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Imagining the negentropic university: The madness of computation, the possibility of the uncomputable, and thinking otherwise (2024)
Journal Article
Featherstone, M. (2024). Imagining the negentropic university: The madness of computation, the possibility of the uncomputable, and thinking otherwise. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2024.2391603

In this piece I outline the history of the university in terms of a shift from a place concerned with the contemplation of the unknowable and the infinite to a machine focused on instrumental rationality, calculation, and computation. Reading this hi... Read More about Imagining the negentropic university: The madness of computation, the possibility of the uncomputable, and thinking otherwise.

Utopia and Time: Conservative and Radical Utopias in the Age of the Anthropocene (2024)
Book Chapter
Featherstone, M. (2024). Utopia and Time: Conservative and Radical Utopias in the Age of the Anthropocene. In Rethinking Democracy for Post-Utopian Worlds (3-15). London: Springer Nature [academic journals on nature.com]. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53491-1_1

My objective in this chapter is to develop a Freudian-Heideggerian understanding of the concept of utopia that conceives of the impulse to imagine ideal societies in terms of a modern tendency to both think about possible futures and create new world... Read More about Utopia and Time: Conservative and Radical Utopias in the Age of the Anthropocene.

The tragedy of utopia in the age of the Anthropocene: Beyond dystopia, despair and catastrophic futures (2024)
Journal Article
Featherstone, M. (2024). The tragedy of utopia in the age of the Anthropocene: Beyond dystopia, despair and catastrophic futures. European Journal of Social Theory, https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241234180

My key objective in this article is to explore the history of the concept of utopia and its application in really existing social, political, economic and cultural forms. Starting with a consideration of what I call the economy of utopia, I theorise... Read More about The tragedy of utopia in the age of the Anthropocene: Beyond dystopia, despair and catastrophic futures.

Viral Law: Life, Death, Difference, and Indifference from the Spanish Flu to Covid-19 (2022)
Journal Article
Featherstone. (2022). Viral Law: Life, Death, Difference, and Indifference from the Spanish Flu to Covid-19. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 35, pages1019–1037. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-022-09893-7

What is viral law? In order to being my discussion, I note that the last two years have been extremely difficult to understand and that we, meaning those who have lived through the pandemic, have struggled to make sense. Thus, I make the argument tha... Read More about Viral Law: Life, Death, Difference, and Indifference from the Spanish Flu to Covid-19.

Beyond the disenchanted university: A pharmacology of the British university in the age of Coronavirus (2021)
Journal Article
Featherstone, M. (2023). Beyond the disenchanted university: A pharmacology of the British university in the age of Coronavirus. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 45(1), 29-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2021.2007209

In the teeth of the coronavirus crisis the British HE system has been thrown into chaos and the severe limitations of the market model have been cruelly exposed. After thirty years of expansion and increasing neoliberalization, the contradictions of... Read More about Beyond the disenchanted university: A pharmacology of the British university in the age of Coronavirus.

Žižek's Pandemic: On Utopian Realism and the Spirit of Communism (2021)
Journal Article
Featherstone, M. (2021). Žižek's Pandemic: On Utopian Realism and the Spirit of Communism. Cultural Politics, 17(1), 124-134. https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797613

In the first part of this article on Žižek's recent book Pandemic! I show how he develops a political theology of the spirit through a discussion of social distancing. In this argument Žižek connects the idea of physical distance to the biblical stor... Read More about Žižek's Pandemic: On Utopian Realism and the Spirit of Communism.

Primal Crime: Visions of the Law and Its Transgression in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cinema (2021)
Journal Article
Featherstone. (2021). Primal Crime: Visions of the Law and Its Transgression in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cinema. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 49-67. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-019-09632-5

In this paper I consider contemporary expressions of what Freud called the primal crime and collapse of paternal law through an exploration of the cinema of the Danish-American Director Nicolas Winding Refn. Introducing the paper I outline Freud’s th... Read More about Primal Crime: Visions of the Law and Its Transgression in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cinema.

Towards a Bureaucracy of the Body (2020)
Journal Article
Featherstone. (2020). Towards a Bureaucracy of the Body. New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory, Politics, 97-113. https://doi.org/10.3898/Newf%3A100-101.07.2020

The objective of this article is to explore the evolution of what Beatrice Hibou calls the bureaucratisation of the world through a cultural history of the idea of bureaucracy in the western canon, taking in readings of Max Weber, Franz Kafka, Hannah... Read More about Towards a Bureaucracy of the Body.

