Acid Horizon

Acid Horizon

Emerging from affinities with post-structuralism, abolitionism, biopolitics, communism, critical metaphysics, critical mysticism, and ontological anarchy, Acid Horizon is a philosophy and theory podcast committed to thought in motion and political struggle. While these are our grounding currents, each episode opens out onto a wider constellation: ethics, politics, phenomenology, decolonial thought, queer theory, post-psychoanalysis, disability/crip theory, anarchism, Marxism, feminism, and analyses of the emergence of the new right. Comprised of a decentralized collective of friends and comrades, Acid Horizon cultivates a terrain of militant inquiry. From readings that span 20th-century French communism to new perspectives on German idealism, the collective has also undertaken forays into aesthetic experimentation, philosophical heresy, and the history of revolt. We seek the concepts and intensities that gesture toward new forms of life. Acid Horizon pushes theory beyond the academy through live engagements, collaborative reading groups, and collective interventions.

  1. The Obsolescence of the Human: AI, Nuclear Weapons, and the Philosophy of Günther Anders

    3D AGO

    The Obsolescence of the Human: AI, Nuclear Weapons, and the Philosophy of Günther Anders

    What does it mean to feel outclassed by your own creations? In this episode, host Craig is joined by Christopher John Müller, translator and co-editor of the new University of Minnesota Press edition of Günther Anders' The Obsolescence of the Human, and Penn State Philosophy Professor Nicholas de Warren, to explore the life and work of one of the twentieth century's most prescient and overlooked thinkers. Together, we unpack Anders' core concepts, including Promethean shame, the phantom world of mass media, and the shadow of nuclear annihilation, tracing their remarkable relevance to our present age of AI, algorithmic frictionlessness, and digital spectacle. Buy the book: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517912659/the-obsolescence-of-the-human/ Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy 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/

    1h 19m
  2. Patreon Preview: Bataille’s 'Guilty' Explained: Stuart Kendall on War, Time, and Instability

    5D AGO

    Patreon Preview: Bataille’s 'Guilty' Explained: Stuart Kendall on War, Time, and Instability

    *Patreon Preview* To access the rest of this discussion, becoming paid subscriber on our Patreon page, or enroll in 'Formless', which begins March 11th. Links are below. What does Georges Bataille’s Guilty reveal about war, time, and the unstable ground of thought itself? In this episode, Craig and Adam speak with Stuart Kendall about Bataille’s confrontation with catastrophe, the “privileged instant,” and the strange oscillation between order and excess in his writing. The conversation explores how Guilty stages a meditation on war, nonknowledge, and the limits of philosophy at the edge of historical disaster. We also discuss Kendall’s essay “The Exacerbation of Instabilities,” featured in the Acéphalous Compendium, and preview his upcoming course on Bataille through the Acid Horizon Research Commons. Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy 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/

    14 min
  3. Communize the Eschaton: Thomas Müntzer and the German Peasants' War

    FEB 28

    Communize the Eschaton: Thomas Müntzer and the German Peasants' War

    Adam is joined by Massimiliano Tomba, O.L. Silverman, and Loren Goldman to discuss the biggest series of uprisings in Europe before the French Revolution, the German Peasants' War, which had its 500th anniversary in 2025. In this discussion, we considered what it meant for everyday people to engage in insurrectionary struggle against Pope and Prince alike, the influence of the conflict on Marxist conceptions of history, the apocalyptic communism of Thomas Müntzer in his allegiance with the peasants of Thuringia, and how Martin Luther's counter-revolutionary thought laid the foundations for the concepts of freedom, authority, and rebellion which underlie modern European philosophy. The introduction of the History of the Present issue on Thomas Müntzer and the German Peasants’ War at 500 Years https://read.dukeupress.edu/history-of-the-present/article/15/1/1/399374/IntroductionThomas-Muntzer-and-the-German-Peasants Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy 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/

    1h 19m
  4. 'Digital Theory' Panel Discussion: Is Theory Itself Digital? (Fazi, Galloway, Weatherby, Handleman)

    FEB 19

    'Digital Theory' Panel Discussion: Is Theory Itself Digital? (Fazi, Galloway, Weatherby, Handleman)

    In this free public panel hosted by the Acid Horizon Research Commons, we discuss Digital Theory (University of Minnesota Press) with contributors Alexander R. Galloway, M. Beatrice Fazi, Matthew Handelman, and Leif Weatherby. The conversation reframes the digital not as consumer technology but as a fundamental mode of mediation grounded in discreteness. We explore the provocative claim that theory itself is digital, and that digitality precedes contemporary computation. The panel revisits structuralism, number, abstraction, and dialectics to rethink the relationship between logic and representation. Throughout, the discussion challenges nostalgic appeals to the analog and asks what it means to think from within a digital ontological condition. Buy the book: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517920197/digital-theory/ Current offerings at AHRC: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy 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/

