Joseph Darlington
Futureworks, School of Art and Design, Faculty Member
- Alan Burns, Experimental Literature, Transatlantic Literature, Theory of the Novel, Underground Press, Anthony Burgess, and 35 moreB.S. Johnson, Ann Quin, New Left and the 1960s, Christine Brooke-Rose, Eva Figes, May 68, Terrorism and Modern Literature, Cultural Materialism, Comedy, 1960s, 1960s Culture, 1970s Culture, Doris Lessing, Angela Carter, Maureen Duffy, History of Books, Printing, and Publishing, Intermittency, National Culture, Postcolonialism and Literary Representations of the British Regions (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), The physicality of texts, Semiology, Folklore (Literature), Folk Culture, Working class culture, Authenticity, Animation, Animation Theory, Video Game Art and Animation, Game Design, Video Game Design, History of Games, History of Board Games, History of Video Games, Comics and Graphic Novels, and Narrative Theoryedit
- I am Programme Leader for the BA(Hons) Digital Animation and Illustration degree at Futureworks Media School and tuto... moreI am Programme Leader for the BA(Hons) Digital Animation and Illustration degree at Futureworks Media School and tutor of Games Design. From 2011 to 2015 I was a lecturer at the University of Salford in English Literature and Film Studies. I am editor of BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal and was awarded a Harry Ransom Fellowship in 2013 for research on the writer Christine Brooke-Roseedit
This book utilizes archive research, interviews and historical analysis to present a comprehensive overview of the works of Christine Brooke-Rose. A writer well-known for her idiosyncratic and experimental approaches to the novel form;... more
This book utilizes archive research, interviews and historical analysis to present a comprehensive overview of the works of Christine Brooke-Rose. A writer well-known for her idiosyncratic and experimental approaches to the novel form; this work traces her development from her early years as a social satirist, through her space-aged experimentalism in the 1960s, to her later poststructuralism and interest in digital computing and genetics. The book gives an overview of her writing and intellectual career with new archival research that places Brooke-Rose’s work in the context of the historically important events in which she was a participant: Bletchley Park codebreaking in the Second World War, the events in Paris during May 1968, the dawning of the internet and the rise of poststructuralism. Joseph Darlington begins with Brooke-Rose’s first novels written in the late 1950s of social satire, studies her experimental phase of writing and finally illuminates her unique approach to autobiography, arguing for reevaluating this interdisciplinary author and her contribution to poststructuralism, life writing and post-war literature.
This file includes the book's Introduction. The book is available here: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030759056
This file includes the book's Introduction. The book is available here: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030759056
Research Interests: History Of Computing, Science Fiction, Postmodernism, Postmodern Fiction, Structuralism/Post-Structuralism, and 10 moreChristine Brooke Rose, Poststructuralist Theory, Post-Structuralism, May 68, Science-Fiction, Post-War Literature, The Science Wars, Christine Brooke-Rose, French Post-Structuralism, and Bletchley Park
The Experimentalists is a collective biography, capturing the life and times of the British experimental writers of the swinging 1960s. A decade of research, including as-yet unopened archives and interviews with the writers' colleagues,... more
The Experimentalists is a collective biography, capturing the life and times of the British experimental writers of the swinging 1960s. A decade of research, including as-yet unopened archives and interviews with the writers' colleagues, is brought together to produce a comprehensive history of this ill-starred group of renegade writers. Whether the bolshie B.S. Johnson, the globetrotting Ann Quin, the cerebral Christine Brooke-Rose, or the omnipresent Anthony Burgess, these writers each brought their own unique contributions to literature at a time uniquely open to their iconoclastic message. The journey connects historical moments from Bletchley Park, to Paris May '68, to terrorist groups of the 1970s. A tale of love, loss, friendship and a shared vision, this book is a fascinating insight into a bold, provocative and influential group of writers whose collective story has gone untold, until now.
Included is the book's introduction. The book is available here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/experimentalists-9781350244405/
Included is the book's introduction. The book is available here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/experimentalists-9781350244405/
Research Interests:
My first monograph is due for release on June 30th. This book discusses British novels published during the 1970s which feature terrorists either as main characters or a major plot points. The focus on terrorism’s literary depiction... more
My first monograph is due for release on June 30th.
This book discusses British novels published during the 1970s which feature terrorists either as main characters or a major plot points. The focus on terrorism’s literary depiction provides insight into the politics of the decade. The book analyses texts from Gerald Seymour, Anthony Burgess, V.S. Naipaul, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, B.S. Johnson, Tom Sharpe, and Eric Ambler, among others, in order to engage with the IRA, the end of Empire, counterculture and environmentalism. The book provides a brief history of terrorism as a concept and tactic before discussing British literature’s relationship with terrorism. It presents a “standard terrorist morphology” by which to analyse terrorist narratives along with other insights into the British post-war imagination, writing and extremism.
This book discusses British novels published during the 1970s which feature terrorists either as main characters or a major plot points. The focus on terrorism’s literary depiction provides insight into the politics of the decade. The book analyses texts from Gerald Seymour, Anthony Burgess, V.S. Naipaul, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, B.S. Johnson, Tom Sharpe, and Eric Ambler, among others, in order to engage with the IRA, the end of Empire, counterculture and environmentalism. The book provides a brief history of terrorism as a concept and tactic before discussing British literature’s relationship with terrorism. It presents a “standard terrorist morphology” by which to analyse terrorist narratives along with other insights into the British post-war imagination, writing and extremism.
Research Interests: British Literature, Irish Studies, Terrorism, Conservation, Countercultural Studies, and 20 moreNarratology, Heritage Conservation, Anthony Burgess, Graham Greene, Morphology, British Empire, Thriller, Doris Lessing, B.S. Johnson, 20th Century British Literature, Environmentalism, Counterculture, Radical Environmentalism, Post-War Literature, Northern Ireland and the Troubles, V.s. Naipaul, Post War British History, Terrorism and Modern Literature, Thrillers, and Conservative Studies
Laurence Sterne’s priesthood has often gone underappreciated in studies of his work. When it’s referenced at all, it’s often to paint him as a bad priest or else a part-time preacher and part-time writer. This article argues for a... more
Laurence Sterne’s priesthood has often gone underappreciated in studies of his work. When it’s referenced at all, it’s often to paint him as a bad priest or else a part-time preacher and part-time writer. This article argues for a rediscovery of Sterne’s theology, reading both his Sermons and Tristram Shandy through the lens of the eighteenth-century Latitudinarian movement. Latitudinarianism was an Anglican “broad church” movement that aimed to patch over theological divides through a renewed emphasis on fellow-feeling, trusting the emotions and laughing at rigid dogma. After extrapolating Sterne’s particular brand of Latitudinarianism through a reading of his Sermons, this article goes on to find the same religious roots underlying the scholarly comedy of Tristram Shandy.
