Episodes
Friday Sep 20, 2024
Andrew Luber
Friday Sep 20, 2024
Friday Sep 20, 2024
In this episode I interview Andrew Luber who I have gotten to know through O.G. Rose (Daniel and Michelle Garner) and their weekly “The Net” zoom gathering. Andrew and I discuss his interest and emphasis on Theme and how it arises from stories and conversations.
Some of this was admittedly over my head, but I feel a certain theme has arisen after the fact and it is just that: Theme always arises unconsciously and is recognized only after the fact — apre coup.
As with many of my conversations on here, I love revisiting them months down the road and hearing and understanding so much more than I did at the time of the recording.
Thank you Andrew. And thank you to anyone that tunes in.
Tuesday May 07, 2024
Wednesday May 01, 2024
Dr. Richard Boothby
Wednesday May 01, 2024
Wednesday May 01, 2024
Dr. Richard Boothby is professor of philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. He is the author of a handful of books on Freud and Lacan and Philosophy. I have been obsessively reading his latest two books: Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred and Blown Away: Refinding Life after My Son’s Suicide.
In our talk we lay out how Lacan theorizes anxiety and its relation to das Ding: the enigmatic, unknown zone of the other. Richard shows how this theory of anxiety differs from those put forth by Heidegger and Sartre. For Sartre anxiety was linked to the radical dizzying, nausea inducing freedom that we as humans essentially are. It's not just that we fear falling off a cliff when standing next to its edge, we fear that we ourselves might throw ourselves off. It's our freedom to do so or not. There's no one stopping you from doing it except you. However, Lacan complicates anxiety one step further. Yes, it is eventually linked with one’s existential freedom, but Lacan crucially first locates the primary source of anxiety somewhere else—within the neighbor, indeed the first neighbor: the mOther.
Boothby explains how Lacan reframed Freud’s Oedipus Complex insisting that it’s actually the infant, not the father, that weans itself and argues that it’s the the name of the father: the function of language, rituals, symbolic gestures and identities that helps to allay the infant’s anxiety in face of das Ding.
For Boothby, these Lacanian concepts ultimately help us to rethink the origin of the sacred, and they shed light on how we might better understand why we continually in the terrifying confrontation with das Ding tend towards forms of tribalism.
In the end, Boothby’s challenge is for us to remain open to das Ding. In a similar manner, every effective analyst must undergo a transformation in their desire. One that becomes directed to the unconscious in the other. In the face of the das Ding of the other, the monstrousness of the neighbor, the analyst like the saint courageously welcomes what others have at best only ever tolerated. The analyst with a sincere and gentle curiosity, without judgment welcomes das Ding's arrival. This openness to the otherness of the other and even to the otherness in oneself, is what Boothby sees as the injunction of Christ: to love not only the neighbor, but also the enemy.
Thursday Apr 18, 2024
Matt Blakeslee
Thursday Apr 18, 2024
Thursday Apr 18, 2024
My dear friends it’s my privilege to introduce to you the one and only Matt Blakeslee. He has been such a wonderful friend to me for many years. He’s the guy that’s responsible for so many great things Billings including the Art House Cinema and Pub, CMYK (back in the day), multiple albums by some of Billings’ best musicians and his own album: Fare Thee Well — which we talk about a bit during this interview.
He has over the years courageously, publicly shared his struggles with faith, belief, doubt, complexity, ambiguity and has been gracious to me and others even when we at times opposed him — often to later realize one day that we needed his friendship as we too entered our struggles with faith.
Thanks Matt!
Saturday Mar 30, 2024
Brother Kole, CrossFit, and Christ
Saturday Mar 30, 2024
Saturday Mar 30, 2024
We’re back! I’m hoping to record and publish more conversations with friends once again on a more consistent basis. Kole is one such friend that I hope to record regular chats with.
In this episode we learn a little about Kole’s faith, his studies in Bible School, how it related to CrossFit, and then we end up talking a little about the Brother K by Dostoyevsky.
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
Dr. Jamieson Webster
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
This week I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Jamieson Webster.
I have recently been reading her book: Disorganization and Sex and highly recommend reading it as well as her recent article in the New York Times entitled I Don't Need to Be a 'Good Person.' Neither Do You.
I was thrilled to get to hear Jamieson's thoughts on the unconcious, superego, guilt, transgression, and how psychoanalysis might help to give desire back to the subject and also how we might alleviate anxiety and guilt on a more collective level.
You can find many fascinating interviews with Jamieson on Youtube as well!
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Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She is the author of The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2011) and Conversion Disorder (Columbia University Press, 2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Pantheon, 2013). She contributes regularly to Artforum, Spike Art Magazine, Apology and the New York Review of Books.
Monday Oct 16, 2023
Releases, Loss of Ego Ideal, and the Summons of Love
Monday Oct 16, 2023
Monday Oct 16, 2023
Ideal Ego: who we desire to become (curated Instagram image of self)
Sunday Sep 24, 2023
Sunday Sep 24, 2023
Daniel Garner returns for another wonderful conversation. Daniel explains in more depth terms like "givens" and "releases". From there we touch on Lacan's Ego Ideal and the Ideal Ego and how the loss of faith in the substantiality of an Ego Ideal may lead to the experience of a release. This then brings us to thinking of C.S. Lewis and his conception of Glory as fame/acknowledgement/recognition with God and how love actually does involve desiring the desire and praise of an other. After a release has occurred the question becomes who or what will occupy the position of the Ego Ideal... ?
We also talk a good deal about leisure and how it differs from toil, laziness, and sloth. Daniel brings out an important distinction between toil and work and how as a parent he loves finding that his kids are at times lost in their play and work.
We finish the conversation with some great thoughts on the skills of community building. How consistency is key and how a home is place where the door is always open.
Monday Sep 18, 2023
Barbie with Alyse and Josh
Monday Sep 18, 2023
Monday Sep 18, 2023
Alyse, Josh, and I discuss Barbie! I loved the film and started to immediately write an essay on it which I have attached below. I still have lots more to add to it. Alyse and Josh really helped to shed new perspective on the film for me as well!
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Sunday Aug 27, 2023
Sunday Aug 27, 2023
Daniel Garner and I today got to discuss a wide range of topics. We discuss the possibility of relating to the Lacanian lack in a positive way that helps lift such a concept out of nihilistic tendencies. We talk about das ding, the other of the other, and its seeming similarities to the Holy Spirit in Christianity. We touch on relational or communal ontology and we talk a bit about understanding Paul and his writings in light of some of these ideas.