Aurora 5: “Homesick,” Time, Abundance, Living Systems, Ideology, and Sourdough

In this episode, for the first 25 minutes or so we commiserate about corona quarantine and talk about how we feel upset. Matt and Hilary talk cooking and share their misadventures in sourdough, a profoundly alien yet living thing. We talk about the erasure of the boundary between work and leisure under capitalism, and particularly how attenuated it is under corona. We chat about mutual aid and the struggle to become the kind of person who does mutual aid and not just the kind of person who believes mutual aid is good. Discussing the willful change in habits that becoming a revolutionary subject requires finally gets us around to talking about the fifth chapter of KSR’s Aurora, “Homesick.” Ship and the gang are heading home to earth and everything is going really, really badly! The inhabitants of ship are confronted with a new set of material conditions that impose upon them new acts, practices, habits, and rituals that turn them into somewhat revolutionary subjects, but in a different way. They gradually arrive at a new ideology that points to a new obviousness: they will have to put themselves in ship’s hands and go into an experimental mode of hibernation (which they must invent!) in order to survive the journey home. We further discuss models and analogies, extinction, colonialism, contingency, control, capitalism, government, law, norms—all the biggies, you know the deal. There are a couple anti-commercials when we encounter our recurring and charming technical difficulties. Email us at [email protected] Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars Leave us a voicemail on the Anchor.fm app Rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts! Music by Spirit of Space