144. Towards a Post-Punk Gothic Architecture with Phillip Thurtle

Original Drawing by Tori Haynes

This week we are joined by Phillip Thurtle, who is the director of the Comparitive History of Ideas (CHID) program at the University of Washington Seattle. Thurtle talks to us about the gothic, what it is and what it means to him and what he researches. 

Timestamp Outline 

2:54 The Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
Alienated Life: Toward a Gothic Theory of Biology

5:39 Why are you into the gothic?

7:30 “The linkage between what is aesthetics and how it pertains to a specific type of politics” PT
Kant

10:33 “The gothic as the making simultaneous exactly the things that should not be simultaneous” PT
Frankenstein

11:47 Hindu mythology Shiva

12:40 Post-punk goth era

14:03 Back to the 70’s: What is “post” and what are we “post”-ing?

17:00 Drama, unresolved, incomplete, and uncertainty

18:44 Origins of biology; German romanticism, organize, organism, and organs

20:18 There’s value to the not-so-happy things

23:50 “If you shift your perspective, your world becomes larger, and you can see that what is a self-justifying conclusion to you ends up becoming one of many possible stories” PT

24:34 What is your perspective on the purpose of life?

29:57 “Birds are just goth and they’re just singing” PT

31:07 “Other Voices” - The Cure

34:49 Distinguishing Thurtle’s goth from hedonism
The uncanny

42:23 “We have never learned to embrace our inner goth” PT