Tag Archives: Jacques Lacan

Everything you’ve always wanted to know about Lacanian analysis * (* but didn’t know you were afraid to ask) It’s AEWCH 167 with Peter Rollins!

19 Oct

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Buy Peter’s books and all the books mentioned on/related to this episode via my booklist for AEWCH 167 on bookshop.org! The site 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! 

Interested in Lacan? Sign up for my patreon at the $10 level or higher to join me + other patrons for a live discussion on Lacanian analysis on October 30th!

Friends,

The core of AEWCH is the spiritualization of the material. That is, I want to present a truly non-materialist way of viewing the world, where spirituality is seen as the wellspring of existence, and informs how we talk about ourselves, politics, economy, art, and more. But to that end, I’m not just inspired by spiritual thinkers. Instead, I draw on the work of humanistic philosophers, dialectical materialists, political theorists, atheists, and more.

One of the thinkers I’ve learned the most from is French psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan (1901- 1981). I think Lacan’s work has tremendous potential to be leveraged as a spiritual project (despite most Lacanian’s protestations!), particularly in its formulation of its three clinical diagnoses: Neurosis, Perversion, and Psychosis. That’s it. Just three. And they can all be used in radical ways to affect culture/politics/economy. But Lacan is notoriously hard to understand. So I invited my friend, theologian and philosopher Peter Rollins, back on the show to break down Lacanian psychoanalysis in an understandable and clear way.

Peter is the most AEWCH of AEWCH guests, with this being his fifth appearance on the show – we also talked on AEWCH 14, AEWCH 55, and AEWCH 70 (with Todd McGowan), and AEWCH 135 (with Elliot Morgan).

That’s because Peter is one of my most important provocateurs; we agree on so much and so little all at once. For me, talking with Peter is electrifying, fun, and friendly.Of course, Peter and I are friends so we wander out into the jargon-y weeds from time to time, but we always pull it back! This is as good a place as any to get your Lacanian start.

SHOW NOTES

• Support Peter’s patreon here. He gives tons of content to patrons. And listen to his great religion & psychoanalysis podcast (with Elliot Morgan), The Fundamentalists; some recommended episodes are “Success,”  “Socialism,” “Fascism,” and “New Normal.” But you can really just start anywhere.

• One of the best resources on Lacan is nosubject.com, which is basically a wiki for all things psychoanalysis, particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis.

• For a look at how standard psychotherapy diagnoses models differ from psychoanalytic ones, here an article using depression as the example: “The Failings of Depression: A Review of Lacanian Psychoanalytic Critiques

• Some other psychoanalysis-oriented episodes of the show not featuring Peter include AEWCH 162 with Dr. Gwen Adshead, AEWCH 101 with Katherine Angel, and AEWCH 47 with Todd McGowan.

Until next time, friends,
XO
CH

Peterson vs Žižek vs Lacan vs Deleuze & Guattari vs Psychoanalysis vs The Left: AEWCH 70 is the first ever Against Everyone event is me + Peter Rollins & Todd McGowan!

14 May

AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 70: TODD McGOWAN & PETER ROLLINS or PSYCHOANALYSIS vs THE LEFT

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Friends,

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!)

Until next time!
XO
CH

Peter Rollins

Can art contain evil? I explore mystery and murder with crime writer Sara Gran on AEWCH 61!

5 Mar

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PATRONS GET ACCESS TO THE FULL YOUTUBE VERSION HERE

Friends,

When you follow a mystery, you see that’s it’s unending. And what better explorer of mysteries than acclaimed mystery writer Sara Gran, whose mystery and crime books rove through philosophy, the occult, and the hardboiled on their way to the murderer.

Sara is the author of mysteries and horror, from her acclaimed Claire DeWitt series (start with the excellent Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead), to her shiveringly creepy demonic possession tale, Come Closer.

We talk about why detectives in fiction are always wounded, how criminals are materialists but detectives are spiritual, being an outsider, the philosopher she invented named Jacques Silette, the unknowingness of writing, how our creative projects becomes spells & become our friends, whether or not people actually succeed in Hollywood, the difference between real genre and mere spectacle, fairy tales, why political solutions don’t work, why the presence of the dead is healing, why people can’t accept the supernatural even in fiction, Suspiria vs Texas Chainsaw Massacre vs Hereditary, Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, how art responds to and creates evil, and how psychoanalysis connects to the Western esoteric tradition and yoga.

Click HERE for show notes!

XO
CH

AEWCH61TitleCard

 

Zachary Schomburg vs The Refrigerator General: AGAINST EVERYONE with CONNER HABIB attacks poetry

4 Sep

 

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AGAINST EVERYONE… is fully funded by listener/viewer support. Please do contribute via Patreon so I can keep making great episodes. Thank you.

