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Politics and Letters

Politics and Letters

By Cris Francach

A podcast about politics and literature
Currently playing episode

Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh & Kerron Ó'Luain: The Irish Civil War

Politics and LettersJan 03, 2023

00:00
01:08:27
Chris Beausang, Tunnel of Toads

Chris Beausang, Tunnel of Toads

Interview

Mar 05, 202443:09
Liam McNulty, James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist and Internationalist

Liam McNulty, James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist and Internationalist

Conversation with Liam McNulty about his book James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist and Internationalist, a critical biography of the great Irish socialist revolutionary, out from Merlin Press.


Tunes:


Frank Harte - James Connolly

Liam Weldon - James Connolly

Feb 02, 202447:53
Chris Beausang: Tunnel of Toads
Nov 29, 202323:13
The Russian Revolution II: Germany, Poland and Russia in the Second International

The Russian Revolution II: Germany, Poland and Russia in the Second International

Further Reading

Broué, Pierre. The German Revolution 1917 - 1923. Haymarket Books, 2005.

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky, The One-Volume Edition. Verso, 2015.

——, Stalin: A Political Biography. Vintage Books, 1960.

FitzPatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2008.

International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald, ‘Manifesto’. Marxists.org, 1915. https://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/zimmerwald/manifesto-1915.htm

Kołakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown. W.W. Norton & Company, 2005.

Kotkin, Stephen. Stalin: Paradoxes of Power: 1878 - 1928. Penguin, 2015.

Liedman, Sven-Eric. A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx. Verso, 2018.

Lenin, Vladimir. Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. Marxists.org, 2008. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/index.htm#ep-s3

Luxemburg, Rosa, The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg Volume I: Economic Writings 1. Verso, 2014.

——, The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg Volume II: Economic Writings 2. Verso, 2016.

——. Reform or Revolution. Marxists.org, 1999. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm

——, ‘The Revolution in Russia’. Marxists.org, 2000. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1905/02/08.htm

Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Programme.

Nettl, J.P. Rosa Luxemburg. Verso, 2019.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising. Indiana University Press, 1991.

Salvadori, Massimo. Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution 1880- 1939. Verso, 1990.

Smith, S.A.. Russia in Revolution: Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928. Oxford University Press, 2018.

The Social Democratic Party of Germany, The Erfurt Programme. Marxists.org, 1891. https://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm

Trotsky, Leon. 1905. Wellred Books, 2017.

——. History of the Russian Revolution. Penguin, 2017.

——, Trotsky on Lenin. WellRed Books, 2017.

Wilson, Edmund. To The Finland Station. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.

Nov 14, 202301:05:05
Sam Slote: Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses
Oct 30, 202357:33
The Russian Revolution I: Hegel, Marx and the First International

The Russian Revolution I: Hegel, Marx and the First International

First part of a 6 / 7 part lecture series on the Russian Revolution going from the Enlightenment to the Paris Commune.


07:27: My bad explanation of Kant ends.

14:20: My bad explanation of Hegel ends.


I think I was sick of recording towards the end, you can hear it in my voice a bit.


Further Reading


Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. Verso, 2018.

Engels, Friedrich. Anti-Dühring. Wellred Books, 2017.

——. The Origin of Private Property, Family and the State. Penguin, 2010.

Hibbert, Christopher. The French Revolution. Penguin, 1980.

Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789 - 1848. Abacus, 2010.

Kołakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown. W.W. Norton & Company, 2005.

Liedman, Sven-Eric. A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx. Verso, 2018.

Mandel, Ernest. The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx 1843 to Capital. Verso, 2015.

Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume I. Penguin, 1990.

——. Capital: Volume II. Penguin, 1991.

——. Capital: Volume III. Penguin, 1992.

——. Civil War in France: The Paris Commune. International Publishers, 2008.

——. Class Struggles in France 1848 - 1850. International Publishers, 1997. 

Wilson, Edmund. To The Finland Station. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.



Oct 23, 202301:03:43
The Russian Revolution: Introduction

The Russian Revolution: Introduction

Strategic aims and outline of what I hope to achieve

Oct 23, 202303:16
Thomas Pynchon's California Novels: The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland and Inherent Vice

Thomas Pynchon's California Novels: The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland and Inherent Vice

'Good American writers know their job has something to do with interrogating the spiritual poverty of the nation'.


