#242 | State Of Exception: From A World That Has Stopped w/ Alley Valkyrie & Rhyd Wildermuth

Intro: 9:53 | Outro: 1:40:30 | Book Pre-sale

In this episode, I speak with Gods & Radicals Press co-founders and Empires Crumble co-hosts Alley Valkyrie and Rhyd Wildermuth. This discussion was recorded on March 22nd, 2020 from each of our respective locations, with Alley currently living in France and Rhyd in Luxembourg. We discuss the "state of exception" and “a world that has stopped” in the midst of this global pandemic and state-mandated lockdowns, as discussed in Alley’s essay ‘Dispatches From a World That Has Stopped,’ and Rhyd’s essay ’Pandemics and the State of Exception.’

“As a New Yorker living in France, living in a world that has stopped carries with it a specific cultural trauma that my friends, my neighbors, and my partner here do not share. It carries recollections and triggers that I honestly thought I left behind on the other side of the ocean. It carries the reminder of how we are defined and wired by past traumas, and the insidious manner in which such traumatic events weave themselves into our DNA.” — Alley Valkyrie, ‘Dispatches From a World That Has Stopped’ (https://bit.ly/2UpvRwi)

“Each government of the world has always held these powers, what Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt called “The State of Exception.” State monopolies on violence, for instance, are exceptions to all the laws that make illegal the confinement, abuse, and murder of citizens. That is, if you were to kidnap someone and lock them in a room for thirty years, that would be illegal. But governments do this all the time, and as a feature of being a government. It’s called prison. Similarly, what the police do on behalf of the state would be highly illegal if you were to do so. You cannot kill an unarmed person on the street because of the color of their skin and expect not to be held accountable, but a police officer may do this very same thing as part of their job. They’re the exception to the rule, because the government decides “the exception.”” — Rhyd Wildermuth, ‘Pandemics and the State of Exception’ (https://bit.ly/3doiDbZ)

Alley Valkyrie is the author of ‘Of Monsters and Miso’ — “a bilingual book of delicious miso sauce recipes,” and Rhyd Wildermuth is the author of ‘All That Is Sacred Is Profaned: A Pagan Guide To Marxism’ — a book that “teases out the intersections between Marx’s ideas and the core worldviews of animism and Paganism.” Alley and Rhyd are the co-founders of Gods & Radicals Press and the co-hosts of the podcast Empires Crumble.

Episode Notes:

- Read Alley’s essay ‘Dispatches From a World That Has Stopped’ and Rhyd’s essay ‘Pandemics and the State of Exception’ at Gods & Radicals Press: https://bit.ly/2UpvRwi / https://bit.ly/3doiDbZ

- Purchase Alley’s book ‘Of Monsters and Miso’ and Rhyd’s book ‘All That Is Sacred Is Profaned: A Pagan Guide To Marxism’: http://bit.ly/39iH08M / https://bit.ly/2U9u7sb

- Listen and subscribe to Empires Crumble: http://bit.ly/EmpiresCrumble

- The song featured in this episode is “How It Feels To Be Free” by Nina Simone: https://youtu.be/5dlrXCYrNYI