Thinking With... A Rhetorical Theory Podcast

Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street
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“Thinking With..." is a pedagogical experiment that serves as an invitation to think along with the text, with us, and with each other. We are three academics who specialize in Rhetorical Theory: Nate DeProspo (Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin College), John Muckelbauer (Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina), and Nathaniel Street (Assistant Professor at Mount Saint Vincent University).

  1. 4D AGO

    S5 EP 10 - Endings and Eternal Re-turnings

    Gay Science – Book 4 continued 00:30-3:30 Quitting tobacco and scotch (or not); 3:38-13:45 Like the stoics; 308 – advice vs. diagnostics (both are actions); 301 and 306 – no blanket advice, it always depends on the style of life involved 14:00-28:45 Amor fati – enduring vs. affirming fate; not acceptance (of being) – the diagnostic move is the advice; just different types of life; 307 – not reason first and then will, we needed our errors; active forces shedding skin – in favor of criticism; negation as shedding; pre-conscious negation in Hegel?; viewing someone negatively as a symptom of a disposition (not what leads you to a disposition); not getting better (not climbing ladder), but different; Our reasons are symptoms not the basis for decisions; Booboo’s prior frustration with Barad and its change; messier than just skin shedding or contradiction; a person is always multiple 29:00-36:30 281, knowing how to end, geologyincluded; not a metaphor?; living in Genoa as a pedagogy; monkeys anticipating storms; Ns fascination with all different modes of life 36:45 – 42:40 312-314 nudging trajectories;footnote to 311, the sweet rapport of stranger; not conflict avoidance or politeness 42:45 – 58:30 341 – eternal return – cosmological principle? existentialtest? Return of the same or difference – ontological “test”?;  related to affirmation? In N, nothing is identical to itself, so… ; what I am willing is the return of difference (or the relation); isn’t time at stake too?; “the autopoiesis of natural laws” – panic attack thought; Dead End’s favorite thought – is thinking the return of the same (as singularity)? Return as the being of becoming. Re-turning, turning again.

    59 min

  2. SEP 22

    S5 EP 9 - The Tone of Affirmative Thinking

    Episode 9 – The tone of affirmative thinking Gay Science Book 4 00:30-12:40 Nietzsche’s affirmative direction; 276; 307; reason is a symptom of a way of life; 278 – how great that we aren’t always honest, esp about death; 289 12:50- a delight in the prospect of becoming; joy of philosophizing as the production of new ways of living; 324 life as an experiment; not redemption – to see what is necessary as beautiful; not arguing against, but situating your ‘opponent’ within your narrative; concepts have different senses; cultivating the capacity to sense; thinking as therapeutics; life is not endurance for N – some fresh air into philosophy; Ns health 27:30-46:00 295 - Brief habits; Endurance is heavy; amor fati; BooBoo misses disc golf; do different stuff; put onself in situations that can induce dispositional shifts; Deleuze’s refrain; repetition and speeds and slowness; breaking stability vs figuring out how things are ever stable; become suspicious of unity of anything; academic freedom is unprecedented (this was 2024 btw); capitalism and subjectivity; nietzsche vs. marx; 46:00-1:01:01 Existence of embattled humanities has always been the case; whats a worthy enemy?; to criticize is to honor (for some); straw-manning; learning to not have a position on something; teaching as the way to learn – liking what you teach; generosity is more interesting; harold bloom; teaching the cognitivists; Habermas; a method for teaching generous responses to texts; different styles of life 1:01:10-1:17:00 282 the stride of thinking; teaching as installing a speed of thinking and writing; modulating speed; conversations are too fast; writing thinking; slogans; teaching as entertainment; booboo’s pedagogy; teaching strategies; being open but decisive

