You know how I hate when people falsely claim that the occult is a fascist or new age project. Since…well…it isn’t. But the left is woefully unequipped to explore or understand why, so they often just say dumb stuff.
So when my buddy Jake Flores made inaccurate comments about theosophy on twitter, I corrected him and, well, he invited me onto his leftist podcast, Pod Damn America!
The results were pretty great. I got to talk about Pascal Beverly Randolph, diss Sylvia Federici, and defend homeopathy all on one podcast! We start around 38:00, and have a pretty substantial conversation.
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. Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? To buy books from Scarlet Imprint, go to their website and buy directly from Peter and Alkistis.
To buy the other books, go to my booklist for AEWCH 127 on bookshop.org. It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends, For a time now, we’ve been walking around with a stone in our shoe – an unavoidable feeling throughout the day. And that feeling is: it’s the end of the world. The end of the world shows up again and again in history, and we’re in one of those end times, it’s risen into public consciousness. That’s why I write it’s the stone in the shoe, we’re aware of it even when we’re not aware of it. How does this new presence change the way we walk, the feeling we have about the day and have about each other? How do we walk with the minor and major imbalances it creates? If something permeates the general consciousness, it has a different effect on us; it becomes a companion. So what does it mean to not just intellectually or creatively entertain ourselves with the apocalypse, but to actually experience it in our daily lives?
And there is, to paraphrase Marx using his own supernatural language, a spectre haunting the end of the world, and that spectre is witchcraft. It’s magic, the occult. Whether it’s the symbols of the political elite, the black magic conspiracy theories of Q Anon, the presence of new thought and new age in the US democratic primary, the resurgence in the interest in tarot and astrology, the aesthetics of witchcraft on Instagram, we see again and again the presence of a new and old version of looking at the world, paired with the constant presence of its end. The end of the world and witchcraft are siblings this time.Maybe it’s not surprising, since the end of the world is always brought by prophecy and oracles, always seen by the knowing in its portents. And the end is always changing the way we relate to time; when we think there’s an end of the road, so many of us move away from linearity and start to think in layers of time. In synchronicities and correspondences. In creative ruptures outside of the normal flow of things.
We think in witchcraft.
So, I needed to discuss all of this, and give it flesh. I invited two people I know working with witchcraft and art in the apocalypse – Alkistis Dimech and Peter Grey. They’re also authors, performers, and the founders of the occult/witchcraft publishers Scarlet Imprint.One of the most interesting aspects of this conversation is that Alkistis and Peter and I come from differing traditions – they’re working with Babalon – the being that appears in Revelations, in thelema, in enochian magic and more.Whereas I am working with The Christ and the Archangel Michael via anthroposophy.So there’s a tension between our traditions – almost a sort of antagonism. What’s important to remember here is that through me and through Peter & Alkistis, a conversation takes place between these end of the world and beginning of the world beings – through Christ and Babalon. Conversations – real ones – become sites for the interaction of spirit as well.It is through that that tension found only in friendship that we ask a lot of big questions for our big time.
ON THE EPISODE
The rise of apocalypse in consciousness
The way the spiritual world selects or discards people to give itself life
What to do when we notice what we’ve lost and what we depend on
Why to look for spirits in experience, not books
The way location interacts with spirituality
The nature of spirits, the spirits of nature
How spirits get crowded out by other spirits that live with electronic devices
How do we differentiate between spirits (and which ones to not mess with)
The problematic view of Babalon and Christ versus the ones that creates a real view of humanity
Encountering a Christian sex riddle in Vietnam
The importance of sex in spirituality
SHOW NOTES
• For more Alkistis & Peter: here’s Peter’s talk, “Becoming No-Man” and here’s Alkistis’s talk, “Where the Daimon Dwells,” both from the Trans-States conference in 2017. Here’s Alkistis’s performance, “The decollation of flowers” and another, “Visitation.” Both of them have been on the Rune Soup podcast multiple times, and here’s the latest (and I think greatest, so far).• Scarlet Imprint has published the work of other AEWCH guests, including Phil Legard and Gordon White.
• I talked quite a bit about apocalypse with Mark O’Connell on AEWCH 105.
• Here’s a short article on the style of dance that has influenced Alkistis, butoh. Pictured below is a performance of one of butoh’s most profound elaborators, Tatsumi Hijikata.
