Critique of the Podcast Form is a bi-weekly podcast by the Critical Theory Working Group about Critical Theory, socialism, philosophy, Marxism, social theory, and everything in between. New episodes featuring the rotating cast of hosts and guests are posted every other Thursday. Visit https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/ (https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/) for writing and updates.
Episode 30: Sappho, Diotima and the Mysteries of Eros
Esther joins Mac to perform a dialectic between Sappho and Diotima and look at the relationship between the account of desire given in Sappho's poems and the mysteric figure of Diotima in Plato's Symposium. Along the way, they get into the thorny questions of Platonic authorship, whether Diotima is meant to recuperate Sapphic desire for a patriarchal philosophical project, what effects this might have had on the history of thought, and much more.
Episode readings:
If not, winter : fragments of Sappho translated by Ann Carson https://archive.org/details/ifnotwinterfragm0000sapp (https://archive.org/details/ifnotwinterfragm0000sapp)
Plato, The Symposium https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm)
Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato's Symposium, Diotima's Speech
Luce Irigaray and Eleanor H. Kuykendall https://www.jstor.org/stable/3809786 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3809786)
Graze M. Janzen, Foundations of Violence: Death and the Displacement of Beauty
‘All human beings are pregnant’
The bisexual imaginary in Plato’s Symposium
Stella Sandford https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/all-human-beings-are-pregnant (https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/all-human-beings-are-pregnant)
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16 Oct 2026
Episode 29: Ibn Sina and Materialism
In this episode, our islamogauchist subset discusses Ernst Bloch's gripping work Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left. On Bloch's account, the history of materialism inherits a problem from Aristotle out of which two opposing lineages emerge: a clerical right-wing that weaponizes the afterlife against feudal European class-society, and a left-wing inaugurated by Islamic Enlightenment figures Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. Why should Marxists care? Does naturalism make us better communists? How can historical materialism account for hope? Let us leave you with a Maoist proverb: There's chaos under the heavens, the situation is excellent!
Episode reading:
Ernst Bloch. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left. Translated by Loren Goldman and Peter Thompson. Columbia University Press, 2019.
Recommend readings:
Cat Moir. Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism: Ontology, Epistemology, Politics. Historical Materialism Book Series 202. Brill, 2019.
Charles T Wolfe., and John Symons. The History and Philosophy of Materialism. Rewriting the History of Philosophy. Routledge, 2025.
Henk de Berg and Cat Moir, eds. Rethinking Ernst Bloch. Historical Materialism Book Series, volume 300. Brill, 2024.
Karam AbuSehly. “Avicenna on Matter: Implications for Ernst Bloch’s Marxist Aesthetics.” ReOrient 3, no. 1 (2017): 4–22.
Tapji Garba. 2020. “Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left, by Ernest Bloch, Trans. Loren Goldman and Peter Thompson”. Arc: The Journal of the School of Religious Studies 48 (December):149–152
If you want to support the show, donate to our Patreon, and visit our website for writing and updates
Follow our socials:
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2 Oct 2026
Bonus: Debrief Margin Notes 2, Excavations
Critics & theorists, this is a bonus episode containing a recording of the presentation and discussion of “Excavations (https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/assets/pdf/journal/Margin_notes_2_final_full.pdf),”, the second volume of our E-Journal Margin Notes: A Journal of Critical Theory, which took place on zoom on the 19th September.
The link to the journal: https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/projects/3_project/ (https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/projects/3_project/)
If you want to support the show, donate to our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/crittheoryworkgroup), and visit our website for writing and updates (https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/)
Follow our socials:
Twitter (https://x.com/crit_theory_grp) | @crit_theory_grp
Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/crittheoryworkgrp.bsky.social) | @crittheoryworkgrp.bsky.social (http://crittheoryworkgrp.bsky.social)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/criticaltheoryworkinggroup) | @criticaltheoryworkinggroup
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