All Outputs (51)

The tragedy of utopia in the age of the Anthropocene: Beyond dystopia, despair and catastrophic futures (2024)
Journal Article

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.

‘Circulus Vitiosus Deus’: The Death Drive Now and Then (2022)
Journal Article

Starting from an exploration of Freud’s notion of the Death Drive and applying it to our times (said to have arrived at the End of History) this contribution argues that our contemporary thanatological moment does still offer, against all odds, the p... Read More about ‘Circulus Vitiosus Deus’: The Death Drive Now and Then.

Viral Law: Life, Death, Difference, and Indifference from the Spanish Flu to Covid-19 (2022)
Journal Article

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

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.

Viral Culture (2021)
Journal Article

Žižek's Pandemic (2021)
Journal Article

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.

Primal Crime: Visions of the Law and Its Transgression in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cinema (2021)
Journal Article

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.

The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity (2021)
Journal Article

Towards a Bureaucracy of the Body (2020)
Journal Article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Writing the Body Politic: A John O’Neill Reader (2019)
Book

Prometheus and the Degenerate: Arno Breker, Hans Bellmer, and Francis Bacon's Extreme Realism (2019)
Book Chapter

The author considers the visualisation of the body under conditions of war through a discussion of two artists, the sculptor Arno Breker (1900–1991) and the surrealist Hans Bellmer (1902–1975), who imagined the fate of corporeality in Nazi Germany an... Read More about Prometheus and the Degenerate: Arno Breker, Hans Bellmer, and Francis Bacon's Extreme Realism.

The Sociology of Debt (Ed. M Featherstone) (2019)
Book

This book includes contributions from a range of authors in a variety of disciplines who approach debt from holistic perspectives, providing accounts that span both social scientific as well as economic analysis.