Mariella talking openly GC stuff now on times radio

[MorrisZapp]

Open and honest chat. Refreshing.

I actually agree with Ash 😱

I've switched to Times Radio. I cancelled my licence fee direct debit last month turned off Radio 4 and listened to Talk Radio but its too full on for me so I switched to Times. Openly GC.

because really over the last 40 years, particularly in Britain and America, is the institutions which produced class consciousness; trade unions, council housing, heavy industry - they've all really disintegrated and what we've been left with to understand the world around us and power dynamics, which do exist, are these sort of floating cultural signifiers that we've got to latch onto and create a narrative out of

To contextualise it - and I agree with it by the way - as there is some support for Ash's bashing of the academy, this is the foundational premise of much, if not all, poststructural and postmodern philosophy. It actually is an approach to understanding social relations that only arose in university philosophy departments in the developed West.

I'm not entirely in agreement that the break down of the industrial society is why identity has become the funnel for the political discourse. I think that is more rooted in the predominant focus on the self that became particularly pronounced from the Enlightenment onwards and in which the individual's ability to reason gave them subjectivity (as in sense of self) and agency (Descartes/Kant etc). It precedes the post-industrial social structure by several hundred years. Early 20th century thought ('modern') often considered the self as produced by the material social structures in which people lived. The poststructuralists, as this traditional ordering started to break down after WW2, start to look at how text and signifiers (less defined structures) produce the subject.

The Times has set itself up to steal readers/ listeners from the Guardian and Radio 4. I hate Murdoch and all he stands for but they've read the situation right. The Guardian and the BBC have gone off to Wokingham leaving the majority of their critical-thinking customers behind, wondering what the hell happened to the media they loved. The Times has seized the opportunity to entice us in. You can see from all the openly GC conversations on LBC and Times radio that they know the majority of people haven't been fooled by TRAs. They wouldn't keep raising the issue if it didn't go down well with listeners.

I'm gutted. I was once Guardian and BBC forever. Now I feel I'm watching both commit slow suicide and leaving me with no option to take up with Murdoch.

@Shedbuilder

The Times has set itself up to steal readers/ listeners from the Guardian and Radio 4. I hate Murdoch and all he stands for but they've read the situation right. The Guardian and the BBC have gone off to Wokingham leaving the majority of their critical-thinking customers behind, wondering what the hell happened to the media they loved. The Times has seized the opportunity to entice us in. You can see from all the openly GC conversations on LBC and Times radio that they know the majority of people haven't been fooled by TRAs. They wouldn't keep raising the issue if it didn't go down well with listeners.

I'm gutted. I was once Guardian and BBC forever. Now I feel I'm watching both commit slow suicide and leaving me with no option to take up with Murdoch.

Agreed. I'm a bit heartbroken that the BBC and Guardian have moved to such an extreme position, and left me here wondering what women did to deserve their contempt.

Sorry for thread derail and tiresome question, but I've been wondering for a while if I can listen to times radio on my kitchen radio and how I'd go about it? Too much faff opening the page on my laptop all the time.

If your kitchen radio is a DAB radio then you can tune it to Times radio. If it's an old-school radio you can't. Same applies to all the other radios in your house.

Remember Beyond the Fragments by Sheila Rowbotham, Hilary Wainwright and Lynn Segal? Well , since the collapse of industry , trades unions and any real opposition to the City and corporations, we are clinging onto the Fragments ie identity politics and cheap gestures. I think this is what Ash Sarkar is saying?

@Gwynfluff The Derrida problem...

You need a Dab+ radio to listen to Times Radio. I've bought one and now listen to TR almost all the time. In the past I had R4 on in the background but increasingly found myself switching it off. It saddens me what has happened to the BBC. I do hope the new DG gets a grip.

@ARoombaOfOnesOwn

I like MC but, when he had Janice Turner on with Matthew Parris a few months ago, and they discussed TRAs, Matt just laughed when Janice was describing some of the madness. He didn't take the threat to women's rights seriously at all, and MP was (predictably) all "But why can't women just be kind"?

Completely agree. And Janice Turner was really on form in that interview. I too like MC but it made you realise men just don’t care.

Man here. Got booted from 2 FB pages and a Messenger chat group. I objected to a tweet someone shared implying that JK only returned her prize because she was going to lose it anyway. In the chat group I was the only guy active. The others are all women and include a lesbian. She is in a LTR with kids. So possibly insulated from the havoc trans people are inflicting on lesbians spaces etc. I'm an older straight man but was ' peaked ' some time ago by speaking to younger , especially gay , people.

Jhuizinga thanks I assumed it was through some kind of app or online, or for subscribers to times. Didn't realize it was an actual radio station on the radio!
This conversation sounds great. I will have to find it on catchup sometime - assume the programs are available online like BBC radio are.

Grybfluff I think you are right. There are lots of things going on that have produced what we are seeing now - but it does seem to me to be be the next phase in the history of the /rise of the individuslist self. Someone should put it in that long context, and I'm not sure anyone has.

since the collapse of industry , trades unions and any real opposition to the City

All of those structures replicated sex-based inequality. So I’ve absolutely no rose tinted specs that it was any better then.

next phase in the history of the /rise of the individuslist self

It’s a particularly Western concept and underpins our philosophic tradition, its really not the next phase.

I’m with Jane Clare Jones on this stuff - post-structuralists like Foucault (dead), Kristeva (still alive), Irigaray would not recognise this working of the self. There’s no authentic or essential self in their work and the subject is contingent on a plurality of social forces.

There are some theorists who try to envision how social movements and political alliances can form with out the old class based structures. They’ve been writing for decades.

"It’s a particularly Western concept and underpins our philosophic tradition, its really not the next phase." Sorry I'm not sure how you get to its really not the next phase?

No I agree that faucault et al wouldnt recognise this version of the self from whaf I know. But I was referring to what you said in your earlier post - pointing to the origins of enlightenment thinking. There's a v rich 'history if the self' sub discipline of history, not only focusing on philosophical texts. 18th century seems to be an important period in the development of this western concept. I think now might also be. But I think I am getting off topic. I will have to listen to the Prog!

I just meant it’s always been a phase in Western thought and then played out in politics, social structure, art etc. I agree I find some aspects of identify politics solipsistic to the extreme! It might resurge in the dominant social/cultural discourse but it’s not a new phase of western history as it’s been there for several hundred years already.