FRIENDS: Do you find this podcast meaningful? Support it! This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon! Thank you so, so much.
Buy all the books mentioned on/related to this episode via my booklist for AEWCH150 on bookshop.org. Bookshop.org sources from independent bookstores in the US, not a big corporate shipping warehouse where the workers are treated like machines. Plus when you click through here to order, the show gets a small affiliate kickback!
Friends, No show notes here. This is the 150th episode. I’m so happy to share it with you.
Thankyouforyoursupportinthistime,friends. This podcast is only possible becauselistenerslikeyousupportit. If the show is keeping you company in isolation, pleasegivewhatyoucan. Contribute to my mission by supporting AgainstEveryoneWithConnerHabibonPatreon!Thankyouso,somuch.
Wanttobuybooksmentiononthisep?Go to my list for AEWCH 109 at Bookshop.org. It will help supportindependentbookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
ON THIS EPISODE
The clash between artists and philosophers
The problem with “fun” music
Why we sum up what a song is “about” from its lyrics
Characters in music and ideas as characters
How songs never end
Deleuze, Guattari, the power of Becoming, set free and turned into art
The way that most artists and political commentators are merely staying in pre-created logics
“Content” vs art
The Secret Histories of music and when it breaks through, and being possessive of the underground music that you like
Stephen’s role in the coming utopia
Bad corona art
SHOW NOTES
• For more on Stephen The documentary on his band Pavement, Slow Century.
• My one foray into music writing was a conversation with my friend Chris Leo, who has been in a number of great bands, but here we specifically talk about The Van Pelt.
• The Fall, which was basically their frontman, Mark E. Smith, remains one of the greatest bands of all time, and has had a huge influence on both Stephen as a musician and me as a thinker.
• One of my favorite episodes of my show is AEWCH 45 with Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance. We talk about the occult power of music.
• And, as promised, here’s a photo of Lungfish’s Dan Higgs.
• Here’s the trailer for Green Room. It’s a good action/horror movie.
• I talk quite a bit about the fantasies of apocalypse on AEWCH 105 with Mark O’Connell.
• William Craddock‘s book is unfortunately not on Bookshop.org, but here’s his wiki, and you can look him and his work up from there.
• Walter Benjamin’s work is more important than ever. I was so happy to hear that Stephen was a fan, too. He mentions a work I haven’t read, the massive (and so exciting to me, even though I haven’t read it yet), The Arcades Project.
This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. One thing to bring forward in 2020? Associative economics. Support the artists you like and let’s do as much as possible to cut out corporate sponsorship. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner HabibonPatreon! Thank you so, so much.
Friends,
What a way to start the year, with author, teacher, and intellectual, Maggie Nelson. Maggie Nelson is the author of so many deep and potent books, including The Argonauts, about art and politics and the body, including her partner Harry Dodge’s experiences of gender and culture. She is also the author of two books about her aunt’s murder, The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial and Jane: A Murder, as well an incredible book about violence in art, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning. She was awarded a MacArthur in 2016 and is one of the most important intellectuals of our time (though perhaps she’d reject that label!).
This is an extremely wide ranging episode, as I’d expect from a conversation with Maggie, whose books move in and out of hundreds of different thinkers and artists, translating her encounters with them into a new kind of light. I love her writing.
I’m so proud to share this conversation with you.
We talk about (among other things):
Passion as an affirmation against materialism
Escorting as permission for desire
Why frustrated desire might be worse than death
The value of losing your self
Why a shrug against danger matters
Thoreau, Emerson, and being a good artist or a bad prism
The shapes and lives of art
The uses of occult perspectives
The ruse of the anti-social
Wittgenstein and the music of the spheres
The uses, rituals, and boundaries of seeing violence
• The Rudolf Steiner verse, which you can try reciting inwardly, too, to see how it feels:
More radiant than the Sun
Purer than the snow
Subtler than the ether
Is the Self
The spirit within my heart
I am that Self.
That Self am I.
• The Emerson quote is: “It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”
• Helen Keller’s mysticism informed her politics and her work in the world. You can read about in in her book Light In My Darkness.
• Maggie’s quote, “I think I give in the writing, mostly, but also as a teacher, and just by being. I don’t think of it as “giving back” per se. And mentoring doesn’t always mean holding someone’s hand. It’s often just by example… We can be for each other beacons of possibility. Often that’s the most important thing.” set me to thinking so much about being a beacon that I spoke about it at length on Rune Soup 195 with Gordon White. I also talk about speaking poetically on there, as well as on AEWCH 93, with Sara Maria Griffin.
• The dead spiritual teacher I prayed to for guidance after being exposed to violence on the guy’s phone, Daskalos, who I talk about at length with his student (a spiritual teacher in his own right), Daniel Joseph, on AEWCH 67.
• Narrow Roomsby James Purdy is one of the most extraordinary novels I’ve ever read. Read it.
• A good quote on violence from Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta: “(Violence), by its very nature, to suffocate the best sentiments of man, and to develop all the antisocial qualities, ferocity, hatred, revenge, the spirit of domination and tyranny, contempt of the weak, servility towards the strong.”
• You can look at some of Tala Madani‘s work on the 303 Gallery website, including an excerpt of “The Audience” which Maggie talks about at some length.
• I loved talking with Franco “Bifo” Berardi on AEWCH 83 about the challenge of white noise.
Pay for yourpodcast is the new “pay for your porn.” At least in my case. Your support youlove,is crucialtokeep my workgoing.Ifyou finds omethingofvalueonmyshow,givebackandsupportthemany hours offreecontentIoffereverymonthforthepriceofalatteor cocktailor lunch or, you know, a month of Only Fans.