• As Peter and Alkistis and I try to define what spirits are, I am reminded by Alkistis’s comment about spirits being “semi-material” of Valentin Tomberg’s passage in Meditations On The Tarot about ghosts: “Ghosts exist. This is not a question of belief; it is a matter of fact. There is an immense literature, without speaking of facts that one can find in the sphere of personal experience, which bears witness to the existence of ghosts. Now it is no longer a matter of believing or denying; now it is a matter only of understanding and explaining. Ghosts exist therefore. Thus it happens from time to time after someone’s death that this person or “something” of him or similar to him manifests in an outward and physical way (noises, movements, etc.) in the guise of an active energy. It is as if a certain quantity of energy, freed through death, but remaining condensed and not dispersed, manifests as an entity or as an individual “body”. … (p. 358)What, then, is a ghost?A ghost is always constituted as a consequence of crystallisation, i.e., crystallisation of a desire, a passion, or a purpose of great intensity, which produces a complex of energy in the human being.”
• I talked about Wilhelm Reich on an “Against Saturdays” episode. And my saying about sex and individuality is “If you ever want to know how someone feels about freedom, start talking about sex.”
LISTEN HERE OR ON iTunes • Spotify • Overcast • Soundcloud 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. Want to buy the books mentioned on/related to this ep? Go to my booklist for AEWCH 126 at bookshop.org. It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends,On Michaelmas, the celebration of the Archangel Michael, I wanted to present what I think is the most urgent task of our moment: aligning ourselves with the Archangel Michael.
SHOW NOTES
• “Lily” by Kate Bush evokes the four archangels. And it’s a great song, isn’t it?
• The illustration of the adversarial forces on this episode is detailed at great length on other episodes, especially the most recent episode, AEWCH 125 with Doug Rushkoff. See also AEWCH 114 on how to abolish Silicon Valley with Wendy Liu, AEWCH 115 on the inner experience of the internet with Joanne McNeill, and AEWCH 105, talking apocalypse and AI with Mark O’Connell.
• Peter Roth’s beautiful book, Worlds In The Mirror, is only available through the Camphill Books.
• I wrote about helping stop suicide by the Liffey and sharing the burden of suffering here.
Friends, does this show have value to you? If so, I ask that you support it on Patreon! The show is funded exclusively by listeners like you, and your contribution is vital and deeply appreciated!
Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? Go to my booklist for AEWCH 122 on Bookshop.org! It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends, Is it enough to just think new thoughts to change the world? Is it a matter of having the right knowledge, the right perspective, the right information? The answer may seem unfortunate given the urgency of our times: Absolutely not. What we need instead is to actually change our thinking. That’s a completely different task, and one that’s much more difficult. But it’s also much more gratifying and powerful and transformative. I knew that I’d have to talk to someone about this on the show, and I knew that one of the most capable and thinking-filled people to talk about this with was Scott Eliiot Hicks. Scott is one of a small group of teachers worldwide who have used Rudolf Steiner’s book The Philosophy of Freedom (also known as Intuitive Thinking As A Spiritual Path) as it was intended – that is, as a living guide through occult development.What happens on this path is that you start to get in touch with not just your thoughts, but the actual direction, flow, and livingness of thinking. Scott’s books are dense and dizzying and totally worth the journey. They include The Resurrection of Thinking: Steiner’s Anthroposophy & the Postmodernism of Badiou, Deleuze, Derrida & Levinas(available through bookshop.org – you can see how this title would appeal to me!), and two books only available via Amazon, Earthly, Transcendental, & Spiritual Logic: From Husserl’s Phenomenology to Steiner’s Anthroposophy and his novel The Shattering Light of Stars. We go deep on this episode, and I’m so excited to share it with you.
ON THIS EPISODE
Why thought is not enough and we must change thinking
Being stuck in a “spiritual eggshell” or “shell hell” after death
The unappealing-ness of doing spiritual work and why we can/should overcome it
Why do some spiritual events and encounters show up for some people out of nowhere?
