Podcast
re:verb
Hosted by Calvin Pollak and Alex Helberg · EN
re:verb is a podcast about politics, culture, and language in action, featuring interviews and segments from scholars, writers, critics, and activists in the humanities, social sciences, and outside the academy.
15episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
E108: AI-Assisted War Crimes?
Mar 2301:28:38Tap to summarizeOn today's show, Alex and Calvin continue our discussion about the ongoing war in Iran, focusing on the literal use of artificial intelligence in the imperialist campaign being waged by the US and Israeli militaries. We analyze statements from major AI companies regarding their military contracts, unpacking the conflict between the “Department of War” and Anthropic, and contrasting this with the increasingly cozy relationship between OpenAI and the military. We argue, based on a close look at the language of both companies’ statements, that despite all the hype there isn’t much ideological gap between these two companies. While each claims to draw moral red lines against mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, they both rely heavily on technical jargon to justify their ongoing military partnerships and affirm numerous arbitrary assumptions about US nationalism and the non-universality of human rights. We explore how these corporate statements might function to protect the companies’ progressive brand identities, showing how they still accommodate US imperial objectives.Later in the episode, we shift our focus to Palantir and its Project Maven Smart System. We explore how the military’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, Cameron Stanley, presents the Maven system’s “targeting workflow” as an AI-based platform for detecting targets and suggesting convenient and efficient options for killing them. We talk about how this kind of interface gamifies the battlefield, and we argue that it severely dehumanizes the victims of military violence. We go on to discuss these AI-based systems in relation to the recent US military strike on the Minab girls school in Iran, in which at least 175 people were killed, including dozens of children. While the media and the military might refer to this tragic event as an error, we suggest that this specific language is a framing device that treats a moral failure as a simple technical glitch. We close by reporting on the results of an experiment in which we tested to what extent Anthropic’s Claude (which is integrated into the Maven Smart System) will acknowledge its own culpability in the Minab school strike when prompted. Spoiler alert: it will do so, but we are dubious about the ultimate significance of this given all chatbots’ tendency towards sycophancy. In the end, AI tools are designed and guided by human intentions, so we must hold the people who build and use these systems accountable for their devastating consequences.Texts Analyzed in this EpisodeAnthropic: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of WarTrump’s Truth Social post condemning AnthropicOpenAI: Our agreement with the Department of WarCameron Stanley, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer of the Department of War, statements on Palantir’s Project Maven Smart SystemCalvin’s chat transcript with Claude about its culpability for the Minab strikeWorks & Concepts Referenced in this EpisodeHaskins, C. (March 13, 2026). Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans. Wired. Pynchon, T. (2012). Mason & Dixon. Penguin.Ramkumar, A., Hagey, K., & Bergengruen, V. (February 15, 2026). Pentagon Used Anthropic's Claude in Maduro Venezuela Raid. Wired. Read, Max. (Feb 27, 2026). What Anthropic's fight with the Pentagon tells us about the politics of Silicon Valley. Read Max. An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)
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E107: No War With Iran 3: Rise of the Machines
Mar 600:56:11Tap to summarizeOn today’s show, Calvin and Alex return to a grim and perennial topic in American politics: US military aggression against Iran. We look at the rhetoric of key political figures in the catastrophe currently unfolding in the Middle East, examining recent statements and audio clips from US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. We also look at the official justifications that the White House provided for the recent strikes.In our conversation, we examine the audio artifacts and official documents that surround the newly launched military campaign, which the administratioin is Reddit-ly calling "Operation Epic Fury." We talk about how the Trump administration is using justifications that function a lot like generative AI, in that their arguments seem to be a synthesized remix of past right-wing and neoconservative rhetorics offering very little of substance to clarify the situation. We also explore the dissociation of concepts, a rhetorical strategy defined by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca as a way to separate a current idea from negative past associations. The administration uses this strategy in an effort to distance the current conflict from Bush-era "endless wars," while maintaining those wars’ bellicose premises. Furthermore, we track how the concept of "freedom" operates as an ideograph in administrative rhetoric. This term has historically been a potent political buzzword, but it increasingly seems to function as a brand identity rather than an actual measure of political