Jie Li | Utopian Ruins

In this episode, Christian Sorace talks with Dr Michael Sawyer about how the Black aesthetic tradition offers resources to move beyond a world dominated by white supremacy. They discuss the work of Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, Kara Walker, Hegel, the film Black Panther, and falconry.

In this episode, Christian and Matt talk with historian Mark Driscoll about his recent book The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven (Duke University Press, 2021) on movements of decolonial and ecological resistance to the superpredation of Euro-American people in China and Japan during the nineteenth century. They also discuss the revolutionary queerness of opium dens in Sichuan, sumo wrestling, and how to read familiar history against the grain.

In this episode, Christian Sorace speaks with poet and essayist Cynthia Cruz about her recent book The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Classon the artistic and affective struggles to reclaim working class identity and resist its erasure by middle-class fantasy.

In this episode, Christian Sorace and Matthew Galway speak with Ari Heinrich about his translation of Chi Ta-wei's classic of queer speculative fiction The Membranes; bio-technologies and prostheses; the racialisation of cadavers, organ transplant and trade; and the trap of utopian conclusions.

In this episode, Christian Sorace speaks with philosopher Artemy Magun about the impasse of current models of protests, the need for a new internationalism and utopian vision, and why the ghost of Lenin continues to haunt the present.

For our inaugural podcast, Christian Sorace spoke with Jie Li about Utopian Ruins (2020), her recent book about the creation, preservation, and elision of memories from the Mao era. Among other things, they discuss how we might salvage the utopian impulses from their imposed forms; how to conceptualise memorial museums; and the power, sanctity, and violence of words and images.