Philosophy Department 100th Anniversary
Penn State Penn State: College of the Liberal Arts
Make a Gift
Department of Philosophy
Search
Call for Paper for Hortense Spillers Workshop, November 30

Allison Savage

You are here:
Home
Allison Savage

Podcasts

Latest Epsiode

Featured

The Obsolescence of the Human: AI, Nuclear Weapons, and the Philosophy of Günther Anders

What does it mean to feel outclassed by your own creations? In this episode, host Craig is joined by Christopher John Müller, translator and co-editor of the new University of Minnesota Press edition of Günther Anders' The Obsolescence of the Human, and Penn State Philosophy Professor Nicholas de Warren, to explore the life and work of one of the twentieth century's most prescient and overlooked thinkers. Together, we unpack Anders' core concepts, including Promethean shame, the phantom world of mass media, and the shadow of nuclear annihilation, tracing their remarkable relevance to our present age of AI, algorithmic frictionlessness, and digital spectacle.

More Episodes

The Anarchist Imaginary: Nicolas de Warren on Glissant, Levinas, and a New Radical Ethics

Show

Plastic Ghosts and Trash Immortals: Our Afterlife as Waste' with Nicolas de Warren

Our quest for immortality is complete: we will live forever through our trash. Our penchant for plastic disposables in particular presents us with a future in which forms of life will remain haunted by human waste. What does the legacy of ‘homo detritus’ mean for humanity and the world?
Show

Fanon & Anders : On Revolution', an AHRC Public Panel Discussion

What if the revolution isn’t dead but instead was co-opted by reaction or technological progress itself? In this AHRC Public Panel, Nicolas de Warren and Tyrique Mack-Georges put Günther Anders and Frantz Fanon into unlikely dialogue, asking whether Fanon’s vision of a new, liberated humanity can survive a world Anders diagnosed as saturated by media technology to the point of human obsolescence. Together we trace how colonial logics of extraction and violence reappear in AI, data centers, and algorithmic warfare, and explore the thesis that today’s most effective “revolutionaries” may be the political right, who’ve mastered spectacle and disinformation while the left clings to outdated 19th-century models of praxis. The conversation ranges from Promethean shame and the collapse of truth/falsity to drone warfare, dividuated digital tribes, and whether class struggle still makes sense in a fully mediated world.
Show

Fanon and Sartre: Rethinking Praxis, Race, and Revolution with Tyrique Mack-Georges

What happens when the dialectic between Sartre and Fanon is not one of influence, but of mutual transformation? Today we’re live at Webster’s in State College with Tyrique Mack-Georges, who returns to the podcast to discuss his research on seriality, group infusion, and the possibility of a new humanity. Together, we explore how Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason illuminates Fanon’s revolutionary project, and how Fanon, in turn, reorients Sartre’s ethics. This is a conversation about stretching Marxism, confronting racial capitalism, and recovering the lost art of collective praxis.
Show

Identity on Credit: Ajax, Achilles, and the Modern Self with Fredrik Westerlund

What happens when the self we imagine drifts further from the one we actually live? In this episode, philosopher Fredrik Westerlund joins Craig and Nicholas de Warren to explore his concept of “identity on credit,” where our sense of self is built on promises yet to be realized. From Sophocles’ Ajax to Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Scheler, we trace how recognition, resentment, and failure shape the modern psyche. Together we ask whether it is possible to live beyond the creditor–debtor logic of identity.
Show