Cruel Optimism: Affect Theory and the Structure of Feeling
Rev Left Radio
Breht O'Shea
4.8 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2021
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Maggie Doherty teaches writing at Harvard, where she earned her PhD in English. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the Nation, among other publications. She is also the author of The Equivalents: The Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960's.
She joins Breht to discuss the work of Lauren Berlant, Affect Theory, our emotional landscapes in late capitalism, and much more!
Follow her on Twitter @magsrdoherty
Check out her interview on Open Source: https://radioopensource.org/into-the-feel-tank/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody and welcome back to RevLeft Radio. On today's episode I have Maggie Dorodion |
| 0:11.4 | to talk about cruel optimism, affect theory, COVID and climate change, Buddhism, late capitalism, |
| 0:20.9 | and her book The Equivalence, and much more. This is a really fascinating conversation. |
| 0:25.7 | I heard Maggie actually on open source with Christopher Lighten, one of I think the longest running |
| 0:31.6 | podcasts in existence, and knew just by listening to that interview that she would be a perfect fit |
| 0:38.1 | for our show here. So if you like what you hear here, definitely go check out her interview and |
| 0:43.4 | I'll open source with Christopher Lighten and get more of it. But it was a fascinating conversation |
| 0:49.7 | and I know that a lot of you will really enjoy this and get a lot out of it. So without further |
| 0:54.4 | ado, here's my conversation with Maggie Dorodion. I'm Maggie Dorodion. I am a writer, |
| 1:06.7 | teacher, and organizer based in Cambridge Massage Resets and I'm so excited to talk today |
| 1:12.5 | on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely, yeah. It's an honor to have you on the show. |
| 1:17.8 | I actually came across you as we'll talk about in this interview from a recent interview you did |
| 1:22.8 | on open source, which is I've been a long time listener of, and just listening to that overall |
| 1:28.0 | discussion and your contributions to it, I thought you'd be really interesting and a guest and |
| 1:32.6 | a perfect fit for our show here. So really appreciate you coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for having |
| 1:37.6 | me. Absolutely. So we're going to be talking about a lot of different stuff. But as I said, |
| 1:41.6 | we can start off in this direction, which is what you talked about on open source with Christopher |
| 1:47.2 | Lighten recently, because on that show you talked about being a sort of student of Lauren Berlant, |
| 1:53.1 | the author of cruel optimism among other things. So just to start off, can you talk about sort of who |
| 1:58.2 | Lauren was and what's your relationship to them was? And I know I don't know if you knew them |
| 2:03.1 | personally or not, but just take that question however you want. Sure, yeah. So I unfortunately did |
| 2:10.2 | not have the chance to get to know Lauren Berlant personally. I met them very briefly at a conference |
... |
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