The darker spirits we’re all full of
Why clairvoyance is often just a disguise for materialism
How to see what objects really are if they’re not material
Why you should forgive yourself when you move out of your spiritual developments
Why spiritual experiences are difficult to hold in memory
Language as boom tube – and how a new language arises when you are spoken by the spiritual world
Sex as an occult encounter and why sex is so “dark”
Why love cannot exist without the antichrist
The need for forming constellations of spiritual seekers
• I talked a bit about the difference between thinking and thought way back on AEWCH 20 with rogue anthropologist David Shorter. And I discuss anthroposophy directly on AEWCH 116 with Are Thoresen and AEWCH 68 with Lisa Romero.• For more on the spiritual double, check out the booklist for this episode.
• I love Scott’s expression of language creating “positive voids” like boom tubes in DC Comics.
• In spite of giving him a hard time on this ep, I like Jacques Lacan quite a bit, and discuss his work and psychoanalysis in general with Todd McGowan on AEWCH 47.
• Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon‘s work comes up a lot on this episode. I suggest you look into his work, which centers around what he calls “cognitive yoga.”
Friends, How does evil – created by culture and our own deeds – affect us?
You’ve heard me discuss spiritual topics on the show before, but I don’t think I’ve ever pulled you all into the deep end with me like this, nor steered the conversation towards the topic of, well, demons. And not the metaphorical kind. Demons as actual entities – as well as why we need to talk about spiritual beings asbeings – and how they affect our health and our lives.
My guest, Are Thoresen is a a Christian occultist, author, veterinarian, and acupuncturist who lives in Norway. His writing details (sometimes in the same book) his decades-long career in healing as well as his own spiritual experiences, encounters, and events.
Unlike other episodes, I let myself get lost a bit in this one, because Are and I have some overlapping spiritual experiences, and I don’t want to halt the conversational pathwork to explain everything. To that end, I give some guidance with the terms we use (elementals, Lucifer/Ahriman, etc) at the top of the show.
We start off with evil and we end with the Nothingness of the Christ. In between, there are dinosaurs, translocating demons, sick pets, a planet made of bad deeds, and more. This is a wide-ranging episode that has its own life. If it knocks you over, that’s okay. Hit those fifteen-seconds-back buttons and listen through again.
ON THIS EPISODE
The lure of evil when we talk about it, and the protection of the heart healing
Why Are considers the fact that he had coronavirus a blessing
How negative feelings and thoughts echo up into the cosmos
The 8th Sphere
The Northern Way, Southern Way, and Middle Way of initiation
The time I heard the devil in my backyard
Why pets get sick when their owners are sick
Why podcasting is just a little bit evil
When Are time traveled and saw dinosaurs
The problems with magical activism
SHOW NOTES
• For more on Are, here’s his website, as well as a great skeptical (and far less skeptical by the end) interview with him on the Adventures Through The Mindpodcast. I’m also linking here to his Temple Lodge Publishing page and to two of his books via amazon, because some of his books are not available or are on backorder on bookshop.org.
• The Fifth Gospel lecture cycle by Steiner is one of the most complicated and intense, and one that Steiner himself said others would have great difficulty understanding.
• Mentioned briefly: For more on occultist PeterDuenov, (pictured here) click for a comprehensive review.
Against Everyone With Conner Habib · AEWCH 114: WENDY LIU or AGAINST TECHNOCRACY
LISTEN ABOVE OR ON: iTunes • Stitcher • Soundcloud
Thank you for your support in this time, friends. This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. If the show is keeping you company and making you think or inspiring creativity, please give what you can.
Contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon! Thank you so, so much.
Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? Go to my booklist for AEWCH 114 on bookshop.org. It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends,
Collectively, the world is waking up to the problems of big tech, and the challenges that lay ahead. But to understand what the problems are, and how to overcome them, we need guides, particularly guides who have been through the anti-life equation of tech themselves and somehow managed to not become deadened by it.
So I knew the best to talk to would be Wendy Liu, Bay Area software engineer and start up founder, and now the author of Abolish Silicon Valley, a practical memoir about awakening within and then challenging tech.
With a book title like that, Wendy’s stance on tech has obviously changed since the start of her career. Her public presence now focuses on revealing turn after turn of unsound ethics, structural inequality, the problems with data gathering, and even darker impulses in tech. To that end, Wendy and I talk about what’s happening now, how theory and activism can help with what’s coming, and lots more. This is a great episode, and I’m so happy to share it with you.