capacity. Later, we look at how the mainstream Democratic leadership in Congress has responded with feckless and purely procedural objections, and we contrast these responses with the morally clear anti-war stances of progressive politicians, whose rhetorics prioritize human lives over abstract process complaints. Finally, we preview an upcoming discussion about the chilling intersection of artificial intelligence and foreign policy, focusing specifically on the recent partnership between OpenAI and the "Department of War”, enshrined on the eve of the current bombing campaign against Iran. Past episodes in this series:No War with Iran! (February 2020)No (More) War with Iran! (June 2025)Works & Concepts Referenced in this EpisodeMcGee, M. C. (1980). The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology. Quarterly journal of speech, 66(1), 1-16.Pecheux, M. (1975). Language, Semantics and Ideology. (Referencing the concept of the pre-constructed phrase).Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. (Referencing the dissociation of concepts). An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)
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E106: CMU Coup? (w/ Sheila Liming & Catherine Evans)
Jan 2200:49:43Tap to summarizeOn today’s show, Alex and Calvin sit down with the co-authors of a viral op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education regarding the controversial restructuring of the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University: Dr. Sheila Liming (Associate Professor of Writing & Publishing, Champlain College) and Catherine Evans (doctoral candidate in Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University). This article is particularly significant for Calvin and Alex, who also earned their PhDs in Rhetoric from the CMU English Department and had many cherished mentors and colleagues in the Literary and Cultural Studies (LCS) program. In the article, entitled "A Coup at Carnegie Mellon?," Sheila and Catherine examine the administrative pivot at CMU from LCS to a new degree in Computational Cultural Studies (CCS). Specifically, the authors analyze and interrogate the institutional rhetoric of innovation - a buzzword that puts a positive spin on undemocratic changes, such as dissolving or downsizing university programs, staff, and/or faculty.In our conversation, we talk with Catherine and Sheila about how values like "interdisciplinarity" and "innovation" are paradoxically being used to hollow out the humanities at Carnegie Mellon as they privilege a more narrow set of research priorities. They take us through the major findings in their article regarding the opaque administrative process that "froze out" faculty and student input, effectively replacing a program centered on the critique of power with one focused primarily on training with computational tools. We also discuss the broader implications of the "AI hype" cycle in higher education, the validity of arguments regarding job market prospects for humanities graduates, and the vital importance of studying literature and culture for their own sake - rather than as case studies for purportedly "neutral" data-driven methodologies.Sheila and Catherine’s co-authored article: Liming, S., & Evans, C. A. (2025). A Coup at Carnegie Mellon? The Chronicle of Higher Education.Works & Concepts Referenced in this Episode: England, J. & Purcell, R. (2020). Higher Ed’s Toothless Response to the Killing of George Floyd. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Gitelman, L. (2008). Always already new: Media, history, and the data of culture. MIT Press.Kirschenbaum, M. (2025). The U.S. of A.I. (Public lecture, Princeton University). Williams, J. J. (2016). Innovation for What? Dissent.An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)
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E105: Writing Assessment is not “Viewpoint Discrimination”
Dec 1601:00:35Tap to summarizeOn today’s show, Alex and Calvin cover a recent culture war controversy tailor-made for re:verb - the sanctioning of a University of Oklahoma Psychology instructor for giving a student a poor grade on their writing assignment. At issue in the controversy, however, is not just whether the student fully completed the assignment given its specifications and rubric, but rather her invocation of alleged “Christian” beliefs about the nature of sex and gender, as well as the elevation of the issue in right-wing media and politics by the conservative organization Turning Point USA. Is this an example of ideological and religious suppression at the hands of “Big Academia”? Or is it perhaps a more sinister media ploy on the part of the organization that elevated this issue to national prominence, to further demonize transgender and nonbinary people in American society?Calvin and Alex break down the timeline of how this controversy played out, analyzing the assignment itself, portions of the student essay (all made public by TPUSA), and the response of University of Oklahoma administrators to the allegations of bias against the student. We contextualize these artifacts with our knowledge and experience in writing classrooms, asking if better assignment design could have pre-empted this issue entirely, or if the entire event would have been weaponized against a transgender instructor regardless. We also show how this controversy is part of a broader phenomenon, bringing in research from scholars who view organizations like TPUSA through the lens of surveillance culture: turning students into “watchdogs” in classrooms with alleged “liberal bias,” publicizing the names and faces of university faculty across national media, and providing red meat for a base of extreme supporters who make threats against colleges and their faculty. We conclude with some ways forward for faculty and others who face threats from these organizations, as well as the implications of this kind of surveillance culture for writing pedagogy more broadly.Key Reference MaterialAssignment Guidelines & Rubric:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vgjTfejwWz7Sw7voi57kwaVQAql3doSe/view Article referenced in assignment guidelines:Jennifer A. Jewell & Christia Spears Brown - “Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence” in Social Development Samantha Fulnecky’s full essay:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qxnVi_yaJ-Fb9u1-A1Vy2vQT3Aiw8Nix/view Instructor’s Comments on the Essay:https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/education/2025/11/25/ou-oklahoma-samantha-fulnecky-read-essay-gender-bible/87463858007/ University of Oklahoma Official Statement on the Issue:https://x.com/UofOklahoma/status/1995186884704690262 Works and Concepts Cited in this EpisodeAAUP Guidelines on Targeted Harassment of Faculty: https://www.aaup.org/issues-higher-education/political-attacks-higher-ed/targeted-harassment-faculty Faculty First Responders Info on TPUSA: https://facultyfirstresponders.com/tpusa/ McCarthy, S. & Kamola, I. (2022). Sensationalized surveillance: Campus reform and the targeted harassment of faculty. New Political Science, 44(2): pp. 227-247. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2021.1996837 An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)
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E104: “Shoveling cultural snow,” or: Season’s greetings from AI Slop Summer
Jul 1601:14:53Tap to summarizeOn today's show, Alex and Calvin continue their series on “AI” and public discourse, focusing this time on the increasing proliferation of AI applications in government writing, policy, and social media. We characterize the second Trump administration as the "first totally post-AI presidency," which has adopted the "dumbest, most unreflective, most uncritical approach" to AI's use in communication, research, and analysis. Throughout the show, we emphasize how AI technologies are themselves rhetorical artifacts at the same time as they so often produce “bad” rhetoric, reflecting the intentions, values, and presuppositions of their creators, as well as the inherent biases of their training data and text generation models. This often results in an entry-level, overly dense writing style - often referred to as "slop" - which is almost written not to be read, but rather to fill space.We explore several concerning examples of AI's uncritical adoption by the secondTrump administration and their acolytes in the tech world. Early executive orders exhibited AI-generated formatting errors and formulaic, generic language, demonstrating a context-blind style that could lead to legal problems and erode public trust. Furthermore, the "MAHA Report" from the Office of Health and Human Services was found to fabricate studies and misrepresent findings, reflecting how large language models are "sycophantic," and can reinforce existing (often false) beliefs. Our discussion also covers Palantir's "Foundry" product, which aims to combine diverse government datasets, raising significant privacy and political concerns, especially given the political leanings of Palantir’s founders. Finally, we examine xAI’s Grok chatbot (run by Elon Musk), which illustrates how tech elites can exert incredible political power through direct interventions in AI tools’ system prompts - which in recent months has led Grok to parrot conspiracy theories and make explicit antisemitic remarks on the public feeds of X/Twitter.Ultimately, our analyses emphasizes - once again - that these so-called “AI” technologies are not neutral; they are, in the words of Matteo Pasquinelli, "crystallization[s] of a productive social process" that "reinforce the power structure that underlies [them]," perpetuating existing inequalities. Understanding these mechanisms and engaging in what Pasquinelli terms "de-connectionism" - undoing the social and economic fabric constituting these systems - is essential for critiquing the structural factors and power dynamics that AI reproduces in public discourse.Have any questions or concerns about this episode? Reach out to our new custom-tuned chatbot, @Bakh_reverb on X/Twitter!Examples Analyzed in this Episode:Trump Admin Accused of Using AI to Draft Executive Ordershttps://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-admin-accused-using-ai-191117579.htmlEryk Salvaggio - “Musk, AI, and the Weaponization of ‘Administrative Error’” https://www.techpolicy.press/musk-ai-and-the-weaponization-of-administrative-error/ Emily Kennard & Margaret Manto (NOTUS) - “The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist” - https://archive.ph/WVIrT Sheera Frenkel & Aaron Krolik (NYT) - “Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.htmlDavid Klepper - “Gabbard says AI is speeding up intel work, including the release of the JFK assassination files” https://apnews.com/article/gabbard-trump-ai-amazon-intelligence-beca4c4e25581e52de5343244e995e78Miles Klee - “Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot Goes Full Nazi, Calls Itself ‘MechaHitler’” - https://archive.ph/SdoJn Works & Concepts Cited in this Episode:Bakhtin, M. M. (2010). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. University of Texas Press.Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code (1st ed.). Polity.Bender, E. M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S. (2021, March). On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big?🦜. In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM conference on fairness, accountability, and transparency (pp. 610-623).Our previous episode with Dr. Bender about her workBurke, K. (1984). Permanence and change: An anatomy of purpose. Univ of California Press.Burke, K. (1965). Terministic screens. In Proceedings of the American Catholic philosophical association (Vol. 39, pp. 87-102).DeLuca, L. S., Reinhart, A., Weinberg, G., Laudenbach, M., Miller, S., & Brown, D. W. (2025). Developing Students’ Statistical Expertise Through Writing in the Age of AI. Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education, 1-13.Haggerty, K. D., & Ericson, R. V. (2017). The surveillant assemblage. Surveillance, crime and social control, 61-78.Hill, K. (2025, 13 June). “They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.” The New York Times.Markey, B., Brown, D. W., Laudenbach, M., & Kohler, A. (2024). Dense and disconnected: Analyzing the sedimented style of ChatGPT-generated text at scale. Written Communication, 41(4), 571-600.Miller, C. R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly journal of speech, 70(2), 151-167.Murakami, H. (1994). Dance dance dance : a novel (1st ed.). Kodansha International.Pasquinelli, M. (2023). The eye of the master: A social history of artificial intelligence. Verso Books.Reinhart, A., Markey, B., Laudenbach, M., Pantusen, K., Yurko, R., Weinberg, G., & Brown, D. W. (2025). Do LLMs write like humans? Variation in grammatical and rhetorical styles. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(8), e2422455122.An accessible transcript for this episode can be found here (via Descript)
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E103: No (More) War with Iran!
Jun 2701:18:35Tap to summarizeIn this episode – recorded prior to Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel – Calvin and Alex unpack the alarming reality of US strikes on Iran, recently announced by President Trump on June 21, and the ensuing escalation of tensions between the US, Israel, and Iran. We situate these recent events within decades of neoconservative influence and prior escalations, including the 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani by US Forces (which we covered back in Episode 31), as well as Israel’s “pre-emptive” strikes against Iran in 2024 and earlier in June 2025.We historicize the current conflict by highlighting the success of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) in preventing escalation, contrasting it with Trump's abandonment and the Democrats' failure to defend it, and debunk media narratives about Iran's nuclear ambitions, confirming Iran's compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We then dissect the propagandistic pro-war rhetoric that has been employed most recently, such as Trump's bizarre Truth Social posts announcing the "very successful attack," and exposing the dangerous slippages between US and Israeli foreign policy, evidenced by Senator Ted Cruz's admissions on a recent episode of Tucker Carlson’s show.Finally, drawing on rhetorical scholars such as Jeffrey Tulis and Gordon Mitchell, we explore the libidinal urges driving contemporary presidential rhetoric and US war policy, and how intelligence is manipulated through "Team B intelligence coups," raising concerns about reliance on foreign intelligence like the Mossad. We conclude with a resolute call (echoing our earlier episode) for "No war with Iran," urging public dissent against these increasingly reckless and dangerous decisions.Works and concepts cited in this episode:Curtis, A. (2002). The Century of the Self. London, UK: BBC Four.Daly, C. (2017). How Woodrow Wilson’s Propaganda Machine Changed American Journalism. Smithsonian Magazine. Esfandiari, S. (2020, 6 Jan.). Iran can't hit back over Soleimani's killing because America has only fictional heroes like SpongeBob SquarePants, a prominent cleric said. Business Insider.Flanagan, J. C. (2004). Woodrow Wilson's" Rhetorical Restructuring": The Transformation of the American Self and the Construction of the German Enemy. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 7(2), 115-148.Haar, R. (2010). Explaining George W. Bush's adoption of the Neoconservative agenda after 9/11. Politics & Policy, 38(5), 965-990.IAEA Director General. (2024, 19 Nov.). Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015). [IAEA report raising concerns about Iran’s stockpile of “60% enriched” uranium]Mitchell, G. R. (2006). Team B intelligence coups. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 92(2), 144-173.Oddo, J. (2014). Intertextuality and the 24-hour news cycle: A day in the rhetorical life of Colin Powell's UN address. Michigan State University Press.Perelman, C. & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver. University of Notre Dame Press.Porter, G. (2014, 16 Oct.). When the Ayatollah said no to nukes. Foreign Policy.Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon.Tulis, J. K. (1987, 2017). The Rhetorical Presidency. Princeton University Press.
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E102: Escape from the University of the Cancelled
May 3001:14:36Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Alex and Calvin return to a favorite hobby horse: the University of Austin (UATX). First discussed back in episode 62, this ultra-conservative "university concept" is still not accredited and has no undergraduate degrees planned until at least 2028-2031. In that previous episode, we described UATX variously as right-wing academia’s answer to the Fyre Festival and a pitch deck/PowerPoint scam masquerading as an education; this time, we call it a fast-casual university concept (Chipotle for higher ed). We catch up with the myriad ways that UATX continues to struggle under the weight of its own internal contradictions, while occasionally benefitting from being confused for UT Austin (home of some of our favorite previous guests, like Scott Graham and Karma Chávez).After taking stock of US free speech generally in the age of seemingly intractable US-led conflicts in the Middle East and the criminalization of student peace activism, we examine a Quillette article from Ellie Avishai asking if UATX is betraying its founding principles. As Avishai explains, her UATX research center was terminated in response to her posting a rather benign (and ideologically nuanced) LinkedIn post about DEI. We discuss how UATX's claims of championing academic freedom and viewpoint diversity necessarily conflict with its increasingly extreme anti-woke conservative agenda. Given that it is bankrolled by dark money funders and figures connected to corporate interests and political power like Harlan Crow and Joe Lonsdale, the institution appears more dedicated to fortifying right-wing ideas and providing a filter bubble than fostering genuine free inquiry. This makes it particularly ironic that its corporate doublespeak response to Avishai's termination was to use language like "wind up Mill" and "restructure." In these ways, UATX seems to combine the worst of mainstream academia (neoliberal austerity measures justified through corporate doublespeak) with new heights of conservative radicalism. Drawing on Noah Rawlings' piece in The New Inquiry, we peek into the "Forbidden Courses" summer program held at Harlan Crow's Old Parkland office complex in Dallas, where figures like Peter Boghossian and Katie Roiphe hold court. What does it mean for a university to exist primarily as a "safe space" isolating students from opposition, or worse, a "money and influence laundering operation for some of the most abhorrent ideas" (as Alex calls it)? We conclude that despite the real structural flaws in mainstream academia, the pursuit of knowledge and evidence-based argumentation is still vital in higher ed, but it’s something that UATX seems fundamentally opposed to.Articles Analyzed in this Episode“Is the University Of Austin Betraying Its Founding Principles?” by Ellie Avishai (in Quillette)“An American Education: Notes from UATX” - Noah Rawlings (in The New Inquiry)Previous Episodes ReferencedE62: re:joinder - The University of the CancelledWorks and Concepts CitedVan Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & society, 4(2), 249-283.