    1h 15m
  5. Communist Ontologies: Communism as a Form of Life with Bruno Gulli and Richard Gilman-Opalsky

    FEB 16

    Communist Ontologies: Communism as a Form of Life with Bruno Gulli and Richard Gilman-Opalsky

    What does it mean to think communism philosophically, and how can a political rupture be understood as an ontological transformation of the conditions of everyday life? Adam is joined by Bruno Gulli and Richard Gilman-Opalsky to discuss their book of dialogues "Communist Ontologies: An Inquiry into the Construction of New Forms of Life" out now with our comrades over at Minor Compositions. They discuss the nature of identity and difference, insurgent ontologies, and how to think of communism as an abolitionist horizon latent in struggles against oppression today.  Get the book:https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1320  Check out Richard's latest rhythms: edgetonerecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-fierce-and-gentle-force Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy 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/

    1h 24m
  6. Hyperreality Is Dead: Baudrillard, the Age of Trump, and 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place' Revisited

    JAN 31

    Hyperreality Is Dead: Baudrillard, the Age of Trump, and 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place' Revisited

    Adam's intensive Kant course now enrolling: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/2026-classes In this episode, we revisit Jean Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, a text that diagnosed the emergence of war as media event, non-event, and managed spectacle. Joining us is friend and returning guest Cameron Carsten, a graduate student in continental philosophy whose work explores the state, power, and the production of reality across Baudrillard and Deleuze. Rather than treating Baudrillard’s claims as prophetic or obsolete, the conversation puts them to work against the present—testing the fate of hyperreality in the age of Trump, AI-mediated images, and escalating political violence. What emerges is a question that now presses harder than ever: has the simulacrum collapsed, or has the real returned with a vengeance? Cam's blog: https://camtology.substack.com/ Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy 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/

    1h 3m
  7. The Spectral Woman with Ciara Cremin

    JAN 20

    The Spectral Woman with Ciara Cremin

    Join Adam's class here: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/2026-classes/p/cause-category-and-command-an-introduction-to-kants-1st-and-2nd-critiques Adam is joined by Ciara Cremin to discuss the libidinal economy of femininity in her latest book "The Spectral Woman: Transfemininity and the Abolition of Gender" out now from Pluto Press. Drawing from psychoanalytic, feminist, and Marxist theory, we discuss how Ciara's book articulates a vision of communism, abolitionism, and femininity against the male fantasies of capital, wielding the handbag and sickle against new fascisms mired in transphobia and gender essentialism. You can find the book here at:  https://www.plutobooks.com/product/the-spectral-woman/ Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy 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/

    53 min
  8. Comrade Delta: Organisation, Theory, and the Failure of Britain's Biggest Revolutionary Party

    JAN 10

    Comrade Delta: Organisation, Theory, and the Failure of Britain's Biggest Revolutionary Party

    Amidst the unceasing murderous march of capitalist imperialism and its transformation into new fascisms, the mantra of the revolutionary is to become organised, either by founding or joining a revolutionary organisation such a party, in order to establish a political organ for the proliferation of capitalism's overthrow. In this episode, Adam is joined by Elane Heffernan and David Renton to discuss a case of revolutionary organisation and its failure which still shapes the ecosystem of revolutionary activity in the UK today: the Socialist Worker's Party or SWP, and the culture of abuse that led to its decline . The SWP was Britain's largest Marxist organisation until 2013, when the central committee's shameful treatment of women who accused one of its leadership, "Comrade Delta", of sexual assault led to an exodus of members and the discrediting of their structures and methods. In this episode, we discuss their experienced during this scandal and how it arose from the SWP's internal culture, and what radicals can learn from the failures of the UK's largest Far-Left Party. David's history of the scandal, "Comrade Delta" containing over 50 interviews with members and ex-members of the SWP, is out this July from Ebb books. Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy 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/

    1h 5m
4.4
out of 5
205 Ratings

About

Emerging from affinities with post-structuralism, abolitionism, biopolitics, communism, critical metaphysics, critical mysticism, and ontological anarchy, Acid Horizon is a philosophy and theory podcast committed to thought in motion and political struggle. While these are our grounding currents, each episode opens out onto a wider constellation: ethics, politics, phenomenology, decolonial thought, queer theory, post-psychoanalysis, disability/crip theory, anarchism, Marxism, feminism, and analyses of the emergence of the new right. Comprised of a decentralized collective of friends and comrades, Acid Horizon cultivates a terrain of militant inquiry. From readings that span 20th-century French communism to new perspectives on German idealism, the collective has also undertaken forays into aesthetic experimentation, philosophical heresy, and the history of revolt. We seek the concepts and intensities that gesture toward new forms of life. Acid Horizon pushes theory beyond the academy through live engagements, collaborative reading groups, and collective interventions.

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