Blindboy Boatclub on the Vexing Value of Christ’s Foreskin

In this episode of the Broadcast Monologues, the witty and thought-provoking Irish satirist, author, and musician known as Blindboy Boatclub riffs on “Value: Towards a Dialectic on Christ’s Foreskin.” The host of the highly celebrated Blindboy Podcast opens his reflections with an early 16th century Renaissance painting The Circumcision of Christ by Francesco Bissolo. Blindboy then delves into the claims of authentic ownership of Christ’s foreskin by several Catholic churches around the world and the questions the relic poses about his origins. Musing on the relationship between relics and scarcity, Blindboy ponders the ebbs and flows of what is deemed valuable in our modern era. The epitome of these shifts, he asserts, can be as basic as foods and colors: he takes us through the lowly origins of lobster as shameful grub for indentured Irish workers to the degradation of a meat that should be expensive, beef, to the discovery of purple excretion oozing from snails’ butts.

Digital artist and filmmaker Eva Papamargariti provides a stunning, impressionistic visual context for Blindboy’s monologue. Opening and closing music are by Joel Robinow. ♦