In Part 1 (see below), I proffer the conditions of the contemporary moment, what I'm calling the Age of the Argument. There is no clear source of truth, no ground of certainty: all there are are arguments. It's not that some are false and some true; it's that all of them make claims, all of them are "true." So how do we make decisions? That's the s…

Seeing is not neutral or natural: it is taught. As John Berger argued in his incredible, Ways of Seeing, men have a tendency to gaze at women, at life, with a certain will to penetrate, dominate, and such — the so-called 'male gaze.' To see is to be undone, necessarily. Seeing takes place in the middle voice. Ask yourself: is seeing active or passi…

This is part of one of a longer essay entitled, "Making Sense with Pleasure in the Age of the Argument." This part focuses on establishing what I mean by the Age of the Argument—and what I mean by an argument. An argument is not based on proof. In fact, arguments begin where proof leaves off. If there's proof, there's nothing to argue about! Argume…

Inspired by this great Erich Fromm quote, “Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice," I riff on taking acid, being in a relationship, meditation, the way capitalism coerces it all — and how to do it all differently.…

Not surprisingly, this documentary perpetuates the very problems it thinks its revealing.

Rather than a government and public discourse that navigate and legislate the good or profit, I want to imagine a government and public discourse dedicated to facilitating Nietzsche's great Yes — facilitating the ecstatic.

Often, when I get excited about an idea — Nietzsche's amor fati, Kierkegaard's knight of faith, Deleuze's fold, and now Guattari's machine — I am often met with a certain confusion by those around me. Their instinct is that whatever I'm saying is "academic" and hence of no real interest. Believe me, I understand such a reaction. But I believe it's …

Inspired by reading Félix Guattari, here I am trying to explain what an art machine is as distinct from Foucault's discourse, Marx's means of production, and Althusser's ideological hailing.

I try to bring Deleuze and Guattari's figure of the Body without Organs to life and discuss different modes of access — different drugs, S&M, and mostly yoga. And I play some Boredoms! Fun for the whole family.

There is no word, no thing, that is not always already being expressed. In the common view, we imagine words are these conveyors of preformed meaning that we hurl across the abyss separating me from you. But the expressive field is dense, saturated, multiple, and temporal.

How do different spaces distribute bodies? What things are asked of us? What energy is necessary to find our ease in a bar, a restaurant, a park, a clothing-optional spa? This is where power, place, and identity intersect in a collaborative event of creation. Discussed: Foucault, drinking alone, classrooms, city parks, naked hot springs (well, the …

This is a more personal podcast in which I try to reckon the romance of the solitary man — focusing on Kierkegaard's reading of Abraham and Issac in "Fear and Trembling" — with the very real tugs the human social — affection, grief, kindness. I begin by talking about how this jew spends his Christmas....…

This is the second part of a series in which I read the title of my new book, Reading the Way of Things. In this episode, I focus on how the phrase "The Way" functions. A way is an action, a trajectory, a mode of going. It is limited and yet emergent and infinite. I discuss Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai; the relationship between the infinite and…

I discuss why use the word "reading" in the title of my book (Reading the Way of Things). I reference the implications for writing and teaching writing; Deleuze's readings of things; the pleasure and power of reading as distinct from what we consider literacy.

As far as I can tell, everything is multiple — which shifts the demands of life. For if everything is in fact multiple, how do we articulate it? How do we seek it? Amplify it? The will to multiplicity is different than the will to the definitive; this will can be found in irony, in humor, in Monty Python, Louis CK, Clarice Lispector, Derrida, Deleu…

(Thoughts on my soon to be released book on Zero Books) Before we're even born, we are taught how to process the world. After all, we are prefigured in the womb as a baby soon to arrive as a child, as male or female, as having a name and parents. Which is to say, we come to this world already enmeshed in elaborate cultural institutions, discourses,…

Theory doesn't explain art; theory is art.

Some thoughts on the plenum and how the space between things is full, filled to the brim with forces that are social, local, global, cosmic all at once. With reference to Merleau-Ponty and online dating.

Watching The Graduate again recently, I was struck by the hilarity of youth thinking it understands life when it knows, we all know, our perspectives, feelings, horizon changes, relentlessly and necessarily — with some references to Gadamer and Bergson.

Sense is the way bodies cohere, or don't, in a perceptive field. Sense is not the meaning of an experience; sense is the meaning + the immediate affect + temperature + speed + intensity + color + shape and the diverse terms in which different bodies interact and cohere, more or less, with other bodies (visible, invisible, organic, machine, vegetal …