In recent years, international agencies such as the World Bank have begun to fund parenting interventions to improve young children’s brain development in Global South countries. But who decides on the standards for good parenting? And what are the consequences to argue that poverty is based on poorly developed brains? In this episode, we talk with anthropologist Gabriel Scheidecker about the colonial undercurrents of early childhood interventions. 

The hegemony of the bourgeoisie, its culture and its values, is a central feature of our colonial and capitalist present. But what does it feel like to be a bourgeois subject and what structures of feeling enable the dominant class of the colonial world order to function? Today, we talk with philosopher and critical theorist Henrike Kohpeiß about the colonial lives of bourgeois coldness.

On January 8, 2023, after Jair Bolsonaro had lost Brazil’s presidential election, hundreds of his supporters stormed the capital to oust the new president, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. This dramatic event manifested fierce conflicts over the country’s political future. Today, we talk with journalist and communication studies scholar Débora Medeiros about contesting colonial affects in Brazilian politics.

Our global economy is fundamentally governed by colonial logics. The resulting power inequalities, ecological destructions, and social corrosions severely impact the daily lives of people. They transform the way they feel about themselves, about others and about the world around them. Today, we talk with artist and writer Bassem Saad about the affective lives of colonial economies.

It is more and more evident that the world faces an urgent environmental crisis. Global economies, based on colonial imaginaries of progress through resource extraction, have severely damaged the planet. But not everybody is equally affected. The ecological catastrophe further marginalizes people along racial lines. Today, we talk with anthropologist Tamar Blickstein about the colonial affects of environmental racism. The discussion is informed by her research for LANLOSS, a project supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 846550

In the large cities of Europe, millions of people live as first-generation migrants — many of them from the Global South. Often, they are expected to make an effort to belong and develop a strong attachment to their new home. But what if their experience of belonging does not conform to the ideal of integration? Today, we talk with anthropologist and writer Omar Kasmani about migration and the feeling of thinness in the European metropolis.

It is seen as one of the great achievements of European modernity to have cast out revenge from law and politics. The colonial narrative says: where revenge rules, and thus affect, modernity is absent. But is revenge actually outside of modernity or is it rather one of its blind spots? Today, we talk with philosopher Fabian Bernhard about the place of revenge in colonial modernity.

Es gilt als eine zentrale moderne Errungenschaft, die Rache aus Politik und Recht verbannt zu haben. Die koloniale Erzählung besagt: wo die Rache regiert und damit der Affekt, da ist die Moderne nicht angekommen. Doch steht die Rache wirklich außerhalb der Moderne oder ist sie eher ihr blinder Fleck? Heute sprechen wir mit dem Philosophen Fabian Bernhard über die Gegenwart der Rache in der kolonialen Moderne.

Although European societies promise religious freedom, non-Christians remain subject to considerable discrimination. In this context, it is mostly taken for granted that there is a basic conflict between the modern secular state and the passions of religion. But what about the passions of the secular? Today, we talk with sociologist Nur Yasemin Ural about the colonial affects of secular Europe.

Suicide attacks, in which fighters are willing to sacrifice their own life to commit an act of violence, have a long political history. More recently, they are increasingly embedded in the elaborate production of images, including video testimonies in which the attackers present themselves as martyrs and explain their political goals. Today, we talk with art historian Verena Straub about the visual politics of affect in suicide attacks.