State Of The Theory

This is Episode 3 of the State of the Theory Podcast. Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably. In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call. In this episode, we focus on the industry surrounding Valentine's Day. Using the work of Laruen Berlant, Michael Warner, Karl Marx, Wendy Brown, Matthew Coleman and Matt Sparke, we explore the ways in which heteronormativity and neoliberalism are jointly put to work in the preservation and propagation of capitalism and the nation-state.