Episodes

5 days ago
5 days ago
On depicting dystopia.
Acclaimed cartoonists, writers and artists Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson join us for something a little different: to talk about their new comic book, Justice Warriors. Set in a grotesquely unequal world, a police procedural (of sorts) encounters an astrology-based social movement seeking justice.
We talk about how dystopian fiction often serves to manufacture consent and about how fiction can confront us with images of social decline. We also debate free will and determinism in a world that presents few opportunities, social justice warriors and politics that perpetuate the present, and why there is no 'pure' people set against the elite.
Links:
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The Nib - political satire & cartoons

Tuesday Mar 21, 2023
Excerpt: /328/ The New Scramble for Africa
Tuesday Mar 21, 2023
Tuesday Mar 21, 2023
On geopolitical competition over Africa.
In light of the 'new Cold War', we look at what the US, Europe, Russia and China's respective "pitches" are to African countries – what are they selling? And we examine the factors that contribute to Africa's place in geopolitics today: Chinese hunger for raw materials, the global war on terror, the green energy transition, drug and people smuggling, and more.
If the original Scramble for Africa (1884-1914) was driven by an attempt to displace European class war onto another terrain, can we say anything analogous is happening today?
Links:
- /303/ The Failure of the French Forever War ft. Yvan Guichaoua
- /304/ The Failure of the French Forever War (2) ft. Yvan Guichaoua
- Russia in Africa, Financial Times series of articles
- Defending Our Sovereignty: US Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity, Tricontinental Institute
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Italophone Somalia, Then and Now, Iman Mohamed, The Drift
- Emmanuel Macron must reset France’s Africa policy, Sylvie Kauffman (Le Monde editor), FT
- Debunking the Myth of ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’, Lee Jones & Shahar Hameiri, Chatham House
- Let’s talk about neo-colonialism in Africa, Mark Langan, LSE blog
- /267/ South Africa Mafia State ft. Benjamin Fogel

Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
/327/ Capitalism on Edge ft. Albena Azmanova
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
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It’s the Economic Precarity, Stupid, Albena Azmanova & Marshall Auerback, The Nation
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Uber’s dangerous drive to serfdom, Albena Azmanova, Unherd
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Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia, Albena Azmanova, Columbia UP

Thursday Mar 09, 2023
UNLOCKED! /319/ The Dead Left (II) ft. Steve Hall & Simon Winlow
Thursday Mar 09, 2023
Thursday Mar 09, 2023
On the left's understanding of freedom.
We continue our talk with Steve Hall and Simon Winlow, social scientists in the northeast of England, about their new book, The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin From the Beginning Again.
This is followed by the After Party, where we debate the extent to which Thatcher 'sold' freedom and what the left's understanding of liberty is.
To gain access to episodes like this that normally remain paywalled, subscribe to our patreon: patreon.com/bungacast
Part 1 is here: https://bungacast.podbean.com/e/318-the-dead-left-ft-steve-hall-simon-winlow/
Links:

Tuesday Mar 07, 2023
Excerpt: /326/ What Did Capitalism Do Next?
Tuesday Mar 07, 2023
Tuesday Mar 07, 2023
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TCS Special Issue: ‘Post-Neoliberalism?’, Various, Theory Culture & Society
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End of the Neoliberal Era?, David Kotz, NLR
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The new rules for business in a post-neoliberal world, Rana Forfoohar, FT
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What's beyond "beyond neoliberalism"?, Amy Kapczynski, LPE Project
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Reading the post-neoliberal right, Amy Kapczynski, LPE Project

Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Excerpt: /325/ Reading Club: Freedom (1)
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
On Martin Hägglund's This Life.
[Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive]
We begin the 2023 Reading Club with the theme of FREEDOM. In this episode, we examine Martin Hägglund's arguments for secular faith presented in the first half of his book. Is Hagglund right in arguing that much of religious belief, especially in relation to morality, is actually motivated by secular faith?
Hägglund's enemy is not so much religion as the "Stoic" attempt to withdraw and detach from the temporal world. Instead we should be engaged and committed to the persons and projects we care about in this life. But does Hägglund underestimate alienation? Is his approach overly demanding?
And what about disenchantment? How would we go about re-enchanting the secular world?
For local Reading Clubs, email info@bungacast.com
Readings:
- This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free, Martin Hägglund, Profile Books ––Introduction; Chapter 1 (Sections 2, 3, 4); Chapter 2 (Sections 2, 4, 6)
- From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism, Slavoj Zizek, Cabinet Magazine
- Vulnerability as Ideology, Peter Ramsay, The Northern Star

Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
/324/ Reifying Race ft. Kenan Malik
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
On the mainstreaming of racial thinking.
We welcome back author and broadcaster Kenan Malik to talk about his new book, Not So Black and White. The book presents a historical account of how racial thinking has accompanied the spread of notions of equality and common humanity. How is it that many supposed humanitarians in the past were often racists?
And how have we reached a point where today, many liberals and supposed anti-racists sustain racial thinking? How have notions of global whiteness/blackness come to dominate the discourse?
We also discuss the 'post-liberal' critics of wokeness and their shortcomings, and whether the far right is gaining from the reification of race.
Want more? Subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
Excerpt: /323/ Tasty Frictionless Convenience
Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
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Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, Adam Greenfield, Verso
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Delivering Restaurants to Wall Street, Alex Park, Compact
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5 Reasons Marxism Has Nothing To Offer Millennials, Austrian Economics Center

Tuesday Feb 14, 2023
/321/ Covid Dissensus ft. Toby Green & Thomas Fazi
Tuesday Feb 14, 2023
Tuesday Feb 14, 2023
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The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left, Toby Green & Thomas Fazi
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/213/ The Leopard Lockdown ft. Adam Tooze
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/38/ The Economics of Exit ft. Thomas Fazi

Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
Excerpt: /320/ Aufhebonus Bonus (Feb 2023)
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023

Tuesday Jan 31, 2023
/318/ The Dead Left ft. Steve Hall & Simon Winlow
Tuesday Jan 31, 2023
Tuesday Jan 31, 2023

Tuesday Jan 24, 2023
/316/ From Emergency to Emergency: 2022 Review, ft. Ashley Frawley
Tuesday Jan 24, 2023
Tuesday Jan 24, 2023

Tuesday Jan 17, 2023
/314/ Shallow & Wrongheaded Filmic Squabbles ft. Maren Thom & Alex Dale
Tuesday Jan 17, 2023
Tuesday Jan 17, 2023
On aesthetic criticism & performance.
The hosts of a new podcast on film, Performance Anxiety, join us to talk about how a focus on performance can break through endless squabbles over wokeness and representation in film.
We also discuss our best and worst films of 2022.
Part two of this episode is at patreon.com/bungacast
Links:
- Performance Anxiety podcast
- The Greatest Films of All Time, Sight & Sound, BFI
- The Radicalization of the Film Canon, Adrian Nguyen, Quillette

Tuesday Jan 10, 2023
/312/ Consolation-Prize Marxism & the Bunga-Bunga State ft. Dylan Riley
Tuesday Jan 10, 2023
Tuesday Jan 10, 2023
On the achievement of democracy and the 'impartial' state.
We speak to sociologist Dylan Riley about his new book Microverses, a series of aphorisms on social theory and politics.
The rational-legal state seems to be under threat by politicians who have no sense of the division between public and private – patrimonialists like Donald Trump, or Silvio Berlusconi. What are we to make of this attack on the notion of office?
Anti-corruption politics is often the response, but what happens when the left positions itself as the defender of the 'impartial' bourgeois state – rather than its overthrower? And was democratic capitalism the achievement of a militant working class – or a concession made after the working class had already been disciplined by fascism and war?
The second half of the interview, and our After-Party, is available at patreon.com/bungacast
Readings:
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Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, Dylan Riley, Verso Books
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Seven Theses on American Politics, Dylan Riley & Robert Brenner, NLR
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Inflection Point (podcast), Dylan Riley & Robert Brenner, UC Berkley
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Safe Substitutes for Posting: review of Microverses, Harold Florida, Damage

Friday Jan 06, 2023
Excerpt: /311/ Reading Club: The Precariat
Friday Jan 06, 2023
Friday Jan 06, 2023
Is there a new 'transformative' class?
[Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive]
We close of the 2022 Reading Club, and the final section on 'Neo-Feudalism', by discussing how class is changing. Through readings by Guy Standing and Ruy Braga, we ask if the precariat are the new serfs in a supposed feudal-ish social formation.
It's clear the old Fordist arrangements have broken down, so what does the working class look like today? Is it still a class in the old sense? Braga argues we are witnessing 'class struggle without class'. But why then do the precariat's revolts only target state political authority, and not property relations?
Readings:
- A return of class struggle without class? Moral economy and popular resistance in Brasil, south Africa and Portugal, Ruy Braga, Sociologia & Antropologia
- The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class?, Guy Standing, GTI