Episode 3: Shopping for Love - a podcast by The Theory Doctors

This is Episode 3 of the State of the Theory Podcast.

Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably.
In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call.

In this episode, we focus on the industry surrounding Valentine's Day. Using the work of Laruen Berlant, Michael Warner, Karl Marx, Wendy Brown, Matthew Coleman and Matt Sparke, we explore the ways in which heteronormativity and neoliberalism are jointly put to work in the preservation and propagation of capitalism and the nation-state.

The Tesco Valentine's Day advert can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TV5e_9Pfe4

The theoretical texts we refer to are:
"Sex in Public" by Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (http://sites.middlebury.edu/sexandsociety/files/2015/01/Berlant-and-Warner-Sex-in-Public.pdf)
"Capital Vol. 1" by Karl Marx (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Classics/dp/0140445684)
"Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy" by Wendy Brown (http://lchc.ucsd.edu/cogn_150/Readings/brown.pdf)
"Reclaiming Democracy: An Interview with Wendy Brown" (http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/01/30/reclaiming-democracy-an-interview-with-wendy-brown-on-occupy-sovereignty-and-secularism/)
"U.S. statecraft and the U.S.–Mexico border as security/economy nexus" by Matthew Coleman (http://www.elsevierscitech.com/pdfs/JPGQ/2005_US_statecraft_and_the_US_Mexico_border_as_securityeconomy_nexus.pdf)
A Neoliberal Nexus: Economy, Security and the Biopolitics of Citizenship on the Border by Matt Sparke (https://faculty.washington.edu/sparke/NN.pdf)

Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agra…he_Face_of_God)

State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick and Anindya Raychaudhuri

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