Identity on Credit: Ajax, Achilles, and the Modern Self with Fredrik Westerlund

Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sbwVioWlhS0What happens when we revisit Wilhelm Reich’s journey from Freud’s student to radical theorist of desire, politics, and repression? In this episode, we sit down with Professor Philip Bennett and David Silver, executive director of the Wilhelm Reich Museum, to explore Reich’s groundbreaking ideas on therapy, character armor, and the enduring relevance of The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Together we trace his path from psychoanalysis to Marxism to work democracy, and discuss the controversies surrounding his later scientific experiments at Orgonon in Rangeley, Maine. Along the way, we consider how Reich’s struggle against repression and authoritarianism continues to speak to our present moment.The Wilhelm Reich Museum in Rangeley, Maine preserves Reich’s historic home, laboratory, and archives. Visitors can explore the striking stone observatory, original orgone accumulators, and breathtaking views of the lakes and mountains. The museum is located at 19 Orgonon Circle (Dodge Pond Road), PO Box 687, Rangeley, ME 04970, and you can find more details online at wilhelmreichmuseum.org.If you’re nearby, consider visiting during the museum’s open season to experience Reich’s legacy in person.Support the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

What does Romanticism have to do with communism, enclosure, and the commons today? In this episode we speak with Joseph Albernaz, author of Common Measures: Romanticism and the Groundlessness of Community, about the radical lineage running from Blake and Hölderlin to Marx and Bataille. We explore how Romantic literature conceived “groundless community”—a poetic and ecological alternative to enclosure and collective identity—and how those ideas reverberate through scene-shaping thinkers like Bataille, Derrida, Nancy, and Moten. Along the way we trace the Commons not as a nostalgic relic but as an ethics of excess and openness that surges beneath modern property and identity structures.Common Measures: Romanticism and the Groundlessness of Community: https://www.sup.org/books/literary-studies-and-literature/common-measuresFall 2025 at AHRC: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/fall-2025Support the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

Can myth itself serve as a material force in struggles for liberation? Federico Campagna joins me to discuss how myth—too often dismissed as escapism or co-opted by reaction—can instead become a practice of imagination, solidarity, and survival. We look at myth’s place in anti-capitalist politics, its tension with materialism, and its role in resisting despair. What emerges is a vision of myth as a politics of possibility against history’s catastrophes.Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainLEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDJoin us with Grafton Tanner on live stream on 8.24.25: https://studio.youtube.com/video/BC5H8TU6wqQ/edit"Technic and Magic: Politics, Neoplatonism, and the Limits of Language with Federico Campagna": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sSdkgnXgqsOtherworlds: Mediterranean Lessons On Escaping History: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/otherworlds-9781350536401/Support the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

What happens when the self we imagine drifts further from the one we actually live? In this episode, philosopher Fredrik Westerlund joins Craig and Nicholas de Warren to explore his concept of “identity on credit,” where our sense of self is built on promises yet to be realized. From Sophocles’ Ajax to Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Scheler, we trace how recognition, resentment, and failure shape the modern psyche. Together we ask whether it is possible to live beyond the creditor–debtor logic of identity.Enroll today at AHRC: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/fall-2025Support the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

What happens when the painter’s hand breaks free from the eye, and chaos reorganizes the entire field of vision? In this episode of Acid Horizon, we join Charles Stivale, translator of On Painting and The Logic of Sense, to explore Gilles Deleuze’s rare 1981 seminar on painting. Together we trace how concepts like catastrophe, diagram, and modulation emerge from Deleuze’s live philosophical “laboratory” and feed into his landmark work Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Along the way, we uncover the historical, conceptual, and translational stakes of bringing this dynamic moment in Deleuze’s thought into English for the first time.Buy the Book: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517918408/on-painting/Review of 'On Painting': https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/deleuze-seminars-painting-1234749008/Link to the seminar: Painting and the Question of Concepts, https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/seminar/painting-and-question-concepts/Support the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

What if analytic philosophy isn't as politically neutral as it claims to be? In this episode, we explore the hidden ideological scaffolding of analytic philosophy—its deference to science, retreat to common sense, and therapeutic impulse. Christoph Schuringa, author of A Social History of Analytic Philosophy (Verso), reveals how analytic thought emerged from institutional, class-based, and geopolitical forces. We also discuss its uneasy relation to continental philosophy, AI ethics, and the enduring shadows of McCarthyism.Buy the book: https://www.versobooks.com/products/3018-a-social-history-of-analytic-philosophy?srsltid=AfmBOooMFkt1rNYazXytazQnINKiWBS-PnqCzT4BjBbrEzJ3dZRz3Yy0https://christophschuringa.com/Support the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

What does it mean to become worthy of the event? In this episode, we’re joined by Justin, longtime collaborator and host of our current reading group on Pierre Klossowski’s Living Currency. Together, we explore Deleuze’s stoic metaphysics, Nietzsche’s ethics of affirmation, and the revolutionary stakes of releasing ourselves from resentment. Along the way, we consider how play, pedagogy, and the dissolution of the self open us to the transformative force of the event.Support the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

What happens when the dialectic between Sartre and Fanon is not one of influence, but of mutual transformation? Today we're live at Webster’s in State College with Tyrique Mack-Georges, who returns to the podcast to discuss his research on seriality, group infusion, and the possibility of a new humanity. Together, we explore how Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason illuminates Fanon’s revolutionary project, and how Fanon, in turn, reorients Sartre’s ethics. This is a conversation about stretching Marxism, confronting racial capitalism, and recovering the lost art of collective praxis.Tyrique: @tyorriqueSupport the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

What if the history of feminism wasn’t only a story of liberation—but also one of betrayal, reaction, and complicity? In this episode of Acid Horizon, we speak with Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley, authors of Fascism and the Women's Cause, about the forgotten histories of white feminist collaboration with the far right—from the suffrage movement to the Ku Klux Klan and the British Union of Fascists. Together we explore how transphobia, liberalism, and racial capitalism converge in today’s so-called “gender-critical” movements. This is a conversation about fractures on the left, the dangers of respectable reaction, and why we must fight for a feminism that refuses fascism.Buy the book: https://www.ebb-magazine.com/books/p/fascism-and-the-womens-causeSupport the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

What does it mean to write philosophy in a time of catastrophe? In this episode, we’re joined once again by Stuart Kendall to explore Georges Bataille’s On Nietzsche, a fragmented, intimate, and disorienting text written in the final years of World War II. We examine how Nietzsche becomes not just a philosophical reference but a companion for Bataille—a figure through whom Bataille grapples with sovereignty, death, and the limits of knowledge. From Sartre’s accusations of mysticism to the will to chance as a response to fascism and nuclear horror, we trace how On Nietzsche opens up an ethics of risk, uselessness, and survival.Support the showSupport the podcast:Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-mainWebsite: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/