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This paper analyses Patricia Lockwood’s poetry in relation to its transformative poetics. Through a close study of her work, in particular her two collections Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (2012) and Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals... more
This paper analyses Patricia Lockwood’s poetry in relation to its transformative poetics. Through a close study of her work, in particular her two collections Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (2012) and Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (2014), her poetry is shown to integrate digital, subcultural discourse, within modes of expression common to Victorian nonsense poetry. Her poetics are shown to resolve themselves in a neo-Catholic semiotics of the sacred symbol. Words, in Lockwood’s poetry, are potent actors in their own right.
The paper begins with an overview of Lockwood’s poetic methods and traces this style back to the “Weird Twitter” phenomenon of 2011. The second section goes on to read Lockwood’s best known poem, “Rape Joke” through these complex pragmatics; analysing its use of humour as a confessional method. In the final section, Lockwood’s relationship to Catholicism, described in her memoir Priestdaddy (2017), is shown as a key instigator of Lockwood’s poetics.
The paper begins with an overview of Lockwood’s poetic methods and traces this style back to the “Weird Twitter” phenomenon of 2011. The second section goes on to read Lockwood’s best known poem, “Rape Joke” through these complex pragmatics; analysing its use of humour as a confessional method. In the final section, Lockwood’s relationship to Catholicism, described in her memoir Priestdaddy (2017), is shown as a key instigator of Lockwood’s poetics.
Research Interests: Humor, Nonsense, Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Poetry, Philosophy of Humour, Humour Studies, and 8 moreJokes, Humour, Catholic literary culture and convent literature, Literature and the Internet, Social Media Related Studies and Literature, Literary Nonsense, Christian Writers, and Patricia Lockwood
This paper will argue that 3D digital animation, unlike its 2D and stop-motion counterparts, currently lacks recognisable self-reflexive aesthetic devices through which the trace of animators’ labour can be made visible. It will open with... more
This paper will argue that 3D digital animation, unlike its 2D and stop-motion counterparts, currently lacks recognisable self-reflexive aesthetic devices through which the trace of animators’ labour can be made visible. It will open with a brief history of how animation has previously shown its workings; from the pencil-wielding hand of Émile Cohl to the opening seconds of South Park, plus the intentional and unintentional smears and multiples visible on animation cells. These devices will then be discussed in relation to Marx’s analysis of the commodity in Capital Vol. 1, and how the process of fetishisation is momentarily disrupted by imperfections in the object which have been caused by production errors. These faults reconnect the object to its producer through the trace of (imperfect) labour which remains visible on the surface. In animation, similar (albeit consciously made) ‘errors’ connect the perceptive viewer directly to the work of 2D or stop-motion animators. This paper will argue the need for an equivalent to emerge in 3D digital animation, as well as highlighting some contemporary animators testing and subverting the limits of 3D and sketching some possible ways these might encourage further formal innovations.
Paper published in the journal Information, Communication and Society as part of the Work and Play Special Edition. Link here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1476571?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Paper published in the journal Information, Communication and Society as part of the Work and Play Special Edition. Link here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1476571?scroll=top&needAccess=true
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Christine Brooke-Rose published two ostensibly autobiographical works; the quasi-fictionalised “antibiography” Remake and Life: End of which takes a philosophical rather than narrative form. Utilising correspondence and other personal... more
Christine Brooke-Rose published two ostensibly autobiographical works; the quasi-fictionalised “antibiography” Remake and Life: End of which takes a philosophical rather than narrative form. Utilising correspondence and other personal documents, this paper concerns the notable life events which Brooke-Rose left unaddressed in her writing (war work, illness, marriage breakdown, poststructuralist feuding), the reasons for these excisions and what such a process reveals about the act of transcribing life. It is argued that Brooke-Rose’s approach to autobiography reflects in microcosm her deep concern for writing as both individual trace and transhuman memory; a sublime form made ridiculous by its everyday limitations.
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Christine Brooke-Rose’s 1966 novel, Such, represents a genuine attempt to bridge the gap between the two cultures of literature and science by wedding the experimental formal innovation of the nouveau romanciers with a cosmological... more
Christine Brooke-Rose’s 1966 novel, Such, represents a genuine attempt to bridge the gap between the two cultures of literature and science by wedding the experimental formal innovation of the nouveau romanciers with a cosmological understanding of the universe cutting-edge at the time of composition. This paper traces the author’s conceptual journey to publication and the original techniques of approach by which she mediated and merged literary theory and empirical science. It traces the semiological function of “science” in post-war Britain as a background to the concept “experimental” literature before discussing the influence of the francophone literary movement and finally, how Brooke-Rose’s archives demonstrate the working through of continental theory and scientific practice.
Peer-reviewed research paper which appears in the Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 40, No. 2, Winter 2017.
Peer-reviewed research paper which appears in the Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 40, No. 2, Winter 2017.
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Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and Kubrick’s adaptation have garnered a reputation for extreme violence, appearing regularly on lists of ‘banned’ works and being implicated in ‘copycat crimes’. This paper traces the development of... more
Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and Kubrick’s adaptation have garnered a reputation for extreme violence, appearing regularly on lists of ‘banned’ works and being implicated in ‘copycat crimes’. This paper traces the development of this reputation. Both film and book were very warmly received on first appearance, the first public ‘outrage’ being manufactured by British tabloids two years after the film’s release. The paper goes on to use the theory of the ‘folk devil’ to reassess the text itself and ends by investigating how the moral panic had a positive effect by stopping the torture of prisoners in California.
