Episode 134: On Federico Campagna's 'Technic and Magic'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2022

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality, the philosopher Federico Campagna argues that we moderns have exhausted the reality system we devised at the dawn of our age, a system he calls Technic. Technic has one goal: to reduce all things to language by naming, tagging, measuring, and quantifying them, by turning every parcel of the physical and psychic universe into a "unit" defined by its position in the system. The result has been an erasure of the mere "suchness" of things, the singularity of things simply existing as they are. To replace a worldview that is now revealing its endemic nihilism, Campagna proposes Magic, a way of seeing that reestablishes a balance between the measurable and the ineffable. JF and Phil discuss Campagna's magisterial performance in this episode. Listen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel Support us on Patreon Find us on Discord Get the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau! Get your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop SHOW NOTES Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic Bill Hicks, “Bit on Marketing” Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time Plotinus, Neoplatonist philosopher Francis Bacon, Irish artist Samuel Beckett, Irish author William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch Weird Stuides, Episode 87 on Arthur Machen Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.8	For more episodes or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdst. I'm J.F. Martel.
0:53.1	In Technic and Magic, the reconstruction of reality,
0:57.0	the philosopher Frederico Campagna argues that we moderns have exhausted the reality system we
1:03.0	devised at the dawn of our age, a system he calls Technic. Technic has only one goal,
1:09.6	to reduce all things to language by naming, tagging, measuring, and
1:14.3	quantifying them, turning every parcel of the physical and psychic universe into a unit
1:20.4	defined by its position in the system. The result has been the erasure of the mere suchness of
1:27.3	things, the singularity of things
1:29.4	simply existing as they are. To replace a worldview that is now revealing its endemic nihilism,
1:36.3	Campania proposes magic, a way of seeing that reestablishes a balance between the measurable
1:41.7	and the ineffable. What follows is a discussion of
1:45.5	Technic and Magic that Phil and I had last week. And I am recording this intro at a very late hour
1:52.4	after presenting a lecture for the neurolearning course that Phil and I are doing together,
1:58.0	weirding. You can look that up at neuralarning.com. So I am very tired.
2:03.6	And what I just did was simply read you the summary I wrote for the website. That's as much as I
2:10.3	can give you today. However, I am not so tired as to omit the obligatory Patreon pitch.
2:21.2	I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supports Weird Studies. We couldn't do this without you. It's for real. And we appreciate
2:27.2	all the support we get. If you are not a Patreon member, please consider joining and supporting Weird
2:33.8	Studies. We work very hard on each episode and we really appreciate it. If you are not a Patreon member, please consider joining and supporting weird studies.
	...

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