ON THIS EPISODE
Why tech workers can’t “change things from the inside”
How tech used to solve the problems of centralized “analog” forms of power, and what happened
The collective discontent with tech
The way identity politics issues in tech
The evil embedded in tech itself and how to spot it without becoming a luddite
Theory language vs coding language and how code completes the inner state for you
My goofy undergraduate hot-guys-on-geocities site
Why the pandemic regulations aren’t exactly new conditions
Repression and oppression as a tactic for tech
The pitfalls of tech socialism (and Wendy says, “Conner, don’t worry about that just yet!”)
The elimination of emotion
How (and how not) to resist the tech monster
The neoliberal tech erosion of Ireland
SHOW NOTES
• For more on Wendy, here’s her website. Here’s a great interview with her on the gay Marxist podcast, Twink Revolution.
• Also on the you-should list, check out Doug Rushkoff if you haven’t yet. He’s one of the most brilliant thinkers I know.
• Although I’ve been doing a sort of mini-run of episodes on tech, the first one, really, was AEWCH 105 with apocalypse writer and tech critic Mark O’Connell. If you haven’t yet listen, go for it. And here’s the article on J.G. Ballard that Mark wrote, and which both Wendy and I loved.
• I’ve learned a lot from Owen Barfield (pictured) about language, consciousness, and art.
• J.G. Ballard’s Myths Of The Near Future isn’t available, but you can get his collected stories (or selected stories) via this episode’s booklist link.
• The economics, political, and cultural sphere stuff, is social threefolding, developed by Rudolf Steiner.
• Here’s a little rundown on the death of honeybees from 5G radiation. It’s on a honeybee-centered website, but you can find the data corroborated by other entomologists and tech workers.
• Learn more about Wilhelm Reich’s occult tech on AEWCH 59 or other forms of occult tech via AEWCH 112 with Peter Berbegal or AEWCH 113 with Duncan Laurie.
Thank you for your support in this time, friends. This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. If the show is keeping you company in isolation, please give what you can.
Contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon!
Thank you so, so much.
Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? Go to my booklist for AEWCH 113 on bookshop.org. It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends,
I’m becoming increasingly wary and interested in the deepening commitment to tech in our world, particularly as we go through this global crisis together. I want to push on our capacity to imagine tech in different ways, to create a new relationship to tech in our lives, and to better prepare us for the challenges ahead.
I first heard of Duncan’s work with radionics via his segment on the late, great Disinformation series. In that clip, he talks plainly about two strange technologies I’d never heard of. First, radionics, which we primarily discuss on this episode. Second, bio-sensor sonic connection to plants and stones.
I talk at length about what radionics is at the top of the episode, so I won’t repeat it here, but the intersection of art, magic, science, and philosophy in radionics opens up completely new pathways for us.
Like AEWCH 91 with Lynn Margulis and AEWCH 97 Diana Young-Peak, this was part of a podcast project I started and abandoned in the early 2010s. I would love to have Duncan back on the show again now that I actually have a show, especially since he’s done plenty of work since 2011, obviously. But for now, bear with the less-than-ideal audio/discussion style/my younger voice. It’s pretty good, considering!
ON THIS EPISODE
How Duncan became attuned to the energies of growth and decomposition
“The first step where you get beyond the dimension of just materialism and the mechanistic viewpoint of life and suddenly just walk into a world where a different set of parameters is at work.”
What happens when we see beyond all materialism, and what radionics’s part is in that
How materialism degrades art and how art erodes materialism
The disconnect between validating radionics via science versus its use
Where Duncan sees using magical technology goes
The problem with seeking proof
Writer’s block as an analogy for not using magic
How desire connects us to art and to healing
Taking time out from what is known to look into the unknown
• Here’s a video by two modern radionics practitioners; they break it down in simple terms, although a little materialistically – “systems” “operating” etc. I do like their term for the radionics machine as a “high tech magical wand.”
• The author Upton Sinclair was interested in radionics and other weird science, and he wrote about it in his book Mental Radio.
• Duncan mentions that he’s a practitioner of Sura Shabd yoga. Here’s a very plain language explanation of it by Master Sirio Ji. The volume is low, so turn it all the way up.
• Duncan mentions the SE-5, a “radionics computer” which you can look into here.
• Here’s a link to a rare interview in The Sun with Cleve Backster, who put biosensors on plants. Unfortunately it’s with neo-primitivist transphobe and anti-sex worker activist, Derrick Jensen. But Backster is the focus.
