end. Really happy this is landing somewhere in my skull!