Update + Poll

Hey everyone! Sorry for the absence. Hope you are dealing with the quarantine successfully and getting to read some theory. The last poll made clear that my next video will be on Marx's views on the state and I'm currently working on the script. Next week I have a break from uni, and I want to spend it trying to make an additional video both to make up for my rare uploading rate and to give you something more to watch during quarantine. I'm making another poll so I could immediately know what script to work on next. Here are the options:

1) There’s a popular scene in Toy Story 3 where Mr. Potato Head is assembled using a tortilla instead of a potato, but still retains his consciousness and personal identity. So the question arises: where does Potato Head’s personal identity reside? Is it in the sum of his parts, or their particular combination? Similar questions can be asked about humans as well. I will explore anti-essentialist views on personal identity by utilizing David Hume, and possibly Nietzsche/Deleuze.  

2) This would be about the 1990 movie Total Recall (and potentially Blade Runner), prosthetic memory, and the relations between memory, identity, and authenticity. I would draw mostly on an essay on the topic by Alison Landsberg, but might also use Derrida's ideas on teletechnology. I’d talk about Total Recall as a postmodern take on memory and identity, as it problematizes the connection between them and authenticity.

3) Some people think I should do less media analysis and focus more on thinkers and ideas as such. The most explicit way of doing this would be to do a book summary - this would either be one long video, or several videos, explaining the central concepts of a given book, in a way that even people who haven't read it could understand. If this option gets picked, I will make another poll to decide which book I'll summarize. Right now I'm thinking of Geuss' "Philosophy and Real Politics", Bataille's "Accursed Share", and Schopenhauer's "World as Will and Representation".

4) For years now I've been getting requests to do a video on Mainlander - a 19th century German philosopher known mostly for his extreme pessimism (believing that the purpose of all things is to die), strangely he was also a self-identified communist (although of a non-Marxist, utopian, social democratic variety). He committed suicide according to his own philosophical principles. Because it would be difficult to use his thought for any kind of media analysis, this would be a video that simply summarizes his life and philosophy without applying it - a first for me.

Thanks!