On Conclave.

In our final episode of the year, we debate Edgar Berger's new film about a Papal election, featuring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci as Cardinals and Isabella Rossellini as a nun.

• Is the film about an alien, abstruse process – the conclave – or is it about something familiar and earthly? Is the film about the sacred or the profane? About temporal or holy power?

• What does it say about process and neutrality, in times of lawfare and contested elections?

• ⁠Why is there so much film and TV about the Pope? What is it that appeals today about Papal authority?

• The film features a good liberal, a corrupt moderate, a nasty reactionary, a tainted idpol candiate (a homophobic African) – do these politics matter? Why so crude?

• ⁠Is it mere Oscar bait?

On Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity

[For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Marc Augé's much-referenced 1992 work on 'non-places': airports, shopping malls, corporate hotels, motorways... We discuss:

• Are non-places proliferating, and what would this mean for society and politics?

• Are non-places the spatial accompaniment to post-politics, to the foreclosure of political contestation?

• Is the distinction between non-places and places/spaces useful?

• Is there anything to the notion of a hyper- or super-modernity?

• Is Augé too deterministic? Does he miss how non-places can be places for culture or politics?

Links:

• 2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

On immediacy, representation, and anti-politics.

Anna Kornbluh, professor of English and author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism talks to Alex about the cultural, political, and economic changes she refers to as 'immediacy'. We discuss:

• Is 'immediacy' just a vibe, or is vibe itself non-mediated?

• How does anti-representation in film, TV and books relate to anti-representation in politics?

• And can we relate culture immediacy to the 'material base'?

• How do Fleabag, Uncut Gems, and the turn to memoirs and autofiction exemplify immediacy?

• Why does self-disclosure fit so well with the data economy?

• In what way is contemporary anti-theory nihilistic and apologetic?

• How does the style of immediacy relate to Frederic Jameson's understanding of postmodernism?

• Is the desire to put everything private on show a response to alienation?

• And is the professionalisation of 'theory' a problem or solution?

Links:

• Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Anna Kornbluh, Verso

• Has culture become pure vibe?, Anna Kornbluh, Spike Art Magazine

• The Theory of Immediacy or the Immediacy of Theory?, Jensen Suther, Nonsite

• Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves, Todd McGowan, Repeater

On your questions, comments & criticisms.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We're back with a final letters to the editor episode of 2024 in which we discuss:

• the universalisation of 'anti-fascism' as a kind of politics

• whether there are any actual 'family abolitionists' out there

• humanitarian intervention in Palestine

• the hard and less hard facts of US imperial decline

• the legitimacy of 'existential' politics

• whether anti-corruption politics are good, actually

• and why Phil loves Hillary

On Taiwan, semiconductors, and war.

[Full episode for subscribers only]

James Lin, Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington at Seattle, talks to Phil about Taiwanese politics and the country's place in the world, in terms of the global economy and Sino-American geopolitical rivalry. We talk about Taiwanese history and politics, from Japanese occupation and colonisation across the Cold War, to the present day, including: 

• Taiwanese politics in the shadow of the geopolitical crisis

• The paradox of political divergence and economic convergence between China and Taiwan since the 1980s

• How did Taiwan corner the market for manufacturing computer chips? 

• How successful is the ongoing US reshoring of chip production?

• Will there be a Marco Rubio/Elon Musk divide on China in the Trump White House? 

• How might a war over Taiwan play out? 

Links:

• In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan, James Lin, UC Press

• What Works in Taiwan Doesn’t Always in Arizona, a Chipmaking Giant Learns, John Liu, NY Times

• Will Trump take the Musk path or the Rubio path on Taiwan?, Lev Nachman, Nikkei Asia

On Mothers and the institution of the family.

We're happy to bring you the recording of the launch event for the third issue of Damage magazine, with whom we're partnered. George and Alex were present for the event as part of a sequence of recordings on the future of place that will be released as a docu-series in the New Year.

For now, here is regular contributor Catherine Liu and friend of the pod Dustin Guastella debating the family to a packed-out bookstore at Moma's PS1 in Queens, NY.