Appearing in: Cambridge Quarterly (2016) 45 (2): 119-134.
doi: 10.1093/camqtly/bfw004
Appearing in: Cambridge Quarterly (2016) 45 (2): 119-134.
doi: 10.1093/camqtly/bfw004
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This article unpacks the relationship between literary depictions of 9/11 and contemporary idealism regarding the potential of the Internet through their elaboration in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013). It suggests that the concerns... more
This article unpacks the relationship between literary depictions of 9/11 and contemporary idealism regarding the potential of the Internet through their elaboration in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013). It suggests that the concerns of postmodern writers and theorists came to dominate interpretations of 9/11 (practiced most successfully by Don DeLillo in Falling Man) and, in doing so, severed its connection to deeper historical trajectories. At the heart of the postmodernist fallacy is the same privileging of discourse over materiality typified by utopian conceptions of the Internet. In Bleeding Edge, this utopia takes the form of DeepArcher: a “Deep Web” paradise infiltrated by suspicious forces during the 9/11 attacks. The intermingling of espionage, the tech industry, and the response to 9/11 in Pynchon’s novel foregrounds the ambiguities of digital modernity in a way yet to be recognized by most writers and theorists of the contemporary.
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This paper stages a reengagement with Lessing's 1962 masterpiece The Golden Notebook using the theory of historical reason outlined in Andrew Gibson's 2011 work Intermittency. Considering Lessing's text as a literature of the "non-event"... more
This paper stages a reengagement with Lessing's 1962 masterpiece The Golden Notebook using the theory of historical reason outlined in Andrew Gibson's 2011 work Intermittency. Considering Lessing's text as a literature of the "non-event" - writing that expresses an experience of time without radical historical rupture - foregrounds questions of authenticity explored within the novel. Without temporal access to historical truth, how do Lessing's characters negotiate politics, identity, writing and the Self? The paper also considers the potential of literature to initiate events as well as reflect upon them, as arguably occurred within 1960s women's liberation movements through works such as Lessing's.
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Funded by a 2013 Harry Ransom Centre Dissertation Fellowship, this paper presents entirely new biographical research into the experimental writer Christine Brooke-Rose's experiences between 1968 and 1975. Her decision to leave a... more
Funded by a 2013 Harry Ransom Centre Dissertation Fellowship, this paper presents entirely new biographical research into the experimental writer Christine Brooke-Rose's experiences between 1968 and 1975. Her decision to leave a culturally conservative Britain for a lecturing position at the post-May '68 University of Vincennes places the militantly apolitical Brooke-Rose in the midst of a radical insurgency. The influence that this experience has upon the composition of 1975's novel "Thru" is examined, as well as the novel's critical failure which ended Brooke-Rose's fiction career for 9 years.
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This paper focuses upon the catchphrase form as a means of approaching comedy’s social function beyond its initial humorous effects. The fairly recent historical appearance of the catchphrase as a recognisable entity and target of... more
This paper focuses upon the catchphrase form as a means of approaching comedy’s social function beyond its initial humorous effects. The fairly recent historical appearance of the catchphrase as a recognisable entity and target of derision is unpacked, and various aspects of its signification considered in light of pre-existing theories of comedy. As a counterargument to some of these theories, the paper then goes on to consider catchphrases as serving a similar role to proverbs and sayings by providing a mutually recognisable cultural shorthand for larger ideas, concepts, characters and stereotypes. By tracing a line of development historically, a popular signifying function is witnessed emerging from folk traditions and being mediated through writers of the Middle Ages such as Chaucer, before finding full expression in the industrial revolution both in print and treading the boards of the music hall stage. The forward march of ‘mass’ media, along with its incumbent homogenising and centralising tendencies, positions the catchphrase in a similar position to that of the proverb in primarily oral cultures. From this investigation, the paper concludes that the catchphrase represents a modern popular embodiment of a form of knowing revelling in the already known. This aligns catchphrases with a pre-Enlightenment sensibility which may contribute to their perception amongst intellectual audiences as populist and ‘lowbrow’.
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B.S. Johnson is currently undergoing a considerable resurgence in academic interest in the twenty-first century. Using new archive research made possible by the British Library's acquisition of the Johnson archive, this paper traces a... more
B.S. Johnson is currently undergoing a considerable resurgence in academic interest in the twenty-first century. Using new archive research made possible by the British Library's acquisition of the Johnson archive, this paper traces a history of Johnson's personal struggles with class identity on his journey into the world of experimental literature. The struggle to reconcile avant-garde practice with working class authenticity is seen to present a new approach to considering one of Johnson's major concerns: "truth" in fiction.
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This paper uses Porter’s 2021 novella The Death of Francis Bacon to explore Porter’s ambiguous relationship with the written word. Bacon’s entire oeuvre, as the critic John Berger points out, is an attempt to breach the subjectivity of... more
This paper uses Porter’s 2021 novella The Death of Francis Bacon to explore Porter’s ambiguous relationship with the written word. Bacon’s entire oeuvre, as the critic John Berger points out, is an attempt to breach the subjectivity of others through visually pummelling, mangling and bruising the flesh. Yet, in spite of Bacon’s deep intimacy with flesh, he never succeeds in capturing human emotion. His creatures are tortured, but never really in pain. Porter explores this alienation in his depiction of the painter’s last days. From the callous nun at his bedside to memories of violent sex with his former lover, Porter shows Bacon a prisoner of his own carnality.
The paper will set Porter’s depiction of Bacon against his own approach to the written word. Porter’s sparse texts, dramatic use of negative space, and use of visual (often art-theoretical) metaphor, reveal a writer desperate to wring maximum signification from his word choices. Yet, like Bacon, we are left wondering whether Porter’s percussive textuality, his insistence on constant maximum impact, ultimately blunts his writing, leaving the emotive, the subjective, untouched. These ambiguities are explored in the use of visual metaphor in Grief is a Thing with Feathers and Lanny, before finally returning to The Death of Francis Bacon, where we ask whether, as with Francis Bacon’s art, Max Porter’s brutal poetics – an affectless art of affect – might be the key to understanding this writer’s battles with the page.
The paper will set Porter’s depiction of Bacon against his own approach to the written word. Porter’s sparse texts, dramatic use of negative space, and use of visual (often art-theoretical) metaphor, reveal a writer desperate to wring maximum signification from his word choices. Yet, like Bacon, we are left wondering whether Porter’s percussive textuality, his insistence on constant maximum impact, ultimately blunts his writing, leaving the emotive, the subjective, untouched. These ambiguities are explored in the use of visual metaphor in Grief is a Thing with Feathers and Lanny, before finally returning to The Death of Francis Bacon, where we ask whether, as with Francis Bacon’s art, Max Porter’s brutal poetics – an affectless art of affect – might be the key to understanding this writer’s battles with the page.
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This chapter engages with Anthony Burgess’ novel M/F (published in 1970 following his expatriation in 1968) using Levi-Strauss’ concept of the culinary triangle to unpack the writer’s symbolic engagement with national cultures. The... more
This chapter engages with Anthony Burgess’ novel M/F (published in 1970 following his expatriation in 1968) using Levi-Strauss’ concept of the culinary triangle to unpack the writer’s symbolic engagement with national cultures. The novel’s structure is made up of a series of increasingly complex puzzles and riddles which once solved, as suggested by Levi-Strauss’ theory, lead to an incestuous union between the main character, Miles Faber, and his sister. In order to fully understand these puzzles the paper concentrates upon culinary signifiers and constructs a triangle America-France-Britain which, read through Burgess’ own works, opinions and prejudices regarding these nations in both a synchronic fashion and then diachronically, can be seen to reflect his changing attitudes to both national cultures and languages. M/F is identified as the key turning point in Burgess’ oeuvre as it develops from an anglocentric perspective to that of an international writer.
Book Chapter published in: Marc Jeannin (Ed.). Anthony Burgess and France. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2017.
Book Chapter published in: Marc Jeannin (Ed.). Anthony Burgess and France. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2017.
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Published in 1973, B.S. Johnson's "Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry" is a mini-masterpiece of black comedy, existential despair and terrorism. Through a mix of historical research and access to the British Library's Johnson archive, this... more
Published in 1973, B.S. Johnson's "Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry" is a mini-masterpiece of black comedy, existential despair and terrorism. Through a mix of historical research and access to the British Library's Johnson archive, this paper presents a sustained analysis of how the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, the British terror group The Angry Brigade and a friendship with fellow experimental writer Alan Burns all came to influence the writing of the novel. I ask what effect, if any, these historical references have upon the creation of humour out of mass destruction.
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Taking as a starting point Spolton‘s 1963 article "The Secondary School in Post-War Fiction", this paper seeks to unpack potential reasons for the post-war boom in school-based novels by focusing on two novels in particular, BS Johnson‘s... more
Taking as a starting point Spolton‘s 1963 article "The Secondary School in Post-War Fiction", this paper seeks to unpack potential reasons for the post-war boom in school-based novels by focusing on two novels in particular, BS Johnson‘s Albert Angelo and Anthony Burgess‘ The Worm and The Ring. Identifying key political and economic factors surrounding education such as the 1944 Education Act and increased state funding, it is possible to outline the historical situation from which these novels arise. This background can then be traced through the authors‘ own biographies and the contemporary educational policies, into the works themselves.
By utilising an Althussarian approach, it can be seen how the changes occurring within the historical situation result in corresponding ideological tensions that, in turn, inform the narrative tensions existent within these novels. As writers, Johnson and Burgess were expressing the concerns that they felt as teachers. Whether it be the future of "democracy" and "civilisation", the "inhuman" teachers whose role it is to enforce such things, or the "savage" children needing to be brought into line – these novels provide a multitude of perspectives on the nature of schooling relevant both historically and contemporarily.
By utilising an Althussarian approach, it can be seen how the changes occurring within the historical situation result in corresponding ideological tensions that, in turn, inform the narrative tensions existent within these novels. As writers, Johnson and Burgess were expressing the concerns that they felt as teachers. Whether it be the future of "democracy" and "civilisation", the "inhuman" teachers whose role it is to enforce such things, or the "savage" children needing to be brought into line – these novels provide a multitude of perspectives on the nature of schooling relevant both historically and contemporarily.
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A review of Trebor Scholz's "Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers are Disrupting the Digital Economy". New York: Polity Press, 2016 which appeared in New Formations 91.
Link here: https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/new-formations/91/reviews
Link here: https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/new-formations/91/reviews
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Longer review of Jodi Dean's "Crowds and Party" (Verso, 2016), appearing in the journal Cultural Politics Issue 13, Spring 2017.
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Review of Unflattening by Nick Sousanis appearing in BSJ3.
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Review of Elisabeth Roudinesco's "Lacan: In Spite of Everything", appearing in New Formations 87.
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Review of Doug Dorst's 2013 novel "S" (created by J.J. Abrams), which appears in BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal, Issue 2. Link to the publication here:... more
Review of Doug Dorst's 2013 novel "S" (created by J.J. Abrams), which appears in BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal, Issue 2.
Link to the publication here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-darlington-hooper-seddon-tew-zouaoui/bsj-the-bs-johnson-journal-2/paperback/product-22374374.html
Link to the publication here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-darlington-hooper-seddon-tew-zouaoui/bsj-the-bs-johnson-journal-2/paperback/product-22374374.html
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Short review of "Bernard Kops: Fantasist, London Jew, Apocalyptic Humorist", a new study by William Baker and Jeanette Roberts Shumaker, published in the Times Literary Supplement 16th January, 2015.
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A long review of Andrew Gibson's Intermittency: The Concept of Historical Reason in Recent French Philosophy (2012), appearing in New Formations 83.
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A short review of Patricia Lockwood's first book of poetry, published in the "writing as though it mattered" section of BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal, Issue 1.
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Introduction to the Work and Play special edition of the journal Information, Communication and Society. I wrote the introduction and acted as lead editor on the special edition. The full issue (Vol. 21, No. 9), can be found here:... more
Introduction to the Work and Play special edition of the journal Information, Communication and Society. I wrote the introduction and acted as lead editor on the special edition.
The full issue (Vol. 21, No. 9), can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rics20/21/9?nav=tocList
The full issue (Vol. 21, No. 9), can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rics20/21/9?nav=tocList
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The third issue of BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal is available now: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-darlington-hooper-seddon-tew-zouaoui/bsj-the-bs-johnson-journal-3/paperback/product-23033655.html The theme of this issue is "The Issue with... more
The third issue of BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal is available now: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-darlington-hooper-seddon-tew-zouaoui/bsj-the-bs-johnson-journal-3/paperback/product-23033655.html
The theme of this issue is "The Issue with Truth"
The theme of this issue is "The Issue with Truth"
Research Interests: English Literature, Poetics, Truth, Postmodernism, Contemporary Literature, and 12 moreMetafiction, Theories Of Truth, Experimental Literature, Historiographic Metafiction, Postmodern Literature, B.S. Johnson, Comics and Graphic Novels, Experimental Writing, Creative Writing Workshops, and Avant-Garde Texts, Post-War Literature, Textual analysis, Psychobiography, Writing Lives, and Graphic Devices in Fiction
The second issue of BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal. Contents page attached.