Against the humiliation of thought: The university as a space of dystopic destruction and utopian potential (2020)
Book Chapter
Featherstone, M. (2020). Against the humiliation of thought: The university as a space of dystopic destruction and utopian potential. In Educational Ills and the (Im)possibility of Utopia (26-38). (1). Taylor & Francis (Routledge). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003025849-4

My objective in this paper is to write a pharmacology of the university by thinking about its relationship to systemic stupidity, intelligence, and the possibility of becoming. Starting with an exploration of the contemporary dystopia of drive-based... Read More about Against the humiliation of thought: The university as a space of dystopic destruction and utopian potential.

Apocalypse Now!: From Freud, Through Lacan, to Stiegler’s Psychoanalytic ‘Survival Project (2020)
Journal Article
Featherstone. (2020). Apocalypse Now!: From Freud, Through Lacan, to Stiegler’s Psychoanalytic ‘Survival Project. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09715-8

The objective of this article is to explore the value of psychoanalysis in the early twenty-first century through reference to Freud, Lacan, and Stiegler’s work on computational madness. In the first section of the article I consider the original obj... Read More about Apocalypse Now!: From Freud, Through Lacan, to Stiegler’s Psychoanalytic ‘Survival Project.

Psychoanalysing the 21st Century: Introduction (2020)
Journal Article
Featherstone. (2020). Psychoanalysing the 21st Century: Introduction. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 403-408. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09714-9

The purpose of this introduction is to sketch out the value of psychoanalysis for the twenty-first century and in particular the ways in which analysis might enable us to move beyond the crisis of the post-Cold War symbolic order.

Simmel’s (non-human) humanism: On Simmel’s ‘ethics of endings and futures’ (2020)
Journal Article
featherstone. (2020). Simmel’s (non-human) humanism: On Simmel’s ‘ethics of endings and futures’. Journal of Classical Sociology, 21(2), 203-220. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X20915667

Given the recent non-human turn in sociology and the social sciences, the popularity of theories of entanglement, and contemporary concern with the concept of the anthropocene, it is easy to forget that classical sociology was always-already aware of... Read More about Simmel’s (non-human) humanism: On Simmel’s ‘ethics of endings and futures’.

The libertine (2020)
Book Chapter
Featherstone, M. (2020). The libertine. In Crime, Harm and Consumerism (39-53). Taylor & Francis (Routledge). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429424472-4

My objective in this chapter is to explore the moment where crime, harm, and the consumer experience meet through the figure of the libertine. In order to develop my reading of this figure, I start by focusing on the work of the Marquis de Sade, and... Read More about The libertine.

The architecture of authoritarian luxury (2019)
Book Chapter
Featherstone, M. The architecture of authoritarian luxury. In The Third Realm of Luxury (47-66). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350062801.0007

Mark Featherstone In his Origin of German Tragic Drama (2009) , Walter Benjamin reflects upon the condition of tyranny in early modern German drama. The king sits uncomfortably upon his throne. The world is a maelstrom of events, and he is crippled b... Read More about The architecture of authoritarian luxury.

French Thought and Literary Theory in the UK (2019)
Book Chapter
Featherstone, M. French Thought and Literary Theory in the UK. In I. Goh (Ed.), French Thought and Literary Theory in the UK. Taylor & Francis (Routledge). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367809287

In this chapter I begin by exploring the impact of Paul Virilio’s thought upon British academia from the 1980s through the 1990s to the contemporary. Following this work, I move on to show how Virilio’s dromology can shed light on the history and pre... Read More about French Thought and Literary Theory in the UK.

Stiegler’s ecological thought: The politics of knowledge in the anthropocene (2019)
Journal Article
Featherstone. (2019). Stiegler’s ecological thought: The politics of knowledge in the anthropocene. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1 - 11. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1665025

My objective in this article is to consider the implications of Bernard Stiegler’s theory of the neganthropocene for the politics of knowledge and education. Stiegler sets out his theory of the neganthropocene in his recent books, Automatic Society a... Read More about Stiegler’s ecological thought: The politics of knowledge in the anthropocene.