The Pythian School of Futures is a podcast series by Avenir Institute that critically examines outdated conceptions of the future to produce plural, inclusive and participatory understandings of it. The title refers to the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi that served as its oracle. Denis Maksimov poses questions on ambivalent factors with definitive impacts on our collective future such as normality, state politics, futurology, historiography, and language.
Podcast Overview
The Pythian School of Futures is a podcast series by Avenir Institute that critically examines outdated conceptions of the future to produce plural, inclusive and participatory understandings of it. The title refers to the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi that served as its oracle. Denis Maksimov poses questions on ambivalent factors with definitive impacts on our collective future such as normality, state politics, futurology, historiography, and language.
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Publishing Since
11/20/2020
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Recent Episodes
June 23, 2021
Episode 7: Critical Ideography
<p><strong>In this episode of Pythian School of Futures, Denis Maksimov presents critical ideography, a method with emancipatory potential to build languages within languages. Analyzing the impact of linguistics and semiotics on subjective thinking, Maksimov disavows taking established meanings of the words and images for granted. As a form of insurgency against a predetermined future built by what is deemed fixed or given, he proposes to employ language as a hacking tool to subvert our collective mindset. The episode is a call to coin new words, generate alternative meanings, and modify existing ones to liberate languages and therefore ourselves.</strong></p> <p><strong>Ideography is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. McGee uses the term in his seminal article “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology” which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1980. McGee explains ideography as “political language which manifests ideology seems characterized by slogans, a vocabulary of ‘ideographs’ easily mistaken for the technical terminology of political philosophy.” An ideograph or rhetoric is a word frequently used in political discourse that uses an abstract concept to develop support for political positions. An ideograph in rhetoric often exists as a building block or simply one term or short phrase that summarizes the orientation or attitude of an ideology. Such examples notably include liberty, freedom, democracy, justice. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideograph_(rhetoric)"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideograph_(rhetoric)</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, rhetoric played a central role in Western education in training orators, lawyers, counselors, historians, statesmen, and poets. Rhetoric is also used in the construction of true arguments, or in identifying what is relevant, the crux of the matter, in a selection of true but otherwise trivial statements. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>Michael Calvin McGee was the first rhetorical theorist to propose the concept of ideograph, which he described as, "an ordinary-language term found in political discourse. McGee had many major contributions in the realm of rhetoric and in cultural studies. He published three major works: Rhetoric in Postmodern America, The Ideograph: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology, and Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Calvin_McGee"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Calvin_McGee</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>Donald John Trump is an American media personality and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and was elected in a close victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote. He was the first U.S. president without prior military or government service. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump</strong></u></a></p> <p><br></p>
April 10, 2021
Episode 6: Anticipation
<p><strong>The new episode of Pythian School of Futures focuses on our shared obsession with anticipation. The host of the series, Denis Maksimov reflects on the urge to calculate the consequences of any action or event to take place in the future. It unpacks emotions involving pleasure or anxiety while awaiting or considering outcomes of an expected occurrence. What kind of feelings arise while potentiality becomes actuality? Why is anticipation such an essential part of every decision-making process? How does anticipation differ from forecasting or prediction? Maksimov invites listeners to contemplate whether we have any space left for spontaneity in our lives.</strong></p> <p><u><strong>Episode Notes:</strong></u></p> <p><strong>The word dynamo (from the Greek word dynamis, meaning force or power) was originally another name for an electrical generator and still has some regional usage as a replacement for the word generator. Dynamos were the first electrical generators capable of delivering power for industry, and the foundation upon which many other later electric-power conversion devices were based, including the electric motor, the alternating-current alternator, and the rotary converter. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>"Actuality" comes from Latin its meaning is "anything which is currently happening". </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality#Actuality"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality#Actuality</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>Potentiality and potency are translations of the Ancient Greek word dunamis as it is used by Aristotle as a concept contrasting with actuality. Its Latin translation is "potentia", the root of the English word potential,. Dunamis is an ordinary Greek word for possibility or capability. Depending on context, it could be translated "potency", "potential", "capacity", "ability", "power", "capability", "strength", "possibility", "force" and is the root of modern English words "dynamic", "dynamite", and "dynamo". In early modern philosophy, English authors like Hobbes and Locke used the English word "power" as their translation of Latin potentia. The concept of potentiality refers to any "possibility" that a thing can be said to have. Aristotle did not consider all possibilities the same and emphasized the importance of those that become real of their own accord when conditions are right and nothing stops them. Actuality, in contrast to potentiality, is the motion, change, or activity that represents an exercise or fulfillment of a possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>The concept of an archetype appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that other statements, patterns of behavior, and objects copy, emulate, or "merge" into. Informal synonyms frequently used for this definition include "standard example," "basic example," and the longer-form "archetypal example;" mathematical archetypes often appear as "canonical examples." </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>Produced by Lara Huz | </strong></p> <p><strong>Sound Production by Barış Tan | </strong></p> <p><strong>Music by Arsan Sağlar</strong></p> <p><br></p> <p><br></p> <p><br></p>
March 13, 2021
Episode 5: State of Noland
<p><strong>This episode of Pythian School of Futures sets off to envision a form of state which neither occupies land nor holds borders. The title of the episode refers to a project done by the Avenir Institute in which artists aim to bypass the bureaucratic convention of naturalization. The symbolic protocol to obtain citizenship does not require any paperwork but paying a visit to the website of the state: </strong><a href="http://www.stateofnoland.info/"><u><strong>www.stateofnoland.info</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>The host of the podcast, Denis Maksimov puts the concept of state under scrutiny to discover how the outdated notion of statehood could be redefined according to the needs of the new world that is to come. He dives into speculative future scenarios to pose questions about how states could be useful rather than forceful.</strong></p> <p><u><strong>Episode Notes:</strong></u></p> <p><strong>The first article within the statement of principles describes the state of noland as a state of mind not aligned with any geopolitical entity and a state-after-state, a constellation of practices that replace political monopolies. The statement of principles are available at: https://www.stateofnoland.info/statement-of-principles</strong></p> <p><strong>The nation-state is an ideal in which cultural boundaries match up with political boundaries. According to one definition, "a nation-state is a sovereign state of which most of its subjects are united also by factors which define a nation such as a language or common descent." It is a more precise concept than "country" since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>The process in which a notionally non-European subject (be it a culture, a language, a city, or a nation) adopts several European features (often related to Westernization). Europeanisation in political science has been referred to very generally as 'becoming more European like'. More specifically than this, it has been defined in several ways. One of the earliest conceptualizations of the term is by Ladrech (1994, 69), who defines Europeanisation simply as ‘an incremental process of re-orienting the direction and shape of politics to the extent that EC political and economic dynamics become part of the organizational logic of national politics and policymaking.’ </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europeanisation"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europeanisation</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan. The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)</strong></u></a></p> <p><strong>Rhizome as a philosophical concept was developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972–1980) project. It is what Deleuze calls an "image of thought", based on the botanical rhizome, that apprehends multiplicities. Deleuze and Guattari use the terms "rhizome" and "rhizomatic" to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy)"><u><strong>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy)</strong></u></a></p> <p><br></p> <p><br></p>
8 total episodes available
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