    1h 18m

  3. SEP 15

    S5 EP 8 - The Smell of Thinking

    Episode 8 - The Smell of Thinking End of Book3 00:30 - 4:00  section 213 cause and effects - cause is added later as an intervention;   4:00 - 18:15 Reading the short maxims vs. reading aphorisms; teaching. Section 192 on good natured people, Section 193 on Kant, section 195 - distilled. Like kafka short stories; section 152 on different colors; diagnosing styles of life; changing questions - ontology is still a style question; reality-making intervention; ethics v ontology: N solves the Heidegger/Levinas conundrum 18:20 -34:50 Learning to hear religion differently (not as dishonest); transcendence sounds like life-hating; interpretation of the world as bad is what makes the world bad; John believes that nothing is necessarily anything; BooBoo’s resentment is to blame for this podcast; the smell of thinking; education as movement without a telos (not growth but transformation); intelligence is really about the capacity to learn/change, not about knowing; is this just a new learning outcome? Critical thinking;  34:55 - 53:05 Nietzsche’s perspectivalism; 159-160; a non-human sense of agency/context; 177 laughter as a means of education and 200; this is a book on pedagogy; learning environments are all seriousness: “f**k those f*****s”; BooBoo’s joy; camel, lion, and child from Zarathustra; 324 en media vita; thinking is itself an activity, an experiment; Nietzsche as the teacher of laughter 53:10-end Asymptotic relations - without any failure/truth; specificity is not on the way to truth but creating more points of contact; “truth” can serve to increase exposure; cutting vs. clarity; “suffering” fools; Cogito, the outside as an intrusion - discovering something other than endurance; sovereignty as promising to make the future; promise as object of affirmation (rather than obligation); compliments as dismissal?; teaching evals;

    1h 12m

  4. SEP 1

    S5 EP 7 - Poly and Mono Theism

    Book 3 (again) 0- 3:15 Bad intros 3:20 - 16:00 Nietzsche’s materialist comedy; section 124 - the infinite;  panic attacks - cognitive models vs. affective experiential; subjectivity; thinking as terror/comfort; what meaningless means;  16:00 - 39:20 section 143: advantages of polytheism; vs. monotheism; agonism vs. true/false; section 149 Plato and Pythagoras as failed founders of religions; the conditioning of “the people”; biodiversity; “it wasn’t me. god did it through me”; the alleged fragmentation of contemporary society; multiple monotheisms? polytheism and monarchy/monarchies; John is skittish about all transcendence;  different orientations to difference (pluralism v dogmatism);  39:30 - 58:20 Rome vs. Judea; imperialism and religion; is science monotheistic?; absolutist responses to COVID; the CDC couldn’t be provisional; polytheism as just a moment without a dominant monotheism; experimental science seems to potentially lead toward overman also - despite piety and fealty

    59 min

  5. AUG 25

    S5 EP 6 - Shadows of God

    §108-125 0- 3:00 Podcasting and Romance; new intros;  3:00- 22:40 Book 3 Gay Science §108— The Death of God; theology of atheism; §109 anthropomorphism and will to power; the need for error life v knowledge ; §110 22:42 - 41:55 John’s “famous” saber tooth tiger anecdote; the recurring problem of identification; thinking was/is risky; perceiving complexity dangerous for life; the advantage of unjust and coarse perception (errors); at some historical, slow cautious thoughtful judgment ALSO became advantageous for life, Socrates as inverted instinct; disputation is not conversation 41:55 - 57:00 Nietzsche’s interpretive historicism; section 113 - doctrine of poisons; when will artistic energies join with science; is it like Hegelian history? Multiplicity and negation; Booboo agrees to write the Hegel v Nietzsche book

    57 min

  6. AUG 18

    S5 EP 5 - Responding to Nietzsche's "Woman"

    0:00–14:25 The sections on “woman” are not distinct from the rest of the book; §68 “Will and Willingness” §64 “Skeptics” superficiality of existence ; the feminine operation and the body marked by the feminine operation. 14:30–36:20 John’s writing project ; maybe these aphorisms are more interesting now? §74 “The Unsuccessful” and §75 “The Third Sex” ; Kaufman can’t handle it anymore ;  §80 “Art and Nature” the fantasy of good speech and the self-controlled cogito ; are we talking about Platonic ideals when we talk about woman as a “ship at a distance”? ; the prospect of metaphysics ; coordinating these aphorisms “on woman” with the rest of the book ; §59 “We Artists,” woman, god, and property. 36:20–60:00 The multiplicity of misogyny ; Nietzsche is a strange pathway by which to engage feminism;  Beyond surfaces and depths (or between them); why gender is impossible to think and why that’s important; politics vs. metaphysics; deconstructive feminism; the political conditions for thinking; the #FigureItOut movement; exceptions and institutions; honoring Sinèad.

