PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy
The Pill Pod is hosted by a group of PhDs offering their irreverent (and unsolicited) takes on critical theory, philosophy, culture, and politics.
Episodes
This week we read Sloterdijk's 1999 "Rules for the Human Zoo" (https://web.stanford.edu/~mvr2j/docs/Elmauer.pdf) which was the source of immediate controversy and accusations of fascism and eugenics. We see what the hype was about.
We read the eminent The Gift (https://amzn.to/3NAenx3) by Marcel Mauss which is important to later theorists including Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques Derrida.
(originally recorded 08/24)
We read Durkheim's Elementary forms of Religious Life (https://amzn.to/4c1ubkB) and try to get a hold on a primordial concept, what for Claude Levi-Strauss exemplifies the floating signifier: it's MANA (originally recorded 08/24).
In this episode we cover Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason and why Philosophy needs to incorporate disrespect, sacrilege, and fart jokes if it is ever going to be relevant again.
Peter Sloterdijk wrote a philosophy bestseller in 1983 called The Critique of Cynical Reason. In this episode, we try to communicate what he means by cynical reason.
https://monoskop.org/images/7/7b/Sloterdijk_Peter_Critique_of_Cynical_Reason.pdf
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Read Samantha's essay and the instructors' comments here:
https://www.oklahoman....
A Signifying Chain (or symbolic chain, or signifying web) is a structuralist concept developed by Jacques Lacan and others ("The Agency of the Letter"; https://amzn.to/4p6wx6l).
Signifying chains structure discourses and we believe, explain the growing rift in conservative politics.
The Pill Pod reads Daniel Kolitz' anthropology of the gooners in Harper's Magazine https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/the-goon-squad-daniel-kolitz-porn-masturbation-loneliness/ and we find it's all connected man
Other sources cited included Lacan Seminar X, Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Baudrillard Transparency of Evil
We conclude our Lacan series with what Fink says is the desired end of Lacanian psychoanalysis. And, the ends of psychoanalysis coincide with some valuable insights for Lacan's theorizing beyond psychoanalysis.
Works cited are Fink's Lacanian Subject (ch. 5; https://amzn.to/4qz1Fgx) and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (ch. 10; https://amzn.to/4hAIKh5)...
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Sources:
Jacques Lacan - Seminar X, "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious", Ecrits
Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
This is Episode 4 of our series on Lacan. Find the other episodes Ad-Free at
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Sources:
Jacques Lacan - Seminar III
Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
"People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies" Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/cult...
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