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 108 on Bookshop.org. It will help supportindependentbookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends,
This is a comprehensive over of our situation and what we need to do.
Bringing together political observation, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and occultism, I take apart the current crisis – a political and socioeconomic crisis that a virus emerged into – and how we can move from this into utopia.
First, I survey the situation. Then our lockdown. And then I move into the importance of breathing; why in the center of this all, is breathing. Not just physical breathing, but the intentional creation of rhythms.
After moving onto whether or not it’s okay to do nothing, I talk about what we’re afraid of. The visions of fear; both fears of what might happening and fear of what is already happening.
That fear is a cue for action. But what kind of action? At the end of the episode, I move towards a vision of utopia, and suggest how we can get there.
Let’s do this.
– This episode arose, mainly, from my nightly “sermon” series, NobodiesTogether. Each night, I talk about an aspect of this crisis, with the aim of getting us all to be more engaged, rather than being passive spectators. I present my perspective for 20-30 minutes, and then move to Q&A. We’ve also had many special guests join us, including Mona Eltahawy, Alex Vitale, Mary Helen Hensley, Jeb Havens, and Una Mullaly. If you’d like to join us each night (except Tuesday), get access by joining my patreon at any level.
SHOW NOTES
•The lead-up conversations to this episode include
• John Moriarty‘s books are not widely available in the US, but you can still order them from The Lilliput Press. They are well worth the money and the wait.
• For more on touch (and the other senses) and their spiritual value, read Albert Soesman’s Our Twelve Senses.
• Here’s my essay in The Irish Times on how the global crisis has affected our experiences of time and space.
• The author of the sleep pamphlet is Walther Buhler, whose work is difficult to find in the US.
• The Slavoj Žižek quote, “‘The function of ideology is not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape,” comes from his book, The Sublime Object of Ideology.
• I still can’t believe I had Billy Bragg on the show. Do listen to that episode, and his music, for some wisdom. And read his short book, The Three Dimensions Of Freedom.
• An incredible book for evaluating the lead up to this moment is Babelby Zygmunt Bauman and Ezio Mauro.
Thank you for your support in this time, friends.Thispodcastisonlypossiblebecauselistenerslikeyousupportit. If the show is keeping you company in isolation, pleasegivewhatyoucan. Contribute to my mission by supporting AgainstEveryoneWithConnerHabibonPatreon! Thank you so, so much.
Want to buy books mention on this ep?Go to my list for AEWCH 107 on Bookshop.org. It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends,
We’re surrounded by terms that sound new, but that aren’t new. “Social distancing.” “The new normal.” And actions that seem new but are not new. Elevated police presence. Government overreach. Pandemic.
But these are old narratives that have been changed slightly to seem new. They’re mythic. So I invited one of the most important thinkers of our time to sort through what is new, what is old, and what is
needed in our moment.
SrećkoHorvat is an author, political organizer, and philosopher. Of his many profound and politically potent books, my favorite (and the one you should start with) is PoetryFromTheFuture:WhyaGlobalLiberationMovementIsOurCivilisation‘sLastChance. It’s a hopeful but evenhanded book about the possibility of interconnected movements in a world where neoliberal capitalism has won
.
He’s one of the cofounders of the DemocracyInEuropeMovement2025,orDiEM2025 – a broad-based coalition of thinkers, rebels, and political theorists committed to creating a true leftist alternative in European politics, particularly in response to the disintegration of the EU.
Srećko is also currently giving live mini lectures, Q&As through the DiEM25 channel, and hosting conversations with luminaries as diverse as Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Žižek, and Seinfeld co-creator Larry Charles. (And on the 24th, he’ll be speaking with FrancoBifoBerardi!)
I’m so excited to share this conversation with you. It’s one that combines the political, the spiritual, and the philosophical, with activism. It identifies and creates new directions for us to move in during this crisis, and after.