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E101: Discourse & Manipulation pt. 4 - The Economic Assumptions of "Liberation Day"
May 8, 202501:03:19Tap to summarizeOn today’s show, Alex and Calvin – briefly rebranded as Kenneth Jerke and Mikhail Shocktin, co-hosts of "Shock Docs" – explore the state of rhetorical manipulation in the context of the second Trump presidency. We discuss the general ineptitude of the conservative movement occupying the White House and the unsettling lack of a powerful counter-rhetoric in the Democratic opposition, before turning to analyze Trump's tariff policy. We discuss how the tariff conversation is a particularly baffling current example in which raw power seems to be operating without legitimation through traditional rhetorical norms.Applying a Critical Discourse Studies lens to understand this moment, we revisit concepts like dialogicality from Mikhail Bakhtin, explaining how discourse can be evaluated based on whether it opens up difference (ie. to what extent it is dialogical) or suppresses difference. We introduce assumptions analysis from Norman Fairclough, which examines what a writer/speaker takes for granted as truth (existential, propositional, and values assumptions) and assumptions can reduce dialogical space for manipulative purposes. As a case study, we analyze an article by left-punching journalist Batya Ungar Sargon titled "Liberation Day puts Main Street ahead of Wall Street" (published in Commonplace). We analyze the ways that Ungar Sargon’s manipulative assumptions reframe Trump's tariffs as beneficial for the American worker by ignoring corporate interests and tax policy, misrepresenting political history, and erasing important debates over national security and border policy issues. We conclude with a reminder that it’s always better to be a Mikhail Shocktin than a Kenneth Jerke. Texts Analyzed in this EpisodeBatya Ungar Sargon - “Liberation Day puts main street ahead of Wall Street” (published in Commonplace)Works Referenced in this EpisodeFairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse (Vol. 270). London: Routledge.Relevant Past EpisodesDiscourse and Manipulation, Pt. 3Discourse and Manipulation, Pt. 2Discourse and Manipulation, Pt. 1re:blurb - Conceptual Metaphorre:blurb - Dialogicalityre:blurb - IdeographsAn accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)Episode Image Description: Top text: "re:verb"; Left-center image includes a picture of Critical Discourse scholar Norman Fairclough with a laser beam shooting out of his left eye towards right center image; Right-center image is offset, includes a screenshot of an article titled "Liberation Day Puts Main Street Ahead of Wall Street"; Bottom text: "Discourse & Manipulation pt. 4 - The Economic Assumptions of "Liberation Day""
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E100: Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans (w/ Dr. Corinne M. Sugino)
Apr 21, 202501:06:33Tap to summarizeToday’s episode features our rich conversation with Dr. Corinne Mitsuye Sugino, Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Center for Ethnic Studies at The Ohio State University, about her compelling new book, Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans. On the show, Alex and Calvin are joined by guest co-host Dr. Sarah Hae-In Idzik to talk with Corinne about her multifaceted analyses of the role of Asian American racialization in the construction of the concept of the human. We delve into Corinne’s concept of "racial allegory," which illuminates how media and institutional narratives mobilize categories of difference, including Asian Americans, to stabilize the idea of "Western man".Our discussion touches upon the significance of the title Making the Human, unpacking how Asian American racialization and gendering contribute to the social formulation of the human. We explore key concepts such as the understanding of "Western man" drawn from Black Studies scholarship, while also examining the crucial relationship that Corinne charts between anti-Asian racism and anti-Blackness within communication and rhetoric studies. Corinne also explains how she applies the notion of racial allegory to a case study on Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, revealing how anti-racist discourse can be used to uphold racial hierarchies, and the strategic role of the victimized Asian student trope in this context. Furthermore, we analyze Corinne’s intercontextual reading of the film Crazy Rich Asians alongside Daniel Patrick Moynihan's “The Negro Family” report, exploring allegories of family and mothering and the underlying racial narratives at play. Our discussion also considers the significance of animacy and the inhuman in relation to the boundaries of the human, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racialization of Asian Americans as potential disease carriers. Finally, we reflect upon Corinne’s nuanced perspective on the term "Asian American" itself, considering its complexities and its potential as a resource for undoing categories and fostering coalition.Corinne Mitsuye Sugino’s Making the Human: Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans is available now from Rutgers University Press.Works and Concepts Referenced in this Episode:Chen, M. Y. (2012). Animacies: Biopolitics, racial mattering, and queer affect. Duke University Press.Jackson, Z. I. (2020). Becoming human: Matter and meaning in an antiblack world. New York University Press.Johnson, J. (2016). “A man’s mouth is his castle”: The midcentury fluoridation controversy and the visceral public. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 102(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2015.1135506Maraj, L. M. (2020). Anti-racist campus rhetorics. Utah State Press.Molina, N. (2014). How race is made in America: Immigration, citizenship, and the historical power of racial scripts. Univ of California Press.Moynihan, D. P. (1965). The Negro family, a case for national action. United States Department of Labor, Office of Policy Planning and Research.Spillers, H. J. (1987). Mama's baby, papa's maybe: An American grammar book. diacritics, 17(2), 65-81.Wynter, S. (1994). “ ‘No humans involved’: An open letter to my colleagues.” Forum N.H.I.: Knowledge for the 21st Century, 1(1), 1–17.Wynter, S. (2003). “Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—An argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337.Wynter, S., & McKittrick, K. (2015). “Unparalleled catastrophe for our species? Or, to give humanness a different future: Conversations.” In K. McKittrick (Ed.), Sylvia Wynter: On being human as praxis (pp. 9–89). Duke University Press.da Silva, D. F. (2007). Toward a global idea of race. University of Minnesota Press.An accessible transcript for this episode can be found here (via Descript)
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E99: Black Iconoclasm in Post/Ferguson America (w/ Dr. Charles Athanasopoulos)
Mar 28, 202501:31:01Tap to summarizeToday’s episode features a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Charles Athanasopoulos, Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies & English at The Ohio State University, about his groundbreaking new book, Black Iconoclasm: Public Symbols, Racial Progress, and Post/Ferguson America. On the show, Alex and Calvin talk with Charles about the intricate relationship he charts between Black freedom struggles, the power of icons (and their destruction), and the complex liminalities of social change in contemporary America. We explore Charles’s fresh analysis using his concept of "Black iconoclasm" as a guide - a process of Black radical discernment, which beckons us to constantly questioning established norms and the received wisdom of black liberation and social change more broadly.Our discussion touches upon the personal backdrop that informed Athanasopoulos's work, particularly his religious upbringing, the emergence and mainstreaming of the Black Lives Matter movement during his time as an undergraduate, and some of his observations of the 2020 BLM protests as a graduate student in Pittsburgh. We unpack key concepts from Black Iconoclasm, such as the "twilight of the icons," where the lines between image-making and image-breaking blur. We also explore his insightful application of the work of Frantz Fanon in communication studies, exploring the idea of "Fanonian slips" as accidental rhetorical slippages that reveal deeper investments in racial iconography, using examples like comments from political figures like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, as well as Charles’s own experiences. We also examine the visual rhetoric of a BLM mural in Pittsburgh through the lens of Édouard Glissant's "poetics of visual relation," considering the transformations and defacements the mural underwent, and its broader symbolic underpinnings. We conclude by hearing the inspiration behind Charles’s creative story of “Black Icarus” that interweaves his chapters, reflecting upon his choice to include an innovative mythopoetic narrative as part of his scholarly work.Charles Athanasopolous’s Black Iconoclasm: Public Symbols, Racial Progress, and Post/Ferguson America is available now as a free E-Book from Palgrave Macmillan (via SpringerLink)Works and Concepts Cited in this EpisodeBurke, Kenneth. 1970. The rhetoric of religion. City: University of California Press.Fanon, Frantz. 2018. Alienation and freedom. Ed. Jean Khalfa and Robert J.C. Young. Trans. Steven Corcoran. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black skin, white masks. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press.Fanon, Frantz. 1967. The wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. London and New York: Penguin Books.Glissant, Édouard. 1997. Poetics of relation. Lansing: Michigan State University Press.Hartman, S. V. (1997). Scenes of subjection : terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century America. Oxford University Press.Hartman, S. (2008). Venus in two acts. Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 12(2), 1-14.Maraj, Louis M. 2020. Black or right: Anti/racist campus rhetorics. Logan: Utah State Press.Matheson, C. L. (2019). The instance of the letter in the unconscious, or reason since Freud. In Reading Lacan's Écrits: From ‘The Freudian Thing’to'Remarks on Daniel Lagache' (pp. 131-162). Routledge.Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. Twilight of the idols. Trans. Richard Polt. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.Spillers, H. J. (2003). Black, white, and in color: Essays on American literature and culture. University of Chicago Press..An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)
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