Available from Lulu here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-darlington-hooper-seddon-tew-zouaoui/bsj-the-bs-johnson-journal-2/paperback/product-22374374.html
Available from Lulu here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-darlington-hooper-seddon-tew-zouaoui/bsj-the-bs-johnson-journal-2/paperback/product-22374374.html
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First issue of BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal. Contents pages attached.
Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/BSJ-Hooper-Seddon-Zouaoui-Darlington/dp/1326003704/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443446039&sr=1-1&keywords=bsj
Available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/BSJ-Hooper-Seddon-Zouaoui-Darlington/dp/1326003704/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443446039&sr=1-1&keywords=bsj
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"The essays gathered in this volume explore the difficulties of classfying and conceptualising the extreme and the excessive. Uniting a broad selection of new research, the collection queries some of the premises surrounding these topics:... more
"The essays gathered in this volume explore the difficulties of classfying and conceptualising the extreme and the excessive. Uniting a broad selection of new research, the collection queries some of the premises surrounding these topics: ideas that are most often presented as a counterpoint to a perceived normality."
- from the blurb.
Books Contents:
"Introduction: Encountering Extremity and Excess"
Joseph Darlington
"Post-Human Pop: From Simulation to Assimilation"
Daniel Cookney
"Larger than Life: Morbidity, Megapixels and the Digital Body"
Rob Gallagher
"Siding with the Pervert: Engaging with the Twisted Hero in Japanese Ero-guro Cinema"
Lydia Brammer
"Hysterical Poetics: Chatterton's Excessive Desire for a 'Real' World of Words"
Erin Whitcroft
"'The simplest of proficiencies - the ability to kill my fellow-men': Isaak Babel and Making Sense of Extremity"
Victoria O'Neill
"Countering Extremism in the Name of Security: Criminalising Alternative Politics"
Will Jackson
"Exodus: A Non-identity Art - Everyone is an Artist?"
Rory Harron
"Critical Intimacy: Lowry's Seascapes and the Art of Ekphrasis"
Patrick Wright
"Manifest Destiny, Violence and Transcendence: An Artist's Statement"
Marc Bosward
Reproductions of artworks by Marc Bosward included with full-colour inserts. 216 pages.
- from the blurb.
Books Contents:
"Introduction: Encountering Extremity and Excess"
Joseph Darlington
"Post-Human Pop: From Simulation to Assimilation"
Daniel Cookney
"Larger than Life: Morbidity, Megapixels and the Digital Body"
Rob Gallagher
"Siding with the Pervert: Engaging with the Twisted Hero in Japanese Ero-guro Cinema"
Lydia Brammer
"Hysterical Poetics: Chatterton's Excessive Desire for a 'Real' World of Words"
Erin Whitcroft
"'The simplest of proficiencies - the ability to kill my fellow-men': Isaak Babel and Making Sense of Extremity"
Victoria O'Neill
"Countering Extremism in the Name of Security: Criminalising Alternative Politics"
Will Jackson
"Exodus: A Non-identity Art - Everyone is an Artist?"
Rory Harron
"Critical Intimacy: Lowry's Seascapes and the Art of Ekphrasis"
Patrick Wright
"Manifest Destiny, Violence and Transcendence: An Artist's Statement"
Marc Bosward
Reproductions of artworks by Marc Bosward included with full-colour inserts. 216 pages.
Research Interests: Art Theory, Philosophy of Art, Horror Film, Political Extremism/Radicalism/Populism, Ekphrasis, and 10 moreMusic and identity, Collage, 3D, 3D Movies, computer games, simulation, virtual reality, web 2, Transgression Studies, Transgression, Thomas Chatterton, Writing war, Ero-guro, Extremity and Excess, and Isaak Babel
Guest blog for Animation Studies 2.0 - link above.
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Blog post for Animation Studies 2.0 written as part of their "children's animation" monthly theme. A sketch for future work on animation and form.
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An interview with experimental video artist Beatrice Gibson relating to B.S. Johnson's influence on her work. Appears in BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal, Issue 2. Available here:... more
An interview with experimental video artist Beatrice Gibson relating to B.S. Johnson's influence on her work.
Appears in BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal, Issue 2. Available here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-darlington-hooper-seddon-tew-zouaoui/bsj-the-bs-johnson-journal-2/paperback/product-22374374.html
Appears in BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal, Issue 2. Available here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-darlington-hooper-seddon-tew-zouaoui/bsj-the-bs-johnson-journal-2/paperback/product-22374374.html
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Contribution to a panel on Christine Brooke-Rose's legacy, part of the Brooke-Rose Society Inaugural Symposium (full details here: http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/christine-brooke-rose-society-symposium). The event took place at Sommerville... more
Contribution to a panel on Christine Brooke-Rose's legacy, part of the Brooke-Rose Society Inaugural Symposium (full details here: http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/christine-brooke-rose-society-symposium).
The event took place at Sommerville College, Oxford, June 26th 2015.
The event took place at Sommerville College, Oxford, June 26th 2015.
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Memorial piece inspired by Alan Burns' 1967 novel Celebrations, appearing as part of Verbivoracious Press' third publication: "The Syllabus".
Link here: http://www.verbivoraciouspress.org/festschrifts/volume-three-the-syllabus/
Link here: http://www.verbivoraciouspress.org/festschrifts/volume-three-the-syllabus/
Research Interests: Alan Burns and Cut-Up
An introduction to Verbivoracious Press' new paperback edition of Christine Brooke-Rose's 1960 novel "The Dear Deceit". Includes some of my research previously published as a chapter in the Verbivoracious Brooke-Rose Festschrift and some... more
An introduction to Verbivoracious Press' new paperback edition of Christine Brooke-Rose's 1960 novel "The Dear Deceit". Includes some of my research previously published as a chapter in the Verbivoracious Brooke-Rose Festschrift and some new research from the Harry Ransom Centre in Austin, TX. The paperback is available direct from the press' website by following the link below;
http://www.verbivoraciouspress.org/the-dear-deceit/
http://www.verbivoraciouspress.org/the-dear-deceit/
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Every writer has their archive. They have their library and their stacks of half-finished work. But what happens when, all of a sudden, right in the midst of life, all of this is taken away? This paper analyses two works of creative... more
Every writer has their archive. They have their library and their stacks of half-finished work. But what happens when, all of a sudden, right in the midst of life, all of this is taken away?
