RU178: PROFESSOR TODD MCGOWAN ON HITCHCOCK, BREAKING BAD, PSYCHOANALYSIS, FILM, POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY
Rendering Unconscious episode 178.
This episode now available at Rendering Unconscious at Substack.
On this episode of Rendering Unconscious, I sat down with one of my favorite guests, Todd McGowan.
Todd discusses the book he’s writing on right-wing and left-wing enjoyment and the class he’s teaching on Breaking Bad, which he finds challenging due to the mismatch between the show’s themes and the readings on ethics. He mentions using philosophers like Kant, Peter Singer, and Martha Nussbaum, but finds Nussbaum’s book on anger and forgiveness unsuitable. I share my experience reading Bryan Cranston’s memoir and note the lack of likable characters in Breaking Bad. We also discuss the impact of technology on social interactions, the role of language in psychoanalysis, and the challenges of teaching and analyzing in the digital age.
Professor Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Universality and Identity Politics (2020), Emancipation after Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (2019), Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy (2017), Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (2016), Contemporary Film Directors: Spike Lee (2014), The Fictional Christopher Nolan (2013), Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis (2013), The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan (2007), and The Impossible David Lynch (2007).
With Ryan Engley, he hosts the podcast Why Theory?
McGowan contributed a chapter “The sex in their violence: eroticizing biopower” to the anthology On Psychoanalysis and Violence: Contemporary Lacanian Perspectives (Routledge, 2018) edited by Vanessa Sinclair and Manya Steinkoler.