Friends,

On the 40th (!!!) episode of Against Everyone with Conner Habib, I met with poet Zachary Schomburg in an old bakery* in Portland to talk all about poetry.

Zach’s poetry is profound, frightening, eerie, and absurd. His book Scary, No Scary, which he reads a bit from on this episode, is a masterpiece, and a great bridge into poetry if you’ve never really gotten into it.

In this episode, we talk about:

Not-knowing and writing; the identity of a writer; what style is; ghosts, deer, and hummingbirds; the way certain words arouse us and why; how poetry is like a computer trying to come to life; poetry and Lacanian psychoanalysis; the index as your analyst; how writing is violence; light and death; how the poem on the page is not the poem; recreating reality, and more. 

Zach also reads poems from Hear Oars, and Scary, No Scary.

Show notes for the show are now available to the general public again, so go to my patreon to get them!

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The Horror of Everyday Life. Conner talks with postmodern horror and weird tale author, Brian Evenson!

13 Mar
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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.
Enjoy!
gerricault

Science vs Love, Libertarians vs Socialists, Education vs Freedom: Conner speaks with Thaddeus Russell!

17 Feb

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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.

M+T

 

Conner and Peter Rollins talk religion without God on AEWCH 14!

17 Nov
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Well hello everyone! AEWCH 14 is me and Peter Rollins — author, philosopher and radical theologian — talking about religion without God, about desire and psychoanalysis, about the way pleasure and pain are intertwined. I have to say, this is my favorite episode so far!
A small but fun-fact backstory: Peter and I used to be roommates – I was a fan and I hit him up and we hung out and then a year later we were living together. If you like our conversation, please consider supporting Peter’s Patreon as well:
IN THIS EP
  • How to have religion without God: 1:20
  • Why do we hide under the covers to protect ourselves?: 5:50
  • The way we enjoy our fears and oppressions: 8:00
  • The only true analysis in the second before you die 9:05
  • It’s difficult to know what you don’t believe, but the unexamined life is not worth living: 10:10
  • Young Conner vs Dracula: 11:35
  • “One of life’s great pleasures is having enemies…the trick is picking the right one”: 14:28
  • Love Trump’s hate: 14:45
  • We have not seen the enemy and it is us: 17:10
  • What if this is the world we want? How would we make it better?: 18:35
  • Whether you like Freud or not, here’s his point that we should all be grateful for: 21:45
  • Why gamblers don’t want to win: 24:35
  • The value of being a utopianist: 26:10
  • Conner’s brushes with atheism, and how Simone Weil saved him: 38:15
  • CS Lewis meets an obscure Italian occultist in the light: 52:05
  • How to act when you’re a mystery to yourself: 55:50
  • “Monogamy is the most widespread perversion”: 1:00:20
  • The value of grace and forgiveness: 1:10:00
  • Why are people suspicious of pleasure: 1:23:40
 As always, I invite you to support the show and my work via my Patreon. Your contribution is so helpful and helps me not lose my mind with all the time I dedicate to this and other projects.
And also, as always, the show notes are up on my Patreon here.
Love!
CH
MAP

AGAINST EVERYONE with CONNER HABIB EPISODE 1 – Against Everyone OR The Vision Is Always A Fact

6 Jun

Hello everyone and here we go!

The first episode of my brand new web series, Against Everyone with Conner Habib, is now up! Against Everyone with Conner Habib is a show about ideas, and how the most profound ideas emerge from thinking in multiple disciplines at once. My series brings serious, deep, and intense concepts to you in accessible, interesting, and usable ways. Each month there are at least two episodes. One (like the first episode) is a mini-lecture from me, and another is me in conversation with a great thinker/rebel/artist/weirdo of our time.

EPISODE 1: AGAINST EVERYONE or THE VISION IS ALWAYS A FACT

In Episode 1, I talk about:

  • How pleasure and political resistance meet
  • A long-forgotten thinker who can enrich our perspective of the present day
  • What having sex on the sidewalk has to do with activism
  • Your miserable friend and why they’re so miserable
  • Superman vs bombs
  • Planets having sex with one another

and so much more!

Please sign up for my Patreon to support the show.

With your contribution, you can get

  • a downloadable audio version of the show
  • bonus episodes only available to patrons
  • membership in the monthly Conner Habib Book Club
  • personalized video postcards
  • chat sessions with me

and more!

You can also find the show notes there. Please also share with your friends, family, animal companions, and preferred objects. Use the hashtag #AEWCH when you do.

Love!

CH

 

 

Trailer! Banishing the World: Postmodern Philosophy & The Occult

17 Oct

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!

New Course! Banishing the World: Postmodern Philosophy & the Occult + Updates!