    1h 45m

  7. AUG 11

    S5 EP 4 - The Truth of Social Formation

    0:00–22:30 What does The Gay Science have to do with rhetoric? ; §57 “To the Realists”, §58 “Only as Creators”, §59 “We Artists” ; our drunken passion for reality and reason ; our ridiculous desire to transcend reality ; creation, destruction, and the insanity of maintenance ; is there a political valiance to this dynamic? §76 “The Greatest Danger” ; the dangers of the exception and the rule ; what happens when “the exception” wears tin foil hats and joins the tea party? ; Is this dichotomy too clumsy?   22:30–31:50 Complicating Nietzsche’s argument about “truth and lying in a nonmoral sense” ; the active power of rhetoric to “make equal,” which is always a verb and never a noun ; constructivism is an “ism,” not a thing – always the activity of formation ; John wonders why Nathaniel’s brain is in the 12th century ; repetition of difference ; the fascism of territorialization ; dragons are real now ; the repetition of a name builds alliances 31:50–36:35 Rhetoric doesn’t communicate, it builds alliances, associations, the socius communus ; the social and the production of desire ; the production of the social is the production of desire is the production of persuasion ; rhetorical intervention is not parasitic on the social, psychological, or the real – it is the production of their production ; Nathaniel’s been reading Deleuze again.  36:35–40:45 Nate asks the question: is this shit also destructive? ; communities of exclusion, Joe Rogan and the Pope 40:45–End Why does Nietzsche think our stupidity has been valuable for the species? ; Nietzsche is a symptomtologist: take the perspective of life ; evolution without telos, without reaction ;  evolution of the exception, not the herd.

    48 min

  8. AUG 4

    S5 EP 3 - A Taste for Thinking

    0:00–18:30 Intro; Approach for a second read; Nate gratuitously makes it about Hegel; §26 “What is Life?” ; the positivity of becoming; §23 “The Signs of Corruption” and §24 “Different Forms of Dissatisfaction” ; §39 “Changed Taste.” The active power of taste & decay; the non-linearity of futurity; taste vs opinion; §11 “Consciousness” the body doesn’t trust consciousness – it’s still in beta testing ; Napoleon & Decay; the individual 18:40–31:15 The value of consciousness; not your baseliner’s materialism; structure of the aphorisms; intellectual irritability; do I contradict myself? : invention and resolution; contradictions are bodies 31:20–41:20 What is a body? Is the intellect in the business of forming bodies? ; the taste of concepts; what does the “equal sign” of the concept do? ; § 37 “Owing to Three Errors” ; What can take up and animate the production of scientific knowledge? 41:25–51:10 Back to the structure of the aphorisms; modalities of life’s violence; a very different sense of the individual; punk-rock-Nietzsche: it’s only one tune; perpetual variation 51:15–58:10 Is reduction avoidable? ; reduction as a style of inflection; how do you teach this stuff? ; teaching vs. writing: the production of theory-bodies; shout out to Marco’s Provocations series 58:15–End  Teaching theory; John’s old age let’s us all learn; John’s dating profile; parting provocations

    1h 4m
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“Thinking With..." is a pedagogical experiment that serves as an invitation to think along with the text, with us, and with each other. We are three academics who specialize in Rhetorical Theory: Nate DeProspo (Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin College), John Muckelbauer (Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina), and Nathaniel Street (Assistant Professor at Mount Saint Vincent University).

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