Excerpt: /179/ The Hobbyist Left ft. David Swift
Readings:
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A Left For Itself, David Swift, Zer0 Books
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How the Left lost all purpose, James Bloodworth, Unherd
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How not to be a white anti-racist, David Swift, Unherd
Game writer & designer Jonas Kyratzes joins us to talk about the art of games, the culture of gaming, the gamification of society, and the identity politics of gamer culture. How far has Jonas’ own philosophy influenced his writing for games, such as “The Talos Principle”? We also talk politics in both Greece, focusing on Syriza failure. Plus, could Bunga co-host Philip Cunliffe’s book ‘Lenin Lives!’ ever be made into a game?
Readings:
Full episode for subscribers only. Go to patreon.com/bungacast
We start off by discussing the beheading of a French teacher for having shown his pupils the Mohammed cartoons in a class on free speech. Then we discuss your points, questions and criticisms from September and October (on class politics, antifa, Covid, unemployment and more). Finally, 25 minutes of bonus content from our chat with Sontag biographer Benjamin Moser on the 1619 Project, identity politics, literature, and cosmopolitanism and empire.
For the rest of the original episode with Moser, that's number 147: Podbean / Patreon
On modernism and its end.
We're joined by 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser to discuss the tensions between hating your national culture and wanting to leave it behind, and the effacement of national culture by postmodern homogenisation.
We talk about his biography of Susan Sontag, plus a range of other questions: Brazil, USA, literature, architecture, sex, imperialism, Freud, the image and representation, and contemporary wokeness.
Moser's Books:
On Applied Ballardianism.
Is it J.G. Ballard's world? Bunga talks Ballard with Simon Sellars, author of a new book on the great British sci-fi novelist J.G. Ballard. Urban decay, social breakdown, consumerism as social control and the Interzone.
Opening passage is taken from Ballard's 2000 novel 'Super-Cannes'.
Reading:
Applied Ballardianism, Simon Sellars, Urbanomic
Subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast
On drugs and mental health.
In part two, we chat about recreational drugs and mental states in a Hollywood bar with friends of the podcast, Amber A'Lee Frost and Alex Gendler. But mostly, we delve deeper into capitalism and depression with the 'States of Wellness' group at UC Irvine (Catherine Liu, Thomas Williams, Michael Mahoney, Benjamin Kruger-Robins).
#CaliBunga is a special multipart series on the Californian Ideology: the seemingly paradoxical hybrid of New Left and New Right ideas - the synthesis of hippies with yuppies, all tied together with the promise that technology might liberate us.
Thanks to UC Irvine School of Humanities for sponsoring this series.
On the 30 years since 1989.
For our 100th episode, we invited our favourite guests to reflect on the question: “What one event, personal or political, most captures for you the past thirty years, since 1989?”
Are we still living in the death throes of the 20th century, or is something new emerging?
Guests:
Subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast
Special multipart series on the Californian Ideology: the seemingly paradoxical hybrid of New Left and New Right ideas - the synthesis of hippies with yuppies, all tied together with the promise that technology might liberate us.
In part one, we talk to Richard Barbrook about the Californian Ideology today before discussing health and mental illness with the 'States of Wellness' group at UC Irvine (Catherine Liu, Benjamin Kruger-Robins, Michael Mahoney, Thomas Williams).
Thanks to UC Irvine School of Humanities for sponsoring this series.
Readings:
Subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast