Episode 5: Reading Lisa Ruddick’s ”When Nothing is Cool”

Phil and JF discuss Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool," an essay on the postmodern humanities and its allergy to essences -- especially that personal essence we call soul. Maybe the soul is a heap of miscellaneous notions and influences that I paint a face onto and then call "me." Or maybe there is something under that painted effigy of the self. If so, what? And if there's nothing under there, could it be a nothing that delivers? WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE Lisa Ruddick, "When Nothing is Cool" (https://thepointmag.com/2015/criticism/when-nothing-is-cool) Elizabeth Gilbert, "Your Elusive Creative Genius" (https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius) Judith Halberstam, "Skinflick: Posthuman Gender in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs" (https://read.dukeupress.edu/camera-obscura/article-abstract/9/3%20(27)/36/31508/Skinflick-Posthuman-Gender-in-Jonathan-Demme-s-The?redirectedFrom=fulltext) Daniel Chua (http://www.music.hku.hk/daniel_chua.html#books) (the musicologist whose name Phil couldn't remember) Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho (https://www.amazon.com/American-Psycho-Bret-Easton-Ellis/dp/0679735771) Mary Harron, American Psycho (film) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho_(film)) David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return (http://www.sho.com/twin-peaks)