Tunes

Bob Dylan's 115th Dream - Bob Dylan

The Big Stick - Minutemen

Hallelujah I'm a Bum - Barbara Dane


Works Cited / Further Reading

Curtis, Adam. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. BBC, 2011.

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. Verso, 2018.

——. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. Verso, 2018.

——, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class. Verso, 2018.

—— and Jon Weiner. Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties. Verso, 2020.

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Marxists.org, 1967.

Elba, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. Verso, 2018.

Harris, Malcolm. Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. Little Brown, 2023.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Clarendon Press, 1988.

Jameson, Frederic. The Antinomies of Realism. Verso, 2013.

Kinzer, Stephen. Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. Holt, 2019.

Mair, Peter. Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. Verso, 2013.

O’Neill, Tom. Chaos: The Truth Behind the Manson Murders. Penguin, 2019.

Panitch, Leo and Gindin, Sam. The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of the American Empire. Verso, 2013.

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day.

—, Bleeding Edge.

—, The Crying of Lot 49.

—, Gravity’s Rainbow.

—, Inherent Vice.

—, Mason & Dixon.

—, V.

—, Vineland.

Sheehan, Helena. Navigating the Zeitgeist: A Story of the Cold War, the New Left, Irish Republicanism, and International Communism. Monthly Review Press, 2019.

Steinbeck, John. In Dubious Battle.

Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Underwood, Ted. Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change. University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Watt, Ian. Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. University of California Press, 2001.

Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, Old Street Publishing, 2015.

Oct 15, 202301:08:39
Tom Roseingrave: Frustrated Writer's Group Vol. 1

Tom Roseingrave: Frustrated Writer's Group Vol. 1

A transmission previously broadcast on Dublin Digital Radio with Tom Roseingrave speaking on the publication of the Frustrated Writer's Group zine (Volume 1), with recorded contributions from the zine's contributors: Clíodhna Breathnach, Emily Featherman, Baxter King-Epping, Molly May O'Leary, Carina nic Giolla Phádraig, Katy Finnegan, Cian Booth and Sophia Malaika.


Music from Kool A.D., Liam Ó Maonlaí, Ice Spice, Rosalía & Rauw Alejandro, MIKE and Moodyman.

Sep 03, 202301:03:05
Joe Cleary: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland

Joe Cleary: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland

A conversation with Joe Cleary about his book Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland, a collection of essays engaging with Irish culture from the time of the literary revival, through the Free State and postwar periods to the Celtic Tiger.

Joe Cleary is a professor of English in Yale University, where he teaches on modernism, Irish, postcolonial and world literatures. More recently he has published Modernism, Empire, World Literature (2021) and The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization (2021). 

The sound quality here is a bit shagged for the first ten minutes or so but it picks up after, my apologies.

Jul 17, 202301:27:48
Odrán de Bhaldraithe: Neglect in the North of Ireland
Jun 20, 202349:46
Sinéad Kennedy: Repeal the Eighth

Sinéad Kennedy: Repeal the Eighth

A conversation with Sinéad Kennedy about the history of Irish feminism, the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment from the Irish constitution, and the distinct ways in which the politics of liberation in Ireland have been inflected by Ireland's unique position within the world system.

This episode was inspired to a large extent by Dr Camilla FitzSimons' book Repealed: Ireland's Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights, which is available here from Pluto Press.

An episode of Pluto Press' Radicals in Conversation consisting of a conversation between Camilla, Sinéad and Ruth Coppinger about the campaign is available here.

Sinéad Kennedy is a senior university tutor in Maynooth University's Department of English. She has written and published widely on struggles for reproductive rights, Marxism, political theory and Irish literature. In 2013 she founded the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment with feminist activist and lecturer Ailbhe Smyth.



May 22, 202301:25:43
Conor McCarthy: Edward Said
Mar 14, 202301:23:46
Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh & Kerron Ó'Luain: The Irish Civil War

Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh & Kerron Ó'Luain: The Irish Civil War

An interview with the historians Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh & Kerron Ó'Luain about the Irish Civil War, originally broadcast on Nervous State.


Leabhar Ó'Luain: https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2019/rathcoole-and-the-united-irish-rebellions/

Blag Mac Bloscaidh: https://blosc.wordpress.com

Nervous State: https://listen.dublindigitalradio.com/resident/nervous-state

Jan 03, 202301:08:27