Episode 74: Democracy, Performance, Ritual

State of the Theory

This is Episode 74 of the State of the Theory Podcast. Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably. In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call. In the middle of the possible impeachment of Donald Trump, Penguin Random House has released the nine-page letter from the anonymous CIA whistleblower as an audio book, which you can listen to hear (https://soundcloud.com/penguin-audio/the-whistle-blower-complaint-released-by-the-house-intelligence-committee-9262019) This got us thinking about the importance of ritualised performance in our democracy. We talk about the performance of the Chilcot Report in Edinburgh in August 2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/aug/09/comedians-begin-edinburgh-recital-of-chilcot-report-iraq-out-and-loud) and the dramatization of the Muller report (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/its-the-end-of-my-presidency-movie-stars-channel-mueller) We use J.L. Austin, Mikhail Bakhtin and Victor Turner to think about the importance of performance, and its connection to our body politic. Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God) State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick (@drhfitz) and Anindya Raychaudhuri (@DrAnindyaR) Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @TheoryDoctors