On the End of History and Europe.

[For full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

LSE professor Mike Wilkinson talks to Phil and Alex about how the history of European integration fits with constitutional theories and ideas of sovereignty. We discuss: 

• In what way are the conspiracy theories about the EU true?

• What are the origins of European integration in the inter-war crisis?

• How did European integration tie into the history of ideas and development of 20th century legal history?

• How far does European integration overlap with counter-revolutionary theories and ideas?

• And who is the Last European? 

Links:

• Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe, Michael Wilkinson

• Political Constitutionalism in Europe Revisited, Michael Wilkinson, Journal of Law and Society

• The Rise and Fall of World Constitutionalism, Michael Wilkinson, Verfassungsblog

On the maelstrom of the metropolis.

[Full episode only available to subscribers. Join at patreon.com/bungacast]

We kick of the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Georg Simmel's short essay "Metropolis and Mental Life" and Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air (chapter 5, on New York).

• How does Simmel relate the metropolitan condition to a historical passage from the 18th century to the 19th?

• Is city life intellectual and blasé, versus small town emotionality?

• Is narcissism built into modernity? Is there an aristocratic individualist revolt in evidence today?

• Do we need places to hang out in before we can do political organising?

• Are we nostalgic for top-down modernisation?

Readings:

• "Metropolis and Mental Life"

• All That Is Solid Melts into Air (chapter 5, on New York)

On the military decline of the American empire.

[Patreon Exclusive]

The Swedish writer Malcom Kyeyune talks to Phil about what happens to the evil empire when the stormtroopers can’t shoot straight and the empire isn’t producing enough star destroyers. They discuss:

• What happens to international politics in a world of new geopolitical rivalries? 

• How does American industrial decline affect US military capacity and strength? 

• Why is America unable to produce enough ships? 

• Why is the US unable to do conscription anymore? 

• Who would win in a showdown between China and America? 

Links:

• America will have to dodge the draft, Malcom Kyeyune, UnHerd

• The Houthis now rule the Red Sea, Malcom Kyeyune, UnHerd

• The West can no longer make war, Malcom Kyeyune, New Statesman

• The American Empire’s Burning Peripheries, Malcom Kyeyune, Compact

• /240/ Populist Interventions: Örebro Party ft. Malcolm Kyeyune | Bungacast

• Facing war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the US looks feeble. But is it just an act?, Adam Tooze, The Guardian

On pro-family politics, and the US election and labour.

[Patreon Exclusive - in association with Damage magazine]

Dustin Guastella talks to Phil and Alex about what the election of Trump will mean for US labour organisations. We then move on to Dustin's proposal for progressive pro-family policies.

• What actually is "the family" today? 

• Social democrats are proud of policies but wary of encouraging family growth. Why?

• What would pro-family policies look like, what would they do, and what might their negative effects be?

• Is the family not a pillar for the reproduction of authoritarian norms?

• How do we explain the fertility crisis in global terms?

• How do we confront the growing marketisation of everything?

Links:

• Damage issue #3 - MOTHERS - Bungacast subscribers get free access

• NY live event: issue launch - Family Trouble

On Trump's return and the end of the End of History (still!)

Historian and Jacobin contributing editor Matt Karp joins us to extract the true meaning of the US election. We discuss:

• How Trump's victory explodes so many Democrat assumptions about demography and identity

• How this election re-writes the past ten years' history

• Whether Trump still retains an anti-political or anti-establishment charge

• If the Democrats are preponderant in leading sectors of the knowledge economy, is this a political rejection of its assumptions?

• How to place this election in the sweep of the global anti-incumbency wave

• What the relationship is between inflation, labour and legitimacy

Links:

• Power Lines, Matt Karp, Harper's

• It’s Happening Again, Matt Karp, Jacobin

• Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbents, John Burn-Murdoch, FT

• /262/ The Useless Past ft. Matt Karp

• /447/ Brunch Back Better ft. Ryan Zickgraf & Amber A'Lee Frost

• /445/ How I Hacked the US Election ft. Alex Gourevitch