Digital Dialogue on Democracy and the Political Unconscious

My book Democracy and the Political Unconscious is the subject of a podcast by Christopher Long’s  Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue:
Cultivating a Politics of Dialogue in a Digital Age.

In episode 8 of the Digital Dialogue, I am joined by Shannon Sullivan, Professor of Philosophy, Women’s Studies and African and African American Studies here at Penn State. Shannon is also the Head of the Department of Philosophy.

She has written extensively on American pragmatism, psychoanalysis, feminist philosophy and critical race theory, including two excellent books, Living Across and Through Skins: Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism and Feminism and Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege.

She joins me on the Digital Dialogue to discuss the recently publish book by Noëlle McAfee entitled Democracy and the Political Unconscious.

We focus on three specific issues:

1. McAfee’s understanding of the public sphere as a “semiotic happening” (p. 132)
2. The meaning of the political unconscious.
3. The notion of a political posture McAfee introduces briefly ( p. 84).

In the course of the discussion, we touch upon McAfee’s recognition that social media opens important possibilities for political community.