Diet Soap Update: censorship joyce literature masturbation modernism prurient roth smut
by douglaslain
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Diet Soap Podcast #178: Samuel Roth, Infamous Modernist
The guest this week is Jay Gertzman and we discuss his book Samuel Roth, Infamous Modernist. Samuel Roth was a literary pirate, a purveyor of smut, and a champion of high modernism. For instance Roth published the dirty bits from James Joyce’s Ulysses as a serial in his literary journal Two Worlds Monthly.
It’s Wednesday, April 24th, 2013. I’m Douglas Lain the host of the podcast, and this week the secret word is “masturbation” and here’s an excerpt from Samuel Roth on the subject.
Diet Soap relies on donations, but rather than make my usual plea for help through paypal I’m actually going to tell you to hold off. I’m about to run a Kickstarter campaign to fund a US Diet Soap tour under the banner “Think the Impossible.” In fact, I just finished editing the Kickstarter video a few days ago and if you’d like to watch the video all you need do to get a sneak peek is join the Diet Soap International Facebook group. It’s much more an exploration of the ideas of Henri Lefebvre through a decidedly Hegelian lens than it is a straight forward call for funds, so I encourage everyone who is listening to check it out. Also, if you like Diet Soap but can’t afford a donation, why not share the podcast with a friend or write a review of the show on iTunes.
There is some smut in this episode of Diet Soap. For example, at the end, you’ll hear a bit of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. You’ll hear a bit more than this:
…shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
The music you’re listening to right now is an instrumental cover of the Violent Femmes Blister in The Sun as covered by the Vitamin String Quartet but in just a moment you’ll be listening to Gertzman and I discuss Samuel Roth, Infamous Modernist.
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Diet Soap Update: conspirators of pleasure erotica fetish Hegel pleasure self-consciousness sex surrealism svankmajer
by douglaslain
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Diet Soap Podcast #177: Hegel’s Desire
This week I discuss Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit with my lovely wife Miriam. We take on the section entitled Pleasure and Necessity and discuss how Jan Svankmajer’s film Conspirators of Pleasure seems to enact Hegel’s critique.
Diet Soap relies on donations and if you’d like to donate you can find the paypal buttons on douglaslain.com and at the podomatic page for Diet Soap. On the other hand, in the next few weeks I’ll be starting a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund a Diet Soap tour that called “Think the Impossible!” You can get more information by following me on Facebook, tweeting me on twitter, putting me in a Google Plus circles, or by gassing me, kidnapping me, transporting me to a village on a mysterious island, interrogating me mercilessly, and taking away my name and leaving me with only a number.
Here’s a quick explanation of Hegel and Self-Conscious desire:
Our self-consciousness, this way of seeing or perceiving, seeks an object as something alien from itself, it seeks to enjoy this object and in enjoying it to understand the distinction between the self-consciousness and its object as something that belongs to self-consciousness. We cease to live for ourselves, but in seeking to enjoy our separation from the world, we lose ourselves to this universal category of separation.
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Diet Soap Update: gene siskel memetics memorial philosophy rene girard rivalry roger ebert siskel and ebert
by douglaslain
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Diet Soap Podcast #176: Siskel and Ebert and Desire
The guest this week the University lecturer and no good commie C Derick Varn. Varn and I discuss the ideas of the French historian, literary critic, and philosopher Rene Girard while also taking Siskel and Ebert as our subjects.
Diet Soap relies on donations and if you’d like to donate you can find the paypal buttons on douglaslain.com and at the podomatic page for Diet Soap. In the next month I’ll be starting a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund a Diet Soap tour that I plan to call “Think the Impossible!” but that shouldn’t stop you from kicking in a fiver or a tener now.
Per wikipedia Rene Girard was:
a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science. His work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy. He is the author of nearly thirty books (see below), in which he developed the ideas of:
mimetic desire: all of our desires are borrowed from other people;
mimetic rivalry: all conflict originates in mimetic desire;
the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and the foundation of human culture, and religion was necessary in human evolution to control the violence that can come from mimetic rivalry;
the Bible reveals the three previous ideas and denounces the scapegoat mechanism.
Siskel and Ebert, on the other hand, were:
…two film critics [who] shared their opinions of newly released films. Their program aired under various names. Its original hosts were Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and WLS-TV and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.
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Diet Soap Update: art art music asymmetry music magazine avant garde Emmanuelle-Gibello Ernst Krenek john cage listening luc ferrari Michael Karman musique concrete new music philosophy
by douglaslain
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Diet Soap Podcast #175: How to Listen to the New
The guest this week Michael Karman. Karman is the editor of Asymmetry Music Magazine, a magazine dedicated to exposing the general public to new and interesting art music, and we discuss how to listen, the problem of tradition, concrete music, John Cage, Coca-Cola bottles and more.
The music and sound in this episode includes A String Quartet playing Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga herself only mashed up, reversed, and filtered, an excerpt of Michael Rodd from the BBC 1979 documentary “The New Sound of Music,” Emmanuelle-Gibello’s “Crashtest 10,” Ernst Krenek’s “Sinfonia no. 4″, John Cage talking about Coca-Cola bottles, and Luc Ferrari’s “Exploitation of Concepts.”
I want to thank Jacob L, Andrew M, Tracy V, Ted F, and John L who are regular subscribers to the podcast. I also want to thank Terry T, Andrew M (a second time), Adrien S, and Babafemi M for their very generous one time donations. If you’d like to donate you can find the paypal buttons on douglaslain.com and at the podomatic page for Diet Soap. And in the next two months I’ll be starting a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund a Diet Soap tour that I plan to call “Think the Impossible!”
The music you’re listening to right now is Paul’s Dance by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, but in just a moment you’ll be listening to Michael Karman and I discuss How to Listen to the New.
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