23 Sep

Gayternity

Me & Eternity

I’m teaching a new online course called BANISHING THE WORLD: POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY & THE OCCULT. One session, 2 hours, live, online, with a Q&A at the end.  It’s only 15.00 for a standard ticket. And it’s going to be awesome.

I’ve been studying both postmodern philosophy and the occult for decades now, and you know? They’re not easy! They’re difficult to read and understand, even as you sense the deep value in them.

But put them together and, whoa, alchemical reaction. Gold.

Below is the course description; click through to the Eventbrite page to sign up! (Oh, and, if you sign up for a Gold ticket, you get an occult-meets-postmodern t-shirt designed by me and customized to your size!)

Below that are a bunch of podcasts I’ve been on, interviews I’ve given (including one super in-depth interview with a literary magazine). Busy fella; thanks for hanging out with me!

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aBANISHING THE WORLD: POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY & THE OCCULT

Like the two snakes that twine around Hermes’s staff, the occult and postmodern philosophy embrace the same deep revelation:

The world is not as it seems.

But while the occult has been pushed out of serious academic study, postmodern philosophy remains much-discussed and influential. Of course, philosophy’s roots are in the occult: initiates in classical cultures discussing the meanings and substances of the universe. Then, as religion rose to new heights of power, philosophy rebelled against the magical, supernatural, and mystical. Now, after the distractions of the modern era, philosophers – as much as they may deny it – have once again found themselves at the altar with the occultists, the witches, and the mystics.

The postmodern philosophers are in many ways the mystics and maguses of our time. They speak in strange languages, presenting uncanny riddles, and exiling the old world by revealing the new. They’re renaming the gods, influencing cultures, changing medicine and science, and more.

With writer, radical thinker, and activist Conner Habib you’ll explore:

jl– How the theories of postmodern thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour, Donna Harraway, Michael Taussig, Michel Serres, and more, overlap with occult ideologies and practices.

– Why it’s all so complicated, anyway, and how using the occult to approach postmodern philosophy and vice versa can make both easier to understand.

– How to use both occult and postmodern ideas to reenvision the world you live in.

– How occult ideas have found their way into academia, science, and activism through the conduit of postmodernism.

dhConner will guide you through the complex ideas of the occult and postmodern philosophy in plain, easy-to-understand language in this live, online course. It’s for the beginner and the adept alike.

The one-session one-hour lecture will be followed by a Q&A, so you’ll be part of the mind-expanding discussion.

If you can’t attend the day of, or if you want to watch the lecture again, you’ll have exclusive access to a recording of the course for 90 days. SIGN UP HERE!

***

UPDATES

PODCASTS! 

dtI’ve returned to the great, mystical, dangerous, raspy clutches of The Duncan Trussell Family Hour! It’s my fourth appearance on the comedy-meets-sprituality-meets-tech-craziness podcast. I seriously love doing Duncan’s podcast. We go deep, and Duncan is one of the best conversationalists out there. Also, we invoke the god Pan together at the end. So, um, there’s that.

I also kicked it with sex positive power generator Dawn Serra on the Sex Gets Real podcast. We go deep there. I diss feminism. But in a non-diss feminism-is-also-good way. And I talk about why consent is a bit of a Trojan Horse when it comes to sexual ethics.

saI was on writer/comedian/adult film witch priestess Sovereign Syre’s podcast, Observations. We talk about being (and not being) nice to other people, identity politics, and more. It’s a good one. Her podcast in general is pretty great. Listen to it.

The guys at Bateworld – a solo-sexual website (look it up, folks) – created a playlist inspired by me, which is kind of awesome. So if you need music to listen to while you’re, *ahem*, thinking fondly of me, it’s there. The site is not SFW, so if you have a horrible job that thinks looking at parts of the human body is wicked, don’t go there at work. Wait till you get home and you can blast it out. The music, I mean.

PRINT! I was featured in the rebel lit magazine, The Matador Review. It’s a good interview, and I’m proud of it. I like that I got to compare making porn to what César Aira must feel when he writes his novels.

Here’s an excerpt:  “…style is a mood. In other words, style is really this unique mood that you’ve created out of yourself. No one else has that mood, no one else has access to it. When you’re actually in your style, you experience a mood that you don’t experience in any other space, a mood that no one else can experience. That’s how you know you’re doing it. It’s this feeling of some emergence from you…”

Hurray that I got to be in Hot Press, which is basically the Irish Rolling Stone. I was interviewed by Olaf Tyaransen, who is the resident outlaw reporter there. Full disclosure, some of the facts are wrong in the interview. But that reflects an even deeper truth: that Olaf and I drank too much Guinness when we spoke.