Acid Horizon

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Were the philosophers of the Kyoto School fascist collaborators, or were they meeting in secret with the Imperial Navy to try to stop a war? Fernando Wirtz and Takeshi Morisato join Craig for a primer on Japan's most influential and most contested philosophical tradition, from Nishida and Tanabe through Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka Jun. The conversation covers what "nothingness" actually means in Japanese thought and why it isn't Heidegger's, how Miki tried to collapse reason and unreason into a logic of imagination, and what tenkō, or forced ideological conversion, did to a generation of Marxist intellectuals. It closes on the newly surfaced Ōshima Memo and the question of what it costs to think under fascism.

Books mentioned in this episode

Miki Kiyoshi, The Logic of Imagination, translated by John W. M. Krummel (Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies)

Itabashi Yūjin, Nishitani's Philosophy of the Body (Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies)

Nishida Kitarō, An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyū)

By our guests

Ōhashi Ryōsuke, The Kyoto School and the Japanese Navy, translated by Takeshi Morisato (Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies, forthcoming)

Fernando Wirtz, Myth and Ideology: An Essay on Philosophy of Political Action in Japan (2023)

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Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com

AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives

Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com

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Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/
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Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com

​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

Fall/Autumn 2026 Courses at AHRC: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses

What do we really owe a stranger at the door, and what grounds that obligation? In this episode, Craig and Adam turn to Jacques Derrida's writing on hospitality to unpack Christopher Nolan's new adaptation of The Odyssey, tracing how xenia, the ancient Greek law of guest and host, becomes a lens for thinking through breaking Zeus's law, the massacre of the suitors, and the slow collapse of Bronze Age civilization. The conversation moves through Derrida's distinction between conditional and absolute hospitality, and what it means for a world where borders, asylum claims, and even hospitals have turned the promise of welcome into a catastrophe. It's Nolan's adaptation of Homer's epic read through Derrida: gods, guests, and the violence lurking underneath the oldest tablets of law.

'Does Psyche Matter?' Free AHRC public panel discussion: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast/posts/ahrc-free-public-166420416?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share
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AHRC

Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com

AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives

Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com

More Links

Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast
Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/
Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438

Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com

Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438
LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com

​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

Enroll in Bob's class coming soon: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses/p/jung-and-spinoza-god-affect-destiny

How does "heat" in Michael Mann's 1995 film Heat relate to concepts in Deleuze's The Logic of Sense? Craig is joined by Bob Langan, and Jay Conway to read Michael Mann's film through The Logic of Sense, tracing how cop and criminal, attachment and discipline, hot and cold, resonate across the film's Los Angeles backdrop. Along the way we touch on the professional monasticism of the antagonists, Mann's other films, Deleuze's work on detective novels, and novelist Edward Bunker, whose life and work anchor Jay's forthcoming book on confinement and escape.
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AHRC

Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com

AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives

Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com

More Links

Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast
Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/
Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438

Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com

Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438
LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com

​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

Watch the full discussion here: https://youtu.be/MwUJGWWFOSU

Join us for 'Fanon & Anders: On Revolution': https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast/posts/final-summer-on-164624401?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share

What does it mean when even compliance with the demands of the neoliberal university no longer guarantees institutional legitimacy or security? As universities become increasingly governed through financial imperatives, visa regimes, managerial restructurings, and strategic repositioning, what forms of university life become impossible? What survives beyond them? If the university increasingly appears unable to sustain the conditions for collective intellectual life, where does study go? What forms of inquiry exceed the university, and what kinds of institutions – or anti-institutions – might emerge in its wake? To discuss the capitalisation of the university and the future of study, Adam C. Jones of Acid Horizon Research Commons hosts a panel alongside theorists Stevphen Shukaitis, John Preston, Angela McRobbie, and Giovanni Mormont.

Link to Minor Compositions: https://www.minorcompositions.info/
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Support the podcast:

AHRC

Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com

AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives

Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com

More Links

Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast
Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/
Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438

Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com

Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438
LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com

​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

AHRC Classes are enrolling now: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses

Can a theory be so complete, so magistral, that it is dead on arrival?
That's the charge Baudrillard levels at Foucault in 'Forget Foucault', the 1977 book review that got him blacklisted from French theory and earned him the title "shame of the profession" from Deleuze. Cooper Cherry of Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour joins us to work through reversibility, seduction, the potlatch, and what Baudrillard thinks theory should actually be doing. We get into power, seduction, enucleation, courtly love, yearning versus craving, and Baudrillard's theory of fascism.
Listen to Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour: https://www.patreon.com/c/muhh/home

twitter: @unconscioushh
Support the show
Support the podcast:

AHRC

Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com

AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives

Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com

More Links

Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast
Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/
Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438

Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com

Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438
LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com

​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/