This paper analyses two works of creative non-fiction: Daniela Cascella’s Singed (2017) and Steve Hanson and Richard Barrett’s The Acts (2018). Both were written in response to house fires that destroyed the authors’ worldly possessions. They work through the traumas, the shock, and the moments of surprising elation that follow in the aftermath of losing everything. To be momentarily freed from the library, its compulsive hoarding and its abiding sense of incompletion, fills both writers with a sense of dizzying detachment. For Cascella, it’s a chance to build herself anew. For Hanson, a chance to see the world afresh. Yet, with dizziness comes nausea, and both use a succession of experimental methods to try and recreate these unpleasant effects, from the loss of words to the loss of identity itself.
By touching on the theories of collecting put forward by Freud and Derrida, Borges and Benjamin, this paper argues, through Hanson and Cascella, for a renewed appreciation of the ephemerality of cultural objects. Fire as a drastic cure for archive fever, on the one hand, and, on the other, the value of the written word as a physical object persisting (precariously) through time. It will also consider the persistence of writing in the face of destruction and the renewal of meaning that this might generate.
This paper analyses two works of creative non-fiction: Daniela Cascella’s Singed (2017) and Steve Hanson and Richard Barrett’s The Acts (2018). Both were written in response to house fires that destroyed the authors’ worldly possessions. They work through the traumas, the shock, and the moments of surprising elation that follow in the aftermath of losing everything. To be momentarily freed from the library, its compulsive hoarding and its abiding sense of incompletion, fills both writers with a sense of dizzying detachment. For Cascella, it’s a chance to build herself anew. For Hanson, a chance to see the world afresh. Yet, with dizziness comes nausea, and both use a succession of experimental methods to try and recreate these unpleasant effects, from the loss of words to the loss of identity itself.
By touching on the theories of collecting put forward by Freud and Derrida, Borges and Benjamin, this paper argues, through Hanson and Cascella, for a renewed appreciation of the ephemerality of cultural objects. Fire as a drastic cure for archive fever, on the one hand, and, on the other, the value of the written word as a physical object persisting (precariously) through time. It will also consider the persistence of writing in the face of destruction and the renewal of meaning that this might generate.
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A selection of research from the IABF archive concentrating on Anthony Burgess' relationships with lesser-known writers and his advocacy of their work both in his reviews and with publishers directly. This paper was delivered in a... more
A selection of research from the IABF archive concentrating on Anthony Burgess' relationships with lesser-known writers and his advocacy of their work both in his reviews and with publishers directly.
This paper was delivered in a shorter version at the Anthony Burgess Centenary Conference held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, July 2017.
This paper was delivered in a shorter version at the Anthony Burgess Centenary Conference held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, July 2017.
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Conference paper on the Marxist-feminist magazine Red Rag (1972 - 1980). focus on its use of graphic design as indicative of wider intellectual trends plus history of its editors' expulsion from the CPGB based on archive research.... more
Conference paper on the Marxist-feminist magazine Red Rag (1972 - 1980). focus on its use of graphic design as indicative of wider intellectual trends plus history of its editors' expulsion from the CPGB based on archive research. Presented at Wars of Position conference at the People's History Museum, Manchester, June 2017.
Link to Prezi: https://prezi.com/x1bqi-5io-7w/red-rag/
Link to Prezi: https://prezi.com/x1bqi-5io-7w/red-rag/
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This paper will argue that 3D digital animation, unlike its 2D and stop-motion counterparts, currently lacks recognisable self-reflexive aesthetic devices through which the trace of animators’ labour can be made visible. It will open with... more
This paper will argue that 3D digital animation, unlike its 2D and stop-motion counterparts, currently lacks recognisable self-reflexive aesthetic devices through which the trace of animators’ labour can be made visible. It will open with a brief history of how animation has previously shown its workings; from the pencil-wielding hand of Émile Cohl to the opening seconds of South Park, plus the intentional and unintentional smears and multiples visible on animation cells. These devices will then be discussed in relation to Marx’s analysis of the commodity in Capital Vol. 1, and how the process of fetishisation is momentarily disrupted by imperfections in the object which have been caused by production errors. These faults reconnect the object to its producer through the trace of (imperfect) labour which remains visible on the surface. In animation, similar (albeit consciously made) “errors” connect the perceptive viewer directly to the work of 2D or stop-motion animators. This paper will argue the need for an equivalent to emerge in 3D digital animation, as well as highlighting some contemporary animators testing and subverting the limits of 3D and sketching some possible ways these might encourage further formal innovations.
Presented at Work and Play: An Interdisciplinary Conference, held at Futureworks Media School, 6th July 2016.
Presented at Work and Play: An Interdisciplinary Conference, held at Futureworks Media School, 6th July 2016.
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This paper will focus on the hospital (or Foucaultian “clinic”) as a contested, and often contradictory symbol in the political imaginary of the post-war period. Against the welfare state’s narrative of collective care, writers like... more
This paper will focus on the hospital (or Foucaultian “clinic”) as a contested, and often contradictory symbol in the political imaginary of the post-war period. Against the welfare state’s narrative of collective care, writers like Kesey, Quin and Burroughs mythologised the asylum as the logical totalitarian conclusion of growing State biopower. Nevertheless, hospital scenes remain a regular staple of Beat biographies; the nadir-point of lives arcing between adventure and misadventure. The paper goes on to analyse Alex Trocchi’s abortive Project Sigma (“an invisible insurrection of a million minds”) as a potential blueprint for deterritorialised, rhizomatic healthcare. Research drawn from the Jeff Nuttall archive at John Rylands, Manchester, reveals a membership list with an international network of Sigma collaborators; Burroughs to Burgess, Guy Debord to Doris Lessing. Proposals from R.D. Laing for nomadic, non-sited approaches to care are included in the archive alongside fevered correspondence revealing the chaos of Sigma in practice. The contradictions which hamstrung Sigma at once reflect the experience of a Beat generation liberated by post-war prosperity but constrained by its structures, while also prophesying contemporary national healthcare struggles in the context of globalised capitalism.
Presented at EBSN Conference at the Wonder Inn, Manchester June 2016.
Presented at EBSN Conference at the Wonder Inn, Manchester June 2016.
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Alan Burns’ 1967 novel Celebrations is the first and arguably best of his literary experiments using the cut-up technique. It traces the internal power struggles of a factory-owning family through a series of “celebrations”; births,... more
Alan Burns’ 1967 novel Celebrations is the first and arguably best of his literary experiments using the cut-up technique. It traces the internal power struggles of a factory-owning family through a series of “celebrations”; births, weddings, funerals, and grand openings. A self-proclaimed “anarchist”, Burns saw the cut-up technique as a tool for tearing apart the hierarchical structures of the British class system and bringing about a new, fluid and spontaneous society to replace it.