On my first ever Against Everyone live event, I talk about psychoanalysis, leftism, and identity politics with two of my favorite AEWCH guests, Todd McGowan and Peter Rollins! The event was part of the theology-meets-psychoanalysis conference Wake, in Belfast, in North of Ireland.
Peter Rollins is a philosopher and theologian who’s been on the show before (way back on AEWCH 14, and more recently on AEWCH 55). Todd McGowan is a psychoanalytic theorist and film studies professor; he’s also the host of the great podcast, Why Theory, and author of many amazing books. He originally appeared on AEWCH 47.
We talk about ID politics, Lacan vs Deleuze, Peterson vs Zizek, psychoanalysis and the left, and more!
This episode is very different than others, not the least of which because there’s a Q&A after – which I always long for with my epsiodes! and not just because it was in front of an audience. It’s different because there is some tension and conflict (though not any animosity, of course! I love Peter and Todd). It was even a bit difficult for me, for reasons I lay out in the introduction. That said, I also think it turned out great.
In fact, I’d love to do more live events, as this one was a bit of a test run for me. So if you’d like to organize an AEWCH event in your city (or a city nearby) with a locally-situated guest, give me a shout out, and we’ll see what we can do. Email me: againsteveryonewithconnerhabib[at]gmail[dot]com
(No show notes this week; the ep is pretty self explanatory, but back to them next week!)
SHOW NOTES, including quotes from the show, what to listen to and read to go deeper, and more, are now for Patrons only, and you can find them here. For as little as $1/month, you can access the show notes! Please do support the show! Get show notes here!
So excited to welcome postmodern horror writer Brian Evenson to the show. A true honor. And the first fiction writer on the show! Brian is one of my favorite authors, and his stories are violent, unsettling, and profound.
We talk about horror fiction, the occult, David Lynch, metaphors, the horror of relationships extending into our lives, the concept of doubles, the meaninglessness or meaning of suffering, and revising everything we know. I also ask Brian how a character could get out of one of his stories unscathed.
Brian also reads the beginning of his story, “The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette” from his collection, The Wavering Knife.
Oh, and also, I ask about if Brian’s stories all stem from boner shame.
To get Brian’s book with Paul Tremblay, Another Way To Fall, go to Concord Free Press.
I couldn’t do this show without the generous support of patreon patrons. Please support the show by donating here.
Hello friends!
So excited to welcome postmodern historian and rebel intellectual, Thaddeus Russell! Thaddeus is founder of Renegade University, his new education initiative (which I maaaaay be teaching a course for soon!). He’s the and author of the excellent, rowdy, boozy book, A Renegade History of the United States.
We kick off our talk by discussing the failures of education, then move right into the major flaw of the left, the right, and more: the abandonment of pleasure. Then onto Thaddeus’s favorite (or most popular?) subject, postmodern philosophy.
I love this episode!
SHOW NOTES are particularly great for this one. Here you go.
Also: If you like the show, please give it a five star rating on iTunes! High ratings get the show boosted on the iTunes page.
“Occultism is the metaphysic of dunces.” – Theodor Adorno, philosopher
“Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.” – Aleister Crowley, magus
“The occult takes everything seriously, because it recognizes that everything is possible.” – Conner Habib, me
The occult is contentious, powerful, absurd, and absolutely vital. My online course, What Is the Occult? Is THIS SUNDAY, 3/12 at noon (PST). Sign up for just 15 bucks! If you can’t attend that day/time, no problem! Your ticket gets you exclusive access to a recording of the whole thing!
You can also get tickets with cool bonus packages like a Skype conversation with me, a curated reading list, suggested rituals, access to recordings of previous courses I’ve given, and more!
I’ve done a lot of media lately, including the legendary Hound Tall podcast with legendary comedian Moshe Kasher on the legendary network, Nerdist! Okay, look, I’m pushing this legendary thing, I get it. The point is, it was fun, like the movie, Legend. Basically, I talked about sex and the occult with a bunch of comedians. They interrupted me a lot, but in funny ways. Moshe’s been on Portlandia, Drunk History, and more. He also has a new show on Comedy Central, Problematic with Moshe Kasher. He’s hilarious and he’s obviously in love with me. Listen to our conversation here.
***
I was on the coolest Swedish Deleuze-meets-cultural-studies podcast (yes, yes, the joke is that it’s the ONLY Swedish Deleuze-meets-cultural-studies podcast, but it’s still the coolest), The Catacombic Machine. Me and Josef Gustafsson discuss a lot of things: desire, Rudolf Steiner, Gilles Deleuze, and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. It’s a nice big mindfuck of a podcast, so give it a listen!
***
I’m part of this year’s Explore More SummitExplore More SummitExplore More Summit! It’s an online conference featuring tons of sex researchers and experts, set up by sex educator, Dawn Serra. She’s awesome and asks great questions. The way it works: You sign up for free and get access to a whole lot of stuff. If you pay, you get access to a ton more stuff.
Oh and here’s the trailer for my course, in case you missed it a couple weeks ago. It’s a masterpiece of me with a candles and some books because that is really witchy. Or something.
Here’s my trailer for my online course Banishing the World: Postmodern Philosophy & The Occult. Watch it and then, like, you know, sign up! (Oh, and also, enjoy the ridiculous screenshot of me in a bookish trance while holding Rudolf Steiner’s The Fourth Dimension.)
Sunday, October 30th. 12:00-2:00PST. $15.00. Register here!
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (pictured) take center stage in this episode. There’s so much to explore with their work, but the best place to start, I think, is 
• Please look into the work of the amazing critical theorist, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick who Maggie studied with. A good place to start is 
r in his own right), Daniel Joseph, on 
Conner Habib 
