Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Academia”

Episode 130: Holiday Memories

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 10:00:00 -0400

In August, 2022, JF and Phil flew to the UK to attend the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) at the University of St. Andrews and the Supernormal Festival in Oxfordshire. In addition to recording two live shows (to be released in the coming weeks), they encountered billiant minds, novel ideas, and arresting works of art that opened new avenues for thought. It's these encounters that anchor this conversation, which branches off to touch ideas such as the elusive ideal of intersciplinarity, Hakim Bey's temporary autonomous zone, the legacy of the 20th-century counterculture, the fate of revolutionary movements, non--human intelligences, and the weirdness of human thought.

Header Image by RomitaGirl67 via Wikimedia Commons.

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References

Dial M for Musicology, Interdisciplinarity
Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone
Entitled Opinions Podcast
William Gibson, Foreword to Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren
DISI Podcast, Many Minds
John Krakauer, professor of nuerology and neuroscience
Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist
The Great Ape Dictionary, specific database used by Cat Hobaiter

Episode 110: Monks of the Cultural Apocalypse: 'The Glass Bead Game,' Part Two

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 11:00:00 -0500

In the current "attention economy," which has resulted in plummeting literacy rates and the almost wanton neglect of various cultural practices, what significance does culture even have? Why seek to preserve something our age has decided doesn't have to exist? Perhaps Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game can be read as an answer to those questions. The order of monastic scholars in the novel exists mainly to remember what others were happy to consign to oblivion. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss Hesse's ideas on the order and its sacred game in terms of how they might help us meet the challenge facing anyone who believes the value of culture can't be expressed in dollars and cents.

REFERENCES

Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
Pope Benedict XVI, former head of the Catholic church
J.S. Bach, Well Tempered Clavier, Rosalyn Tureck interpretation and Glenn Gould interpretation
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Chauvet Cave
Peter Bebergal Strange Frequencies
Andy Goldsworthy, British artist
Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists
William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light

Episode 109: Infinite Play: On 'The Glass Bead Game,' by Hermann Hesse

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 10:30:00 -0400

JF and Phil have been talking about doing a show on The Glass Bead Game since Weird Studies' earliest beginnings. It is a science-fiction novel that alights on some of the key ideas that run through the podcast: the dichotomy of work and play, the limits and affordances of institutional life, the obscure boundary where certainty gives way to mystery... Throughout his literary career, Hesse wrote about people trying to square their inner and outer selves, their life in the spirit and their life in the world. The Glass Bead Game brings this central concern to a properly ambiguous and heartbreaking conclusion. But the novel is more than a brilliant work of philosophical or psychological literature. It is also an act of prophecy -- one that seems intended for us now.

Header image by Liz West, via Wikimedia Commons.

REFERENCES

Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

Paul Hindemith, German composer
Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture
Alfred Korzybski, concept of Time Binding
Christopher Nolan, Memento
William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism
Jeremy Johnson, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness
Teilhard de Chardin, French theologian
Mathesis
Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze
Weird Studies, Episode 22 with Joshua Ramey
Joseph Needham, British historian of Chinese culture
James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games