Why Theory

Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.

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224 episodes
Updated Sunday
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Episodes224

Newest first

Jan 8, 2022 · 1 hr 17 min
Metalanguage (Aphorism 7)
Ryan and Todd discuss Lacan's claim that "there is no metalanguage." They address the political implications of this idea and look at various attempts to constitute a metalinguistic position. Finally, they explore the connection between metalanguage and capitalist subjectivity.
Dec 23, 2021 · 1 hr 18 min
The Christmas Film
Ryan and Todd return to the theorization of the Christmas film by examining three entries in the genre: Meet Me in St. Louis, Holiday Inn, and Christmas in Connecticut. They discuss the Christmas film's depiction of castrated authority, its challenge to cynicism, and its insistence that one must immerse oneself in a fiction to find truth.
Dec 12, 2021 · 1 hr 21 min
Casablanca
Ryan and Todd delve into the theoretical importance of the 1942 film Casablanca. They examine its critique of cynicism, its intermixing of love and politics, and its enactment of the importance of the barrier. They conclude by exploring how the film figures enjoyment and the political implications of this figuring.
Nov 27, 2021 · 1 hr 14 min
Retroactivity
Ryan and Todd explore the concept of retroactivity or Nachträglichkeit from its development in Hegel's philosophy to its pivotal status as the basis for freedom in Slavoj Zizek's thought. In between, they discuss how Freud, Lacan, and Laplanche each deploy this central theoretical concept and trace its political implications.
Nov 14, 2021 · 1 hr 15 min
Id
Ryan and Todd finish their three-episode examination of Freud's structural theory of the psyche with a focus on the id. They discuss the lack of discussion of the id among theorists and try to fill this lacuna. They then explore its cultural resonance.
Oct 31, 2021 · 1 hr 11 min
Ego
In this second in a series of three episodes, Ryan and Todd discuss the trajectory of the concept of the ego from Freud to Lacan. They investigate how Lacan's critique of the ego reshapes psychoanalytic thinking by distancing the subject from ego.
Oct 17, 2021 · 1 hr 19 min
Superego
In this episode, Ryan and Todd trace the development of the concept of the superego from Freud's invention of it in the Ego and the Id to Jacques Lacan's development of it through his seminars to Slavoj Zizek's theorizing of it as a political category. They examine the link between superego and social authority, focusing on the role that enjoyment plays in superegoic logic.
Oct 3, 2021 · 1 hr 16 min
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Ryan and Todd analyze the presuppositions and argument of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. They challenge the conception of dialectic that the book proffers and its general condemnation of the culture industry by examining cases that illustrate the culture industry's failures.
Sep 19, 2021 · 1 hr 18 min
Introduction to Biopower
Ryan and Todd explore the notion of biopower, as first advanced by Michel Foucault and then developed by Giorgio Agamben. They discuss how biopower relates to Marxism and to the dialectical understanding of the law.
Sep 5, 2021 · 1 hr 14 min
Heidegger and Hegel
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the philosophical divide between Martin Heidegger and Hegel, taking as their starting point Heidegger's conception of Dasein. They explore the relationship between Dasein and subjectivity, as well as the differing relationships to modernity that each philosopher has. The episode also touches on the theoretical tendencies for Heidegger's embrace of Nazism.
Aug 22, 2021 · 1 hr 19 min
Breaking Bad
Ryan and Todd work through the main ideas in the five seasons of the television series Breaking Bad, with a special focus on the final season. They discuss the show's commentary on capitalism, its conception of evil, and the significance of Walter White's trajectory.
Aug 9, 2021 · 1 hr 33 min
Twin Peaks The Return
Ryan and Todd offer their interpretation of the television series Twin Peaks: The Return. After Ryan explains the role of the series in peak tv, they explore what the final season of the series has to say about the structure of fantasy and our relationship to the necessity of loss.
Jul 25, 2021 · 1 hr 17 min
Four Discourses
This episode unpacks the reasons that drove Jacques Lacan to invent the four discourses in Seminar XVII and then analyzes the structure of each discourse. Ryan and Todd also touch on Lacan's development of the capitalist discourse. They conclude the episode with a critique of this turn in Lacan's thinking.
Jul 12, 2021 · 1 hr 41 min
Read My Desire, Pt. 3: Sex, Difference, Relation
Ryan and Todd devote a third and final episode to Joan's Copjec 1994 classic Read My Desire, focusing the entire time on the final chapter in the book, "Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason." They address Copjec's critique of Judith Butler and work out the philosophical resonance of this chapter.
Jun 27, 2021 · 1 hr 27 min
Read My Desire, Pt. 2: Democracy, Anxiety, Film Noir
In this second of three episode devoted to Joan Copjec's Read My Desire, Ryan and Todd focus on Copjec's insights into the strength through weakness of the populist leader, the role of anxiety in politics, and the role that film noir plays in explaining the retreat from the public sphere.
Jun 27, 2021 · 1 hr 32 min
Graduate School
In this special requested episode, Ryan and Todd recount their experience of graduate school. They discuss the difficulties of engaging in theory and their attempts to carve out a theoretical path nonetheless. This is a singular episode where theory serves just as a content and not at all as a form.
Jun 13, 2021 · 1 hr 18 min
Read My Desire, Pt. 1: Gaze and Excess
Ryan and Todd devote this episode to unpacking Joan Copjec's groundbreaking first book, Read My Desire. In this first part of a two part series, they focus on the first four chapters of the book, devoting most of the episode to an explication of "The Orthopsychic Subject," which is Copjec's critique of apparatus theory in film studies. In so doing, they work through Copjec's understanding of the gaze.
May 30, 2021 · 1 hr 23 min
Sublime Object of Ideology
Ryan and Todd discuss the emergence of Slavoj Zizek's first book in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology. They work through its impact and historical significance. They then work through the ideas of the book as Zizek develops them--a new theory of ideology, fantasy, the quilting point, and the death drive.
May 17, 2021 · 1 hr 24 min
Alexandre Kojeve
In this episode, Ryan and Todd delve into the life and thought of relatively unknown theorist Alexandre Kojeve, who they claim may be the most influential thinker--for better or worse--of the 20th century. Kojeve basically directed the reading of Hegel for almost 75 years and shaped thinkers such as Jacques Lacan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Georges Bataille. This episode tries to account for his incredible influence while doing just to his thought.
May 2, 2021 · 1 hr 18 min
Psychoanalysis & Narrative
In this episode, Ryan and Todd conceptualize narrative structure in psychoanalytic terms, addressing how the master signifier, the subject supposed to know, the objet a, the object of desire, and the quilting point manifest themselves in the constitution of a narrative. They look at examples such as Hamlet, Memento, Star Wars, and Wandavision.