Dave and Mikey interview Slavoj Žižek! for the Theory Underground book launch + Elton and Bryan

Theory Underground

Dave and Mikey interview Slavoj Žižek for the Theory Underground book TOUR launch in Boise, Idaho. They asked him questions about drive vs. desire and the ethics of psychoanalysis in relation to addiction and serial killers; Nick Land, Baudrillard, and Compact Mag / Nina Power. We get into the politics of universality, our critique of working class identity politics, and underground theory itself!
After the interview the Theory Underground 2023 Tour Crew talks about the two publications, which you can order from Amazon, or for a reduced price, at theory-underground.com/store The video closes with presentations from two of the Underground Theory contributors presenting on their chapters: Elton L.K. on The Vampire Castle is PMC (Mark Fisher meets Barbara Ehrenreich), and Bryan Weeks on his more poetic work that deals with the Idea of the University, the state's need for legibility (James Scott), and in-operability (Giorgio Agamben).
Purchase Underground Theory and TIMENERGY: Why You Have No Time or Energy on Amazon, or if you're local to the U.S. you can order it at a discount from https://theory-underground.com/store/
More about the presenters:
Bryan Weeks earned a B.A. in English & Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 2013 and M.A. in Education from Boise State University in 2022 where his research focused on the intersection of critical discourses in the Philosophy of education, particularly deschooling and democratization in public education. He teaches English at an alternative high school and leads reading and writing groups in philosophy, literature, and poetry for adults in Boise, ID where he lives with his wife and son. In 2023 he co-taught a course at Theory Underground based on Karl Jaspers' work The Idea of the University.
Elton LK was introduced to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche by a friend at age 21 after graduating from a trade school. Eight years later he graduated from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon with a philosophy degree. In 2012 Elton formed the Dead Parrot Philosophical Society, a book club outside of the academy that discusses everything from Plato to Žižek. The Dead Parrots meet monthly to this day. Since high school Elton has been politically engaged, but Occupy was a major turning point. He did not join his first political organization until 2018: the Democratic Socialists of America. In January 2020 he started an in-person Socialist Night School as a part of his local DSA chapter. In 2023 he co-taught a course at Theory Underground called Professional Managerial Class Consciousness and Ideology.
Michael Downs is an independent researcher and author of the philosophy and critical theory blog The Dangerous Maybe. He has earned a graduate certificate from The New Centre for Research and Practice and was the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Essay at the 2018 International Žižek Conference in Athens, Georgia. Michael is currently studying with Todd McGowan with a special focus on the work of Slavoj Žižek. In 2023 Michael taught a course at Theory Underground on Žižek’s For They Know Not What They Do, and in October he teaches an introductory course to the philosophy of Nick Land.
If Theory Underground has helped you see that text to speech technologies are a useful way of supplementing one’s reading while living a busy life, if you want to be able to listen to PDFs for yourself, then Speechify is recommended.
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Missed a course at Theory Underground? Wrong! Courses at Theory Underground are available after the fact on demand. https://theory-underground.com/courses
Dave’s first book, Waypoint, is available for free at Theory Underground in blog and audio formats. https://theory-underground.com/waypoint/ ^There you can also purchase the text for significantly cheaper than it is on Amazon.