On (Not) Guilty Pleasures

In this episode of the Podcast for Social Research, BISR Core Faculty members Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Suzanne Schneider, and Rebecca Ariel Porte mull the case of the guilty pleasure: what does this phrase mean? What kinds of pleasures (if any) qualify as guilty? What are alternative models for thinking about our conflicted pleasures in cultural objects? How to rule on the defendant pleasure: guilty, not guilty, or a plea of no contest? Case studies range from country music to games, teen dramas, science fiction, and Romantic poetry. 

Om Podcasten

From Plato to quantum physics, Walter Benjamin to experimental poetry, Frantz Fanon to the history of political radicalism, The Podcast for Social Research is a crucial part of our mission to forge new, organic paths for intellectual work in the twenty-first century: an ongoing, interdisciplinary series featuring members of the Institute, and occasional guests, conversing about a wide variety of intellectual issues, some perennial, some newly pressing. Each episode centers on a different topic and is accompanied by a bibliography of annotations and citations that encourages further curiosity and underscores the conversation’s place in a larger web of cultural conversations.