ON THIS EPISODE
How and why we were dreaming about the global pandemic before it happened, and how we assisted it in happening
Why the esoteric, the occult, and border science matter now; and how the right seizes on them because the left is ignorant
the “libidinal” economy and why the left needs to take it up instead of opting for class reductionism
Why a leftist project needs to include a reappraisal of time and space (and why it matters now more than ever)
The fundamental fantasies of the left, the right, and the center
The generation of political will through meditation, poetry, reading, creating, gardening, and more
Why people are turning to plants in the global crisis
The possibility of money losing value over time
How to think about the value of laziness
The difference between mythic art and occult art
Why we should and should not applaud healthcare workers
The importance of using your own language
The necessity of new and strange directions for our activism
Meeting the stranger and loving the Other (and dating the Other, too)
• Unfortunately, I cannot recommend Eric Kurlander’s book, Hitler’s Monsters, which is filled with misinformation and (willful?) misinterpretation. The main issue is that Kurlander, like many “historians” of the occult, although Kurlander certainly knows exoteric history, he does not understand the occult. That said, I can recommend a better book on the same subject, Hitler: The Occult Messiah, by Gerald Suster. Suster’s book also has some mistakes, but he at least takes the occult seriously as something other than just religious mind-control and stupidity. That said, it’s a very difficult book to get! At the very least, read them both.
• If you’d like to hear more about psychologist and border science inventor Wilhelm Reich, and his challenging relationship with the left, check out AEWCH 59, where I talk with Reich scholar James Strick. And if you do want to hear about me talking Wilhelm Reich, hereyougo.
• Marx uses the vampire metaphor a few times in his work, but none more famously than, ““Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” (In Capital)
• Here’s Walter Benjamin’s Theses On A Philosophy Of History. It’s, for me, one of the most influential theoretical works. From the essay: “The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious.”
• And Srećko mentions Carlo Rovelli, whose work I have yet to read. But I think I’ll start with the one he suggests, The Order Of Time.
• To hear more about the problem with doomsday preppers, check out AEWCH 105 with Mark O’Connell.
• The prayer of Saint Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy; O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Thankyouforyoursupportinthistime,friends. This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. If the show is keeping you company in isolation, please give what you can.
Contribute to my mission by supporting AgainstEveryoneWithConnerHabibonPatreon!
Thankyouso,somuch.
Friends,
We need to talk about the regulations and messages of “stay the fuck at home;” of quarantines and police powers; of medicine and our bodies; and we need to do it now.
So I asked the brilliant Sophie Lewis -family abolitionist, and author of the challenging and fascinating book about the politics of gestation, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family – to talk about all this and more.
Sophie and I have intersecting influences; Donna Haraway was a huge provocateur for Sophie, and my mentor,
Lynn Margulis, was a huge provocateur for Donna. What these influences have led to: a question about what the individual is, how we’re all connected, where our boundaries are.
This is an intense and wide-ranging conversation. I’m so happy to share it with you.
ON THIS EPISODE
Why being with our families is an intolerable proposition
How the right has seized resistance to the state in our time
How the left couldn’t be less prepared for this pandemic and why
The way the condemnation of magic and the non-critical acceptance of science has made us impotent in the face of the current events
Whether or not astrology is eugenic, even though tarot is great
How leftists can interrogate science now
What Sophie learned from her silence meditation retreat (and how being greeted with silence can affect change)
Why Sylvia Federici and political economy takes on witchcraft (and sex work) need to be critiqued (and, uh, I kind of go off)
Why individual self-care is a “pestilence.”
The lessons of hospice care
The value of strangers and strangerhood
Why the classical elements and magic matter to leftist theory
What if we didn’t reach for the tools of fear and fascism in duress?
• Someone once asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization. “I think it would be a good idea,” he said. At least that’s how the story goes.
• If you’re unfamiliar with Sylvia Federici‘s work, it’s useful to some, even if it deserves (serious and thorough) critique. Here’s Daniel Denvir interviewing her on The Dig. I’ve found Federici’s work mostly uninspiring and overrated; her essays about witchcraft and magic go something like: “Capitalism disempowered witches, but I don’t believe those people ever had power in the first place.” But as you can hear from Sophie’s take, Federici has been a huge figure for many leftists, and a sort of backdoor for some leftists into witchcraft (though mostly in an aesthetic sense). Some of my critique comes out on AEWCH 98 with Thomas Waters.
RT @ConnerHabib: AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 148
I talk with anthropologist Stuart McLean (@StuartMcLean07) about the forces of meta… 2 hours ago
comprehensive review.
I first heard of Duncan’s work with radionics via 
Gregg Museum. Also, here’s a picture from his 
Friends,
• So much about the theorist Roland Barthes on this show. Including, here, 
• 
