Ep. 47 – Jürgen Habermas on Secularism and Democracy; Review of Get Out

Always Already Podcast, a critical theory podcast

In this episode of the Always Already Podcast we discuss two distinct, overlapping, and not-so-overlapping essays by Jürgen Habermas: “Three Normative Models of Democracy,” written in 1994, and “Notes on Post-Secular Society,” written in 2008. We begin by asking whether Habermas’ conception of deliberative democracy changes from the first to the second piece, taking into consideration his critiques of liberal democracy and liberalism across both pieces. We ask whether his model of deliberative democracy attempts to decenter the state or society as a whole; the extent to which his model accounts for workers, anti-work, the workplace and labor politics; and the gems of wisdom that he could gain from Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” (Full disclosure: this episode is grounded in the efforts of Emily, John and Rachel to talk out the paper they are co-writing on anti-work politics and democratic theory).

Stick around for a special review/Frantz-Fanon-driven analysis of the new film Get Out by friend of the podcast/Always Already Fanon Correspondent M. Shadee Malaklou. Shadee also helps John answer listener questions about attending a conference and about glee over a frenemy’s failed Kickstarter campaign.

Support us on Patreon to help us upgrade our recording equipment. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here.Thanks to Leah Dion for the intro music and to B for the outro music. Special thanks to NEW musical feature aster for between-segment music off of their album a l w a y s a l r e a d y (check it out on bandcamp!). Get the mp3 of the episode here.

https://alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ep47.mp3

Links:

Jürgen on His Stuff

Jürgen on the Public Sphere

Kathi Weeks, “Life Within and Against Work”

Weeks, “Beyond the Wage System”

Marxist/Materialist Feminism

wikipedia; CC-BY-SA-3.0.