Bungacast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

On corruption, charisma, populism & assassination in Slovakia.

Slovak sociologist Dominik Zelinksy joins us to discuss Slovakia's positioning between East and West. We discuss:

• Why was Prime Minister Robert Fico a target of an assassination attempt?

• Whether Fico – not a zany outsider but a competent insider – is a "populist"

• Why Slovaks are not so anti-Russian, and why they are sceptical of NATO

• How has anti-corruption politics played a role

• What is "charismatic mimicry" and why have Western leaders aped Ukraine's Zelenskyy?

Links:

• Slovakia's election: "more than a fight between democracy and autocracy", Dominik Zelinsky, LeftEast

• Assassination Attempt Prompts Soul-Searching in Slovakia, Jakub Bokes, Jacobin

• Slovakia’s Election Result Is About Declining Living Standards, Not Just Ukraine, Jakub Bokes, Jacobin

• Charismatic Mimicry: Innovation and Imitation in the Case of Volodymyr Zelensky, Paul Joosse & Dominik Zelinsky, Sociological Theory. Thread on Twitter/X about the article

 

On the electricity grid and the institutions involved.

[Episode originally released only to subscribers on 20 June 2024. Join us at patreon.com/bungacast]

Fred Stafford, a STEM professional, a writer on energy and power, and an editor at Damage, talks to Alex and regular contributor Leigh Phillips about the utility of utilities and his recent essay in the second print issue of Damage, "Deinstitutionalized"./

• What actually is a utility: is it a question of ownership, structure, purpose..?

• How did the 70s energy crisis, neoliberal economics, and environmentalism create a perfect storm that broke up regulated utilities?

• How does the regulatory regime on energy in the US actually work?

• Why have environmentalists been so keen to line up with neoliberal deregulation and to attack utilities – in Europe as well as the US?

• Why should the left think about a restoration of the investor-owned utility model, and not just jump straight to public ownership?

Links:

• The Utility of Utilities, Fred Stafford & Matt Huber, Damage

• Big Public Power from the Atom, Matt Huber & Fred Stafford, Damage

• Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Electric Utility System, Richard F Hirsch

On emotional capitalism + Israeli politics.

Renowned sociologist Eva Illouz joins us to talk about her recent book on the emotions of populism, and her work on the sociology of emotions in general. We discuss:

• Why have emotions become such a collective obsession?

• Where can you buy emotional commodities? What are influencers really selling?

• What emotions accompany victim culture?

• How is identity and victimhood linked in a way that allow us never to forgive or forget?

  Plus:

• How has Netanyahu failed even on his own terms?

• How has Israeli populism channelled fear, disgust, resentment, and love?

• Why have Eva's views on the progressive left changed?

 

Readings & Links:

• The Emotional Life of Populism: How Fear, Disgust, Resentment, and Love Undermine Democracy, Eva Illouz

• Emotion Sickness: The Politics of Feelings, Bungacast series

• Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Eva Illouz

• /232/ Reading Club: Cold, Hard / Warm, Soft - on Eva's 'Cold Intimacies'

• The Global Left Needs to Renounce Judith Butler, Eva Illouz, Ha'aretz

• 'Never has peace seemed so necessary and impossible' — Eva Illouz on the horrors of Oct. 7 and its aftermath, Forward

• Eva Illouz, sociologist: 'I think that after the terrorist attacks, for Israeli society, Hamas has become the Nazi' Le Monde

• Israel Is Facing Existential Threats From Inside and Out. There's One Solution, Eva Illouz, Ha'aretz

 

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Silvio Berlusconi is no more. In mourning of our evil patron saint's passing, we're unlocking this previously paywalled episode in which we discuss a cinematic depiction of the big man.

Keep an eye out for more on Berlusca coming out from us in the next days!

———

We discuss Paolo Sorrentino's "Loro" (2018), a dreamlike cinematic depiction of Silvio Berlusconi. Does the film succeed in capturing Silvio, or does it glamourise him? What explains the appeal he had - and why was the left never able to properly dethrone him? What does it say about 2000s Italy, and its relevance to our times?

On power, values and class.   [Patreon Exclusive]   British professor Matt Goodwin joins us to talk about his recent new book Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics published earlier this year with Penguin. Matt has argued that a new elite has come to dominate public life, leading institutions and the cultural industries in Britain and across the wider Western world, and that they are fixated with issues that divide them from the larger public – to whom they are bitter and hostile.   We talk about elites, old and new, as well as ideas about elites stemming back to Daniel Bell and Christopher Lasch, and how these elites are shaping the future of politics.   Matt also gives us a breakdown of the most recent local elections from the UK, what has happened with the Scottish National Party since the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon, why Keir Starmer’s Labour party will likely win the next election, and why the Tories are - contrary to their ruthless reputation - failing to adapt to the new political landscape.   Readings:

• National Swing Man, the British electorate’s new-old tribe, Bagehot, The Economist
• A decade of SNP one-party rule left Scotland in a state, Matthew Goodwin, The Times
• Sunak’s Tories have lost the Red Wall – and are destined for oblivion, Matthew Goodwin, The Telegraph
• The New Elite is in complete denial, Matthew Goodwin, spiked

On work stoppages and work-doings.

