Poststructuralist Tent Revival Podcast: Philosophy Outside Academia

Podcasts have been an indispensably important resource for my own philosophical education. I attended a small, religious undergraduate institution where we had exactly one philosophy professor. That’s right, our entire department of philosophy was one person. Granted, that one professor taught me a lot about how to read figures like Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, but it was years into my degree before I had even heard of figures like Gilles Deleuze, Franz Fanon, or Luce Irigaray, much less read them. It was at a meeting of the South Carolina Society for Philosophy that I met Professor Aaron Simmons, a scholar of continental philosophy of religion, who promptly introduced me to names like Karl Marx and Jacques Derrida, and to modes of reading like deconstruction, phenomenology, and critical theory. The small Bible College that I attended did not have much in the way of studying Derridean theory. Indeed, many of these thinkers were frowned upon, if not outright rejected as an active threat to the spiritual lives of the students, but I had been bitten by the continental-philosophy-bug, and so I actively sought out digital resources for educating myself.

Soon, I discovered the work of Jack Caputo through a podcast, Tripp Fuller’s Homebrewed Christianity. Caputo’s many hours of interviews on that show became a way of access into continental philosophy of religion. Other guests like Catherine Keller, Phil Clayton, and Merold Westphal continued to expand the range of thought that became available to me. From there, I found other podcasts that touched on continental philosophy like Partially Examined Life and The Catacombic Machine. Needless to say, podcasts have always been a vitally important supplement to my education in philosophical theology.

As I began my graduate studies at Villanova, I continued to pour myself into learning continental philosophy of religion. I helped organize a conference, “The End of Religion? Faith in a Postmodern Age,” that brought together many of the voices that I had initially encountered during my time doing undergraduate work and through podcasts (Aaron Simmons and Jack Caputo, for example). Additionally, I started a podcast through the Department of Theology and Religious Studies entitled Theology in Dialogue. It was on that show that Eric Aldieri and I had our first podcasting collaboration. After a few seasons, I handed off Theology in Dialogue to members of the incoming cohort.

During the summer of 2018, a particularly relaxed one for me, I began to feel an itch to start another digital project. I flirted with YouTube and blogging, but decided that, ultimately, podcasting was the most accessible, efficient, and entertaining medium for hosting philosophical and theological conversations. I immediately remembered the collaboration that Eric and I had done on Theology in Dialogue, and recruited him for the project. We discussed various names and concepts for launching the show, and ultimately we decided on Poststructuralist Tent Revival (PTR), a slightly-tongue-in-cheek title that captures the continental-philosophical bent of the show along with its emphasis on theology and religious studies. I got permission from the Luxury Cloud Service label to use their music, commissioned a friend to do the logo, created an RSS feed on Soundcloud, and set up the proverbial Patreon page, and soon enough, Poststructuralist Tent Revival began recording and distributing weekly conversations. With the addition of Paula Landerreche Cardillo as a permanent cohost last month, the show achieved its current incarnation.

Our podcast focuses on a very particular nexus of disciplines: continental philosophy, theology, and religious studies. In reality, though, the conversations are even more acutely shaped by the peculiar exchange that is unfolding between Eric, Paula and I. The podcast documents this unfolding and invites listeners to read along and think with us, as well as leave feedback through reviews on iTunes, interaction on social media, and joining us for sporadic Patreon seminars (which are later uploaded onto YouTube). Focusing on the idiosyncrasies of our intellectual friendship allows us to track themes that are interesting to us, that might not be readily available in a university setting (i.e. magic, hermeticism, vitalism) and allows us to cover whatever it is that we deem important or interesting without questions of canon or fittingness. We’ve had discussions, for example, on topics as diverse as indigeneity, intersectional feminism, psychoanalysis, fourth-century demonology, and panentheistic process theology. Additionally, we frequently invite guests, including, for example, Tonisha Begay, Jack Caputo, Kat Kurtz, Tad DeLay, Aly Thomas, Aaron Simmons, Tripp Fuller, and Justin Leavitt. Without concern for a particular program, we hope to show that these conversations need not be at odds with each other. Rather, something is emerging, episode by episode, that has its own logic, its own feeling. We refer to it, in shorthand, as Poststructuralist Tent Revival, but perhaps it is something more than just our show, perhaps it is a living demonstration of an approach to philosophy and/or theology, an approach that we hope to embody, but that we don’t quite know how to express. In other words, the show is an experiment in doing philosophy.

Poststructuralist Tent Revival functions for us like a casual, never-ending symposium among friends. Through the show, we hope to provide resources for people, much like myself during my undergraduate program, who are seeking out supplementary resources (or even primary resources) to enrich their lives through philosophy and theology. We aim to create the setting, week-to-week, for philosophical and theological thinking to happen, for insight to occur, but also to have fun, catch up, and keep a running tab of inside jokes that we and our listeners seem to appreciate (banana pudding, “hot damn”, etc.). Anyone who has listened to PTR knows that seriousness is not a primary concern of ours, but we hope that this facilitates the project of the show by situating philosophical and theological thought within a context of genuine friendship. I really do believe that, in Pierre Hadot’s words, philosophy is a way of life, that it is a practice, and that even sporadic encounters with philosophical, theological, and religious ideas can change one’s world. I also believe that the podcast medium provides unique occasions for this practice to happen, and for new communities to coalesce around these conversations.

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Instagram handle: @ptrpodcast

Twitter handle: @podcastptr

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PTRPodcast

Mailing List: https://poststructuralisttentrevival.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=7d3baa0109d214ca7ed658a3d&id=8651fc93e6

Eric Aldieri is a graduate student at DePaul University in Chicago. He holds a BA in Philosophy & Humanities from Villanova University, and currently works at the intersection of poststructuralism, feminist theory, and ethics.

Paula Landerreche Cardillo is a graduate student at DePaul University in Philosophy. She did her undergraduate work in Mexico City and received an MA in Philosophy and Psychoanalytic Theory at The New School for Social Research, NYC. Paula is also a dancer, which informs her philosophical research. She is always looking for new ways to think the body, as well as new ways to challenge philosophical frameworks that are built upon a fundamental neglect of the body. Her research on these topics is always tied to a feminist critique of philosophical discourse and western ontological, ethical and political frameworks.

Jacob Given

Jacob Given is a graduate student at Villanova University. His interests are at the intersection of systematic theology and spirituality. He is particularly interested in thematizing the act of systematic theologizing as itself a kind of spiritual exercise, dissolving hard boundaries between theory and practice. He is currently researching and writing on the communication strategies of the Danish philosopher and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard.