-
16Existentialism and Poststructuralism: Some Unfashionable ObservationsIn Felicity Joseph, Jack Reynolds & Ashley Woodward (eds.), Continuum Companion to Existentialism, Continuum. pp. 260. 2011.This chapter challenges the received doxa that the generation of ‘poststructuralist’ philosophers broke decisively with existentialism and rendered it out of date, a mere historical curiosity. Drawing on recent research in the area, it draws some lines of influence, and even argues for some surprising points of commonality, between existentialism and poststructuralism. At least some of the core philosophical ideas of poststructuralists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze …Read more
-
20The Bloomsbury Handbook of Existentialism (edited book)Bloomsbury. 2023.This fully revised and updated 2nd edition provides a comprehensive reference guide to existentialism, featuring key chapters on key existentialist thinkers, as well as chapters applying existentialism to subject areas ranging across politics, literature, feminism, religion, the emotions, cognitive science, and poststructuralism. Contemporary developments in the field of existentialism that speak to issues of identity and exclusion are explored in 4 new chapters on race, gender, disability, and …Read more
-
10Postinformational EducationInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 31 (4): 501-521. 2023.This paper explores the theme of education and the posthuman from the perspective of French philosophy. It addresses a crisis in eduction today identified by Michel Serres: now that knowledge is widely and freely accessible through information technologies, what is the purpose of education? A response is developed through three conceptual terms prefixed with ‘post’: the postmodern, the posthuman, and through the proposed idea of ‘postinformation.’ The background to the problem is sketched in ter…Read more
-
14Signifying Nothing: Nihilism, Information, and SignsOpen Philosophy 6 (1): 147-57. 2023.This article explores the theme of nihilism from the perspective of post-continental philosophy by focusing on semiotics and information theory and the question of “meaning” at stake between them. Nihilism is characterised here as an avatar of the counter-Enlightenment tradition. Post-continental philosophy is defined by a positive revaluation of reason, science, and technology, which were critiqued for their nihilistic effects by key continental philosophers. Rather than critiquing nihilism, th…Read more
-
Information and alterity : from probability to plasticityIn Natasha Lushetich, Iain Campbell & Dominic Smith (eds.), Contingency and plasticity in everyday technologies, Rowman & Littlefield. 2023.
-
Information and alterity : from probability to plasticityIn Natasha Lushetich, Iain Campbell & Dominic Smith (eds.), Contingency and plasticity in everyday technologies, Rowman & Littlefield. 2023.
-
9Nietzsche and the Politics of Difference (edited book)De Gruyter. 2022.The question of Nietzsche’s use of political theory has a long and vexed history. The contributors of this book re-situate debates around the notion of difference, in relation to historical and scholarly concerns, but with a view to the current political context. Given that today we are faced with a host of political challenges of domination and resistance, the question raised in this volume is how Nietzsche helps us to think through and to address some of the problems. The authors also discuss …Read more
-
4Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition: Reflections on Nihilism, Information and ArtEdinburgh University Press. 2016.Ashley Woodward demonstrates what a new generation of scholars are just discovering: that Lyotard's incisive work is essential for current debates in the humanities. Lyotard's ideas about the arts and the confrontations between humanist traditions and cutting-edge sciences and technologies are today known as 'posthumanism'. Woodward presents a series of studies to explain Lyotard's specific interventions in information theory, new media arts and the changing nature of the human. He assesses thei…Read more
-
13Non-Projects for the Uninhabitable: Lyotard's Architecture PhilosophyArchitecture Philosophy 5 (2). 2022.
-
8Nihilism, Neonihilism, Hypernihilism: ‘Nietzsche aujourd’hui’ Today?Nietzsche Studien 48 (1): 244-264. 2019.The ‘French reading’ of Nietzsche crystallized almost 50 years ago at the 1972 conference at Cerisy-la-Salle, Nietzsche aujourd’hui. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, with the theme of ‘The Politics of Difference’, Newcastle University, 20–21 September 2018. Nietzsche’s fortunes have since undergone some dramatic shifts in France, but there are signs that he is once again on the ascendency, in particular the 2016 edited co…Read more
-
3Acinemas: Lyotard's Philosophy of Film (edited book)Edinburgh University Press. 2017.This collection presents, for the first time in English, Jean-Francois Lyotard's major essays on film: 'Acinema', 'The Unconscious as Mise-en-scene', 'Two Metamorphoses of the Seductive in Cinema' and 'The Idea of a Sovereign Film'. Then, eight critical essays by philosophers and film theorists examine Lyotard's film work and influence across two sections: 'Approaches and Interpretations' and 'Applications and Extensions'. These works are complemented by an introductory essay by leading French s…Read more
-
5Aesthetics in Continental PhilosophyInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016.Aesthetics in Continental Philosophy Although aesthetics is a significant area of research in its own right in the analytic philosophical tradition, aesthetics frequently seems to be accorded less value than philosophy of language, logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and other areas of value theory such as ethics and political philosophy. Many of the most prominent analytic philosophers … Continue reading Aesthetics in Continental Philosophy →
-
9“White Skin”: Lyotard’s Sketch of a Postcolonial Libidinal EconomyJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 51 (4): 337-351. 2020.In 1975 Jean-François Lyotard published a short text entitled Pacific Wall. A mash-up of philosophy, fiction, biography, and art criticism, it is highly gnomic if read in isolation. Studied alongsi...