Ben Hickman, published poet and senior lecturer in English at the University of Kent, joins us to discuss his project on different understandings of work, or rather, The Work. 

What is The Work and why is it so pernicious? Ben wrote a piece for Compact regarding how the American poet and radical professor Audre Lorde transformed the way we think about work. We talk through the differences between work and The Work, how it impacted radical activism, and how middle class work became all about self-exploration. 

Ben talks through a new book project on work and how it is understood culturally through figures such as Jackson Pollock, among others. Plus, what is happening with industrial relations on UK campuses, and how has radical politics unfolded in the Labour Party over the last few years? 

Reading:

• Stop Doing The Work, Ben Hickman, Compact
• “Atlantis Buried Outside”: Muriel Rukeyser, Myth, and the Crises of War, Ben Hickman, Criticism, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 2015)

On Martin Hägglund's This Life.

We continue on the theme of freedom by discussing Martin Hägglund's case for 'democratic socialism'. In this episode, we leave the book itself to one side and attempt to "put the concepts to work". 

We survey the many intelligent responses the book has generated and discuss what their strengths and weaknesses are.  

• Is 'secular faith' just a therapeutic ethos to do with caring about your loved ones?
• What guarantees that we will use our free time appropriately? Why would we work freely for others?
• How does Hägglund’s vision work on a global scale?
• What kind of post-capitalist “state” does Hagglund actually propose?
• Does Hägglund evade class struggle? Does he have any vision of agency?

For access to the Reading Club, join for $10/mo at patreon.com/bungacast Readings:

• Limited Time: On Martin Hägglund’s This Life, Robert Pippin – and response by Martin Hägglund (pdf)
• Response 2: The Problem of Agency, Lea Ypi, The Philosopher
• Socialism For Our Time: Freedom, Value, Transition, Conall Cash, Boundary2 (esp. Sections IV and V)
• LA Review of Books symposium. Pieces by Walter Benn Michaels, Benjamin Kunkel, William Clare Roberts and three-part response by Hägglund: 1, 2, 3

 

On family abolition.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Amber A'Lee Frost joins us to talk through recent radical proposals to do away with the family as an institution. Author Sophie Lewis claims that "ever since the capitalist victory over the long Sixties, the shout for abolition of the family has been buried beneath a strange kind of shame”, but that now it’s back. Why?

What problems does family abolition address? And how do contemporary accounts sit in relation to earlier radical proposals by the Old and New Lefts?

If "the family is doing a bad job at care" and "getting in the way of alternatives", what actually is the alternative? Wouldn't destroying the family merely make life worse for most, without putting anything better in its place?   Readings:

• Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, Sophie Lewis, Verso

• Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, Sophie Lewis, Verso

• Profile of Sophie Lewis in VICE

• Haven in a Heartless World, Christopher Lasch

• Vulnerability as Ideology, Peter Ramsay, The Northern Star

• The Lockdown Left: socialists against society, Philip Cunliffe, spiked

• Anti-Social Socialism Club, Dustin Guastella, Damage

On utopia and individualism.

Renowned intellectual historian and critic Russell Jacoby joins us to talk about his lifetime of left critique. We discuss his early criticisms of psychology in light of the advance of therapy culture over the past 50 years, before moving on to the question of utopianism.

Will the breakdown of the neoliberal era lead to new utopian thinking? Does enthusiasm for a universal basic income signal serious thinking about the nature of work? Or are we still in a world where only dystopian thinking is permitted?

The episode concludes by discussing how all the talk of diversity today obscures the reality of increasing homogeneity. What does this say about the individual? Is the way children are brought up today killing the capacity for imagination and making us all conformists?

Part two of the interview, and our After Party, is available at patreon.com/bungacast 

 

Selected books by Jacoby:

• Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology (Beacon Press, 1975; Transaction, 1997)
• The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (Basic Books, 1987; new edition with new Introduction, Basic Books 2000)
• The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in the Age of Apathy (Basic Books, 1999)
• Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (Columbia University Press, 2005)
• On Diversity: The Eclipse of the Individual in a Global Era (Seven Stories Press, 2020)

Other recent articles and interviews:

• D’une pensée critique sous emprise – Un entretien avec Russell Jacoby, Comptoir
• A Climate of Fear, Russell Jacoby, Harper's
• The Takeover, Russell Jacoby, Tablet

On Turkey's elections.

Alp Kayserilioglu joins us to talk about a crucial election. Erdogan’s rule is seriously threatened for the first time, with high inflation biting into living standards. 

Who are the main candidates and do what they propose? Where does AKP draw its support from, and what has sustained its legitimacy? We discuss the supposed supposed culture war between conservative Islamic values and secular liberal ones. And ask how Erdogan has managed the economic crisis of the past few years. 

We conclude with Alp trying to place Erdogan in longer historical context: 2023 marks 100 years of the Turkish Republic. Does Erdogan represent a radical break, or nationalist continuity?

Readings:

• Turkey’s Statequake, Alp Kayserilioglu, Sidecar
• Goodbye Erdoğan?, Alp Kayserilioglu, Sidecar
• Alp's writing at Jacobin