A long overdue translation of Ernst Jünger’s Der Arbeiter – forthcoming in November 2017

workerA long overdue translation of Ernst Jünger’s Der Arbeiter as The Worker: Dominion and Form is forthcoming in November 2017, edited by Laurence Paul Hemming and translated by Hemming and Bogdan Costea.

Written in 1932, just before the fall of the Weimar Republic and on the eve of the Nazi accession to power, Ernst Jünger’s The Worker: Dominion and Form articulates a trenchant critique of bourgeois liberalism and seeks to identify the form characteristic of the modern age. Jünger’s analyses, written in critical dialogue with Marx, are inspired by a profound intuition of the movement of history and an insightful interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Martin Heidegger considered Jünger “the only genuine follower of Nietzsche,” singularly providing “an interpretation which took shape in the domain of that metaphysics which already determines our epoch, even against our knowledge; this metaphysics is Nietzsche’s doctrine of the ‘will to power.’” In The Worker, Jünger examines some of the defining questions of that epoch: the nature of individuality, society, and the state; morality, justice, and law; and the relationships between freedom and power and between technology and nature.

This work, appearing in its entirety in English translation for the first time, is an important contribution to debates on work, technology, and politics by one of the most controversial German intellectuals of the twentieth century. Not merely of historical interest, The Worker carries a vital message for contemporary debates about world economy, political stability, and equality in our own age, one marked by unsettling parallels to the 1930s.

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Rob Kitchin – Balancing and redistributing ‘additional’ academic work

Rob Kitchin has a very good piece on ‘Balancing and redistributing ‘additional’ academic work‘ at his The View from the Blue House blog. Beginning with an absolutely terrifying list of requests to review, examine, interview, contribute etc. (and I thought I was asked frequently), he questions what is an acceptable number to do, and then moves from this to discuss how those making requests should try to diversify those they ask much more. Worth a read – though the solution needs to be collective, and it will be interesting to see what comes of this discussion.

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Amitava Kumar and V.S. Naipal – Rules for Writing

Amitava Kumar has an interesting piece on 10 Rules for Writing, which includes V.S. Naipaul’s ‘Rules for Beginners’.

As with any of the things I share on ‘advice’, these are of course only suggestions, and different people work in different ways. Kumar’s final two rules concern working on only one thing at once, for example, which is hardly a rule I follow…

 

 

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A copy of Foucault and Rocher’s translation of Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Der Gestaltkreis

IMG_2661I’ve been looking for a copy of Foucault and Daniel Rocher’s translation of Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Der Gestaltkreis as Le Cycle de la Structure for sometime, and now have a copy. While the German text is widely available, the translation was only printed once, in 1958, and relatively few libraries have a copy – even the BnF provided a microfiche instead of the physical book.

This copy is in good condition for a book of its age – the pages are still uncut. This is going to be valuable for my research for The Early Foucault, where I will make the claim that his role as a translator is an important but neglected part of his early career.

Posted in Michel Foucault, The Early Foucault, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Birth of Territory – now available in Chinese translation

My 2013 book The Birth of Territory is now available in Chinese translation. It can be ordered here.

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Stuart Elden, Speaking Against Number (EUP 2006) now available at reduced price

9780748619818_2My 2006 book Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics of Calculation is now available at reduced price from Edinburgh University Press. It was only ever published in hardback, and previously available only at a very high price. It’s now selling for £20. I’m not sure how long this will remain at this price.

I obtained the paperback rights to this book a couple of years ago, with the idea of doing a new edition. As I’ve previously discussed, I got as far as writing a proposal for this, but knew it would require a substantial new introduction taking account of new material, especially the notorious ‘Black Notebooks’. I decided against the idea, so this book remains the last statement I made about Heidegger and politics. Despite his own repugnant views, Heidegger remains a significant thinker to the development of my work, and the ideas explored in this book were central to my future work on territory.

 

Posted in Martin Heidegger, Politics, Speaking Against Number, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

5 Critical Theory Books That Came Out in June, 2017

5 Critical Theory Books That Came Out in June, 2017 at Critical Theory

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Publishing Strategies as an ECR @ PhD Publishing workshop 5th July 2016

Charlotte Mathieson with some very useful advice for early-career researchers.

Charlotte Mathieson's avatarDr Charlotte Mathieson

This workshop hosted by Newcastle University’s International Centre for Cultural & Heritage Studies focused on publishing and peer-reviewing for early career researchers. I presented on publishing strategies – how you can make best use of your time to get the most out of your research in the hectic post-PhD years. My slides from the event are here and below are my notes from the session.

“From publish or perish, to publish and thrive”: developing a publication strategy as an ECR 

This talk aims to you thinking about how you create a publishing strategy in the later and post-PhD stages in order to make the most of your time, get the best out of your publications, and make yourself employable as you do so.

“Publish or perish” is an oft-cited phrase in academia; you need to publish to get ahead. But there’s a sense of negativity implicit in this phrase, and talk of publishing often…

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Books received – Bibliotheca Walleriana, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Garcia, Shakespeare, Lacan, Delanda and Harman

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Mainly sent in recompense for review work, but also a copy of the Bibliotheca Walleriana – the guide to the library of Erik Waller housed at Uppsala University. Foucault used this extensively in his work on the History of Madness. For more details, see my last update on my research on his early work.

Posted in Gilles Deleuze, Graham Harman, Jacques Lacan, Manuel deLanda, Michel Foucault, Tristan Garcia, Uncategorized, William Shakespeare | 1 Comment

Visiting Boko Haram territory – an excerpt from Helon Habila’s new book, The Chibok Girls (plus links to my article and bibliography)

cover.jpg.rendition.460.707.pngVisiting Boko Haram territory – an excerpt from Helon Habila’s new book, The Chibok Girls at African Arguments.

Here’s the book description:

An urgent Penguin Special investigating the 2014 mass-kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by the world’s deadliest terrorists

On 14th April 2014, 276 girls disappeared from a secondary school in northern Nigeria, kidnapped by the world’s deadliest terror group. A tiny number have escaped back to their families but over 200 remain missing.

Reporting from inside the traumatised and blockaded community of Chibok, Helon Habila tracks down the survivors and the bereaved. Two years after the attack, he bears witness to their stories and to their grief. And moving from the personal to the political, he presents a comprehensive indictment of Boko Haram, tracing the circumstances of their ascent and the terrible fallout of their ongoing presence in Nigeria.

While writing a paper entitled “The Geopolitics of Boko Haram and Nigeria’s ‘War on Terror’” (open access), I produced a detailed bibliography of academic writings on Boko Haram. At the time (between 2012 and 2014) there was a manageable amount of literature – things have developed substantially since, and as a consequence the bibliography is out of date. But it may still be of some use. You can download the bibliography here (pdf).

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