Why Theory
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Why Theory
Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.
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203 episoder
Gaze
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss one of psychoanalytic theory’s most influential ideas: the gaze. The hosts talk about how Laura Mulvey’s gloss...
Robert Redford
In this episode, Ryan and Todd pay tribute to the recently deceased film actor, director, and producer Robert Redford. Working through dueling top ten...
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In this episode, Ryan and Todd conclude their Marx duology by working through the excellent Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. The hosts focus on...
1844 Manuscripts
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Karl Marx's posthumously published Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, colloquially known as the 1844...
The End of History
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the so-called "End of History" in Hegel's thought. Francis Fukuyama's 1989 essay "The End of History?" thrust H...
Top Ten TV Series of the 21st Century
In episode 201, Ryan and Todd work their lists of the Top 10 Television Series of the 21st Century. The hosts operated by the following rules:
...
Top Ten Films of the 21st Century
In Why Theory's 200th episode, Todd and Ryan work through their own respective lists of the Top Ten films of the past 25 years not know what the other...
The Musical
In this episode, Ryan and Todd return to their film genre series to discuss the musical through interlocked analyses of The Jazz Singer, Top Hat, The...
Common Sense
On this episode, Ryan and Todd put the idea of common sense through the theoretical wringer. Working through examples both banal and world threatening...
On Narcissism
In this episode (recorded prior to such events as the Trump - Musk breakup and the National Guard being sent to L.A.), Ryan and Todd discuss Sigmund F...
Group Psychology
On this episode, Ryan and Todd work through Sigmund Freud's under discussed Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. The hosts first lay out how...
Racecraft
In this episode, Ryan and Todd dedicate a full-length treatment to one of the podcast's most frequently referenced works: Racecraft: The Soul of Inequ...
A.I.
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the effect artificial intelligence is having on higher education, primarily through commentary on ChatGPT. They...
Slavoj Žižek: An Overview
Kicking off a new Overview sub series of podcasts, Ryan and Todd discuss the influential ideas of Hegelian-Lacanian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek. After d...
Euphemism
Ryan and Todd discuss the political implications of the societal tendency toward euphemism. They theorize euphemism ultimately as a tool of the reacti...
The Symptom
Ryan and Todd define and explore the key psychoanalytic concept of the symptom. They contrast the psychoanalytic understanding of the symptom with the...
The Public
In this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the erosion of the public under contemporary capitalism. Using Jurgen Habermas's influential writing on the pub...
Embracing the Void
On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss Rick Boothby's terrific recent book, Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred. First they discus...
Seminar 16
Ryan and Todd discuss Lacan’s Seminar XVI: From an Other to the other. They focus on Lacan’s modification of Marx’s surplus value into surplus enjoyme...
David Lynch
Ryan and Todd pay tribute to David Lynch’s life and work by discussing each of his ten feature films in order of value as artworks (in the view of one...
Seminar X: Anxiety
Ryan and Todd work through Jacques Lacan’s Seminar X: Anxiety. Since this is the seminar that provides a great deal of Lacan’s initial theorizing of t...
Lesbian Christmas
In their annual Christmas special, Ryan and Todd explore the Lesbian Christmas film and the theoretical contribution that this specific type of film m...
Hegelian Praxis
Ryan and Todd explore the possibilities for praxis in the vein of the notorious philosopher who expresses disdain for the possibilities of a philosoph...
The Beautiful Soul
Ryan and Todd explore Hegel’s concept of the beautiful soul as he lays it out in the Phenomenology of Spirit. They discuss the contemporary political...
Hegel & Feminism
Ryan and Todd address the fundamental connections between Hegelian philosophy and feminism. They discuss the role of contradiction in both lines of th...
Aufhebung (Sublation)
Ryan and Todd work to explain Hegel's central idea of Aufhebung (translated as "sublation"). This unique German term, which means to cancel, to preser...
Contemporary Horror
Ryan and Todd continue their discussion of the horror film by focusing on the genre since Psycho. They discuss Night of the Living Dead, Carrie, The S...
Fredric Jameson
Ryan and Todd pay tribute to the recently deceased theorist Fredric Jameson. They note his deep and wide-ranging contributions to a variety of fields...
Horror Film
Ryan and Todd explore the classical horror film in terms of the antagonism between life and the beyond, inclusive of death. They focus on the films Th...
Heist Film
Ryan and Todd develop their theory of the heist film as a genre, which they see as structured through the opposition between desire and its object. Th...
Sports Film
Ryan and Todd explore the genre of the sports film, focusing on important entries in the genre such as Chariots of Fire, Rocky, and Heaven Can Wait, a...
New Introductory Lectures
Ryan and Todd discuss what they see as the important moments from Freud's New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis--both its highlights and its low...
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Ryan and Todd outline the arguments of Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis and highlight the key ideas that appear in this work. They also...
Suture
Ryan and Todd delve into the concept of suture, as first developed by Jacques-Alain Miller. They trace the deformation that it underwent through the h...
Extimacy
Ryan and Todd discuss the Jacques Lacan's neologism "extimacy," which first occurs in Seminar VII and then disappears. But they theorize that this con...
Prequel
Ryan and Todd explore the prequel as a narrative form. They consider its radical potential and how it might function ideologically. They discuss prequ...
Modernist Novel
Ryan and Todd theorize the modernist novel as a specific literary form, defined not by its time period but by its structural exigencies. They relate t...
Endings
Ryan and Todd explore the problem of the ending, focusing on when and why the ending becomes important in film and television. They discuss the relati...
Parallax View
Ryan and Todd analyze Slavoj Zizek's contribution in what may be his magnum opus--The Parallax View. They discuss how he builds on the concept of para...
Seminar 11
Ryan and Todd unpack Jacques Lacan's most well-known seminar--Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. In doing so, they focus on...