-
15Dispositif, Matter, Affect, and the Real: Four Fundamental Concepts of Lyotard's Film-PhilosophyFilm-Philosophy 23 (3): 303-323. 2019.Jean-François Lyotard's work remains a largely untapped resource for film-philosophy. This article surveys four fundamental concepts which indicate the fecundity of this work for current studies and debates. While Lyotard was generally associated with the “theory” of the 1980s which privileged language, signs, and cultural representations, much of his work in fact resonates more strongly with the new materialisms and realisms currently taking centre stage. The concepts examined here indicate the…Read more
-
8Continuum Companion to Existentialism (edited book)Continuum. 2011.The Continuum Companion to Existentialism offers the definitive guide to a key area of modern European philosophy. The book covers the fundamental questions asked by existentialism, providing valuable guidance for students and researchers to some of the many important and enduring contributions of existentialist thinkers. Eighteen specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts explore existentialism’s relationship to philosophical method; ontology; politics; psychoanalysis; …Read more
-
7A sacrificial economy of the image: Lyotard on cinemaAngelaki 19 (4): 141-154. 2014.:The theme of sacrifice appears in Jean-François Lyotard's writings on cinema not in terms of any representational content but in terms of the economy of the images from which a film is formally constructed. Sacrifice is here understood in a sense derived from Bataille, and related to his notions of general economy, and of sovereignty. Lyotard's writings on cinema have received some attention in English-language scholarship, but so far this attention has been focused almost exclusively on two es…Read more
-
11Lesson of Darkness: Phenomenology and Lyotard’s Late AestheticsJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 50 (2): 104-119. 2019.This paper examines the relationship of Jean-François Lyotard’s aesthetics to phenomenology, especially the works of Mikel Dufrenne and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It argues that this comparison allows a greater understanding of Lyotard’s late aesthetic writings, which can appear gnomic and which have received relatively little critical attention. Lyotard credits Merleau-Ponty with opening the theme of difference in the aesthetic field, yet believes that the phenomenological approach can never adequa…Read more
-
Nihilism And The Postmodern In Vattimo's NietzscheMinerva 6 51-67. 2002.A connection is often made between postmodernism and nihilism, but the full meaning of such a connection is rarelyexplored. The contemporary Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo is one of the few philosophers to have devotedmuch work to explaining this connection. Vattimo extrapolates the relevance of Nietzsche’s theory of nihilism forthe postmodern condition, arguing that the concept of the postmodern can only be thought rigorously in relation tothe nihilistic destiny of the West. This article ex…Read more
-
Claire Nouvet, Zrinka Stahuljak, and Kent Still, eds., Minima Memoria: In the Wake of Jean-Francois LyotardPhilosophy in Review 27 (5): 366. 2007.
-
5Weak Thought and its Discontents: Engaging the Philosophy of Gianni VattimoColloquy 15 178-196. 2008.
-
2Answering the Question, ‘What is an Event?antiTHESIS 16 12-25. 2006.This article surveys the notion of the event as it is treated in Lyotard’s works, and examines the implications of this treatment for his method, and for critical theory in general. While the event is of importance to many influential French philosophers, it is arguably Lyotard who has positioned his philosophy most central around the problem of accounting for events. For Lyotard, an event is an occurence which cannot be predicted in advance, and cannot be fully determined in retrospect. An even…Read more
-
7The Verwindung of Capital: On the Philosophy and Politics of Gianni VattimoSymposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 13 (1): 73-99. 2009.Gianni Vattimo occupies the relatively rare position of being both a prominent philosopher and an engaged politician. This article outlines Vattimo’s philosophy of “weak thought” and his democratic socialist politics, and argues that there is a “gap” between them: his stated political positions seem at odds with aspects of his philosophy. This gap between the phi- losophical and the political is examined with reference to the topic of globalised capitalism. I then apply Vattimo’s own strategy in…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Continental Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Continental Philosophy |
European Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Jean-François Lyotard |