Pill Pod 217 - Gaza vs. The United States of Exception: Agamben's Homo Sacer

1Dime joins Erik and Victor to discuss Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. We cover the popularity of the book, the term, and then wonder whether left-populist electoral campaigns perform the same cathartic function as anti-capitalist TV shows.See more from 1Dime: https://www.youtube.com/@1DimeeAll our public episodes are ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We wanted to review some Lacan because everybody's still desiring, and Bruce Fink's Lacanian Subject (1995) is quite often touted as the best unofficial intro, and we can see why.Get this and all our eps at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpillsThis is the book: https://amzn.to/4oubPxQ

In a recent interview with the New York Times Peter Thiel, one of the world's most powerful men, gave ample evidence that he should be institutionalized before he hurts anyone else.Link to the full interview https://youtu.be/vV7YgnPUxcU?si=qSLrUmKeEblb4jYSFind all our episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Pill pod discuss the public media representations of Epstein and Gaza before a seamless transition into a discussion of Giorgio Agamben's concepts of 1) Sovereignty 2) Bare Life and 3) States of Exception.The FULL OMNIBUS edition of homo sacer is here, but the sections are also available separately.

Pills is away, so 1Dime Tony came present a thesis he's working at. Tony rejoins the pill pod to excavate the terms "woke right" and the semiotics of "woke" more broadly. We don't always agree, but we attempt to deduce which conservative faction is accusing which other of wokeness, although it is sometimes tough going figuring what they mean by the term. Articles:https://americanreformer.org/2024/05/is-there-a-woke-right/https://reason.com/2025/06/11/the-rise-of-the-woke-right/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/woke-right/681716/https://www.theamericanconservative.com/is-woke-right-a-useful-term/If you enjoyed this education, 1Dime has a YouTube channel, a podcast called 1Dime Radio, and a patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/OneDime) that are easily accessible if you're looking for more insights.

According to Derrida, metaphysicians have spent 2000 years conceptually boxing-in metaphor because they don't want to admit their dependence on figurative language. This has allowed them to trick themselves into believing that fiction and non-fiction are fundamentally different; that one can be true and the other cannot. In White Mythology, Derrida discovers the metaphors buried in philosophy from Plato to Hegel, even as they try to hide them.We spent three weeks reading this text, you can find the episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We go deeper into Maurice Merleau-Ponty's insights in The Visible and The Invisible, e.g. The Flesh of the World, the Chiasm, and the Intertwining and what these mean for a meditative experience on the daily. Get the full episode and tons of others at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

This week we looked into OG critic of fascism Wilhelm Reich, who wrote The Mass Psychology of Fascism right after the Nazis were elected in 1933. Reich was among the first "neomarxists", and believed that Marxists need to understand psychoanalysis to understand Fascism.Link to textFind our full episodes on philosophy and theory at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We compare Maurice Merleau-Ponty's insights in an unfinished work he wrote before his death to the meditations of Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna 18 centuries prior.This episode and all the rest can be found at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

The New York Times has claimed that three "fascism experts" are fleeing Trump and "going abroad". In truth, these are not (all) fascism experts, and they did not flee, in fact they have been in Canada for almost a year because they got jobs at the University of Toronto. We looked into their research, which is the same tired, lib, horseshoe theory bullshit that Nazism and Communism are the same thing.  Find this and our other episodes for free, ad-free, at www.patreon.com/plasticpills