Burns’ publisher, John Calder, was also responsible for the British publications of the populariser of cut-ups, William Burroughs. It was at the first Edinburgh literary festival, launched by Calder in 1961, that Burroughs first explained his technique to a mass audience. The ensuing controversy dominated the conference and the debate continued for over a year in the letters pages of the Times Literary Supplement. Over the course of the 1960s Burroughs became a countercultural icon in Britain, appearing on the cover of The Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper’s album among other hip spaces. Seduced, a number of British writers attempted their own versions of the cut-up technique only to produce sub-par imitations of Burroughs. Burroughs’ influence tore apart the old complacencies of British literary style, but threatened to simply replace it with his own quintessentially American voice. It is in this context that we must read Burns’ social realist (anti)novel of manners.
Although Burns claimed to have invented the cut-up technique independently of Burroughs, this paper argues that, directly inspired or not, Burns’ novel stands as the most sophisticated reconciliation of Burroughs’ controversial technique with the concerns of British radical literary politics to have been created in the wake of the cut-up’s infamy.
Burns’ publisher, John Calder, was also responsible for the British publications of the populariser of cut-ups, William Burroughs. It was at the first Edinburgh literary festival, launched by Calder in 1961, that Burroughs first explained his technique to a mass audience. The ensuing controversy dominated the conference and the debate continued for over a year in the letters pages of the Times Literary Supplement. Over the course of the 1960s Burroughs became a countercultural icon in Britain, appearing on the cover of The Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper’s album among other hip spaces. Seduced, a number of British writers attempted their own versions of the cut-up technique only to produce sub-par imitations of Burroughs. Burroughs’ influence tore apart the old complacencies of British literary style, but threatened to simply replace it with his own quintessentially American voice. It is in this context that we must read Burns’ social realist (anti)novel of manners.
Although Burns claimed to have invented the cut-up technique independently of Burroughs, this paper argues that, directly inspired or not, Burns’ novel stands as the most sophisticated reconciliation of Burroughs’ controversial technique with the concerns of British radical literary politics to have been created in the wake of the cut-up’s infamy.
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For all the excesses of 1960s alternative culture, the British literary scene of the period was surprisingly dismissive of experimental approaches. This talk aims at bringing to life the history of an avant garde movement which sought to... more
For all the excesses of 1960s alternative culture, the British literary scene of the period was surprisingly dismissive of experimental approaches. This talk aims at bringing to life the history of an avant garde movement which sought to revolutionise the novel form and was largely sidelined and ignored for its trouble. Individual authors, particularly B.S. Johnson and Ann Quin, are only now being recognised for their contributions to literature, and this will be the first lecture to engage with the group surrounding them as a whole. Based on four years of original archive-based research, a picture is now emerging of a group committed to tearing down Victorian traditions and constructing in their place a new set of fictional forms.
Given as part of the Ragged Project programme, this public lecture aims to translate the research conducted for my PhD thesis into a narrative form suitable for an audience of the general public.
Given as part of the Ragged Project programme, this public lecture aims to translate the research conducted for my PhD thesis into a narrative form suitable for an audience of the general public.
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The months leading up to the 2012 Olympic Games were marked by acts of protest and civil disobedience from a broad range of sources; residents groups, anti-corporate and anti-capitalist groups, environmental campaigners, campaigners for... more
The months leading up to the 2012 Olympic Games were marked by acts of protest and civil disobedience from a broad range of sources; residents groups, anti-corporate and anti-capitalist groups, environmental campaigners, campaigners for civil liberties, and more. Iain Sinclair, an outspoken critic of the bid, released his “documentary novel” Ghost Milk in 2011 as a testimony to the destructive, homogenising forces he believed New Labour’s “grand project” had unleashed across the country. In spite of this initial resistance, however, the Olympics went on to be praised by the majority of left-leaning critics largely thanks to Danny Boyle’s Isles of Wonder opening ceremony and its implied celebration of socialist values. In this paper it will be argued that this collision of Sinclair’s localism and Boyle’s nationalism marks a key point of rupture between the competing nostalgic visions presented by the twenty-first century British left. Where Sinclair’s writing raises the spectres of forgotten utopias and dreamers marginalised by a nation of shopkeepers, Boyle’s £27 million extravaganza staged the collective glories of the past using hordes of choreographed volunteers. Notably, both of these reactions against neoliberal hegemony, both the individualist and the collectivist, treat British socialism as a historical phenomenon; something of the past. In light of this, is it time to start questioning our love affair with the symbolic?
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Developing on the work of other scholars who have convincingly argued that food has a central role to play in Burgess’ Levi-Strauss-inspired novel M/F, this paper focuses upon the eating habits of three nations – Britain, France, and the... more
Developing on the work of other scholars who have convincingly argued that food has a central role to play in Burgess’ Levi-Strauss-inspired novel M/F, this paper focuses upon the eating habits of three nations – Britain, France, and the United States – arguing that they form a “culinary triangle” within the work. Americans, who “cut everything first, in the manner of the nursery” (20), are located in a state of nature compared to the cultural and culinary sophistication of the French, while the British exist in a between-state, enjoying “synchronic sweet and savoury” (197). The triangle is unpacked synchronically, finding recurring patterns across Burgess’ works, and then diachronically in terms of Burgess’ emigration from Britain to mainland Europe: a process occurring as the novel is composed.
It will be seen that the choice of Levi-Strauss’ The Scope of Anthropology as a guiding text in the writing of M/F represents the culmination of Burgess’ attempt to think the international outside of the framework of the British Empire. The complex and multilingual riddles encoded in the text invoke national stereotypes in increasingly contradictory ways, straining the bounds of the culinary triangle Burgess appears to foreground. Shrouded in the language of myth, Burgess is at once recognising fundamental national differences while rooting these differences in cultural practice; a liberatory shift away from the racial determinism of colonial discourse.
It will be seen that the choice of Levi-Strauss’ The Scope of Anthropology as a guiding text in the writing of M/F represents the culmination of Burgess’ attempt to think the international outside of the framework of the British Empire. The complex and multilingual riddles encoded in the text invoke national stereotypes in increasingly contradictory ways, straining the bounds of the culinary triangle Burgess appears to foreground. Shrouded in the language of myth, Burgess is at once recognising fundamental national differences while rooting these differences in cultural practice; a liberatory shift away from the racial determinism of colonial discourse.
Research Interests:
The Sixties saw a huge rise in the adjective “experimental” being used to describe avant garde writing. For the novelist Christine Brooke-Rose this term, deriving from the lexicon of the hard sciences, was entirely appropriate. Captivated... more
The Sixties saw a huge rise in the adjective “experimental” being used to describe avant garde writing. For the novelist Christine Brooke-Rose this term, deriving from the lexicon of the hard sciences, was entirely appropriate. Captivated by a utopian notion of an emergent “space age”, she aimed to create a new type of novel to break out of mechanistic nineteenth century tradition and inspire a “communication revolution” to match the “non-Aristotelian, non-Euclidean” revolution in science. The result was Such (1966), a novel set during a three-minute heart massage as a psychiatrist who specialises in treating astrophysicists flits between memory and dream. The inner-space of consciousness is metaphorically transformed to reflect quantum theoretical and astrophysical understanding contemporary to the novel’s construction.
Access to the Brooke-Rose archive at the Harry Ransom Centre, Texas, has provided unique insights into the process of research behind the novel. Brooke-Rose’s journals contain notes from numerous lectures on quantum theory, astronomy and the science behind the space race. In her essays of the period, Brooke-Rose demanded an equal level of commitment to scientific understanding from her fellow novelists. At one point she even suggested that, should everyday language not change to reflect the post-Einstein world of relativity, “we would not be equipped to survive the evolutionary process”. To prevent this, Such suggests we treat our minds like a map of the universe. Brooke-Rose later went on to regret this moon-eyed, space aged thinking, yet the novel remains a fascinating example of Sixties positivism.
Access to the Brooke-Rose archive at the Harry Ransom Centre, Texas, has provided unique insights into the process of research behind the novel. Brooke-Rose’s journals contain notes from numerous lectures on quantum theory, astronomy and the science behind the space race. In her essays of the period, Brooke-Rose demanded an equal level of commitment to scientific understanding from her fellow novelists. At one point she even suggested that, should everyday language not change to reflect the post-Einstein world of relativity, “we would not be equipped to survive the evolutionary process”. To prevent this, Such suggests we treat our minds like a map of the universe. Brooke-Rose later went on to regret this moon-eyed, space aged thinking, yet the novel remains a fascinating example of Sixties positivism.
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"""The experimental novelist, theorist and critic Christine Brooke-Rose is mostly associated with her postmodernist work, when she appears in academic criticism at all. Her threefold approach of lecturing, novel-writing and publishing... more
"""The experimental novelist, theorist and critic Christine Brooke-Rose is mostly associated with her postmodernist work, when she appears in academic criticism at all. Her threefold approach of lecturing, novel-writing and publishing works of theory in the 1980s represents her fullest actualisation of this postmodern project. However, this was not the first time Brooke-Rose had attempted this style of work. A theoretical work was commissioned to accompany her 1960s experimental novels but, upon encountering French poststructuralism, she called off the project as “Britain was decades behind”. She was left feeling hopelessly uninformed. To rectify this problem, Brooke-Rose took up a teaching post at the University of Paris VII in March 1968. In search of revolutionary ideas, she had found herself in the centre of the largest student uprising in modern European history.
Until now, knowledge of Brooke-Rose’s experiences during May ’68 has been limited to a couple of dismissive pages published in her 1996 “anti-biography” novel Remake. However, with access to the Harry Ransom Centre’s considerable Brooke-Rose archive in September of this year, a far more detailed and nuanced interrogation of her experiences is set to emerge. The enthusiasm, commitment and eventual disillusion and cynicism involved in witnessing a revolutionary moment from beginning to end is traced through her journalism, theoretical essays and her most experimental novel, 1975’s Thru. In many ways the moment can be read as the point at which her forward-looking “experimental” writing transforms into ironic and distanced “postmodern” writing. In this sense, Brooke-Rose is sharing the experiences of the whole ’68 generation – their revolutionary ideals betrayed and their profitable ideas recuperated into late capitalism."""
Until now, knowledge of Brooke-Rose’s experiences during May ’68 has been limited to a couple of dismissive pages published in her 1996 “anti-biography” novel Remake. However, with access to the Harry Ransom Centre’s considerable Brooke-Rose archive in September of this year, a far more detailed and nuanced interrogation of her experiences is set to emerge. The enthusiasm, commitment and eventual disillusion and cynicism involved in witnessing a revolutionary moment from beginning to end is traced through her journalism, theoretical essays and her most experimental novel, 1975’s Thru. In many ways the moment can be read as the point at which her forward-looking “experimental” writing transforms into ironic and distanced “postmodern” writing. In this sense, Brooke-Rose is sharing the experiences of the whole ’68 generation – their revolutionary ideals betrayed and their profitable ideas recuperated into late capitalism."""
Research Interests:
"Manchester born writer Anthony Burgess lived a life defined by movement between cultures. From serving in Gibraltar in the Second World War, through colonial service in Malaya, he then worked in American universities and Hollywood before... more
"Manchester born writer Anthony Burgess lived a life defined by movement between cultures. From serving in Gibraltar in the Second World War, through colonial service in Malaya, he then worked in American universities and Hollywood before ending his life as a “tax-exile” in Monaco. His novels reflect upon this transnational identity as central to the twentieth-century condition – raising existential questions of free-will and economic necessity, whilst accepting the “ex-pat” identity as an eternal outsider.
The way in which the idea of the nation is conveyed in Burgess’ work is thus of great interest. National identities seem defined by Burgess as tiny (sometimes uncannily so) deviations from a set of norms shared the world over. Notions of “cities”, “countries” and “cultures” are reduced to associations of ideas within daily routine. This is sometimes taken to mythical extremes as, for example, the appearance of an American always precedes violence. Similarly, it often leaves Burgess willfully ignorant of the political - as his naïve holiday to St Petersburg at the height of the cold war demonstrates.
Whether the conclusions Burgess draws from his experiences are insightful or not, his novelistic output undoubtedly provides an interesting insight into the twentieth-century as viewed between borders.
"
The way in which the idea of the nation is conveyed in Burgess’ work is thus of great interest. National identities seem defined by Burgess as tiny (sometimes uncannily so) deviations from a set of norms shared the world over. Notions of “cities”, “countries” and “cultures” are reduced to associations of ideas within daily routine. This is sometimes taken to mythical extremes as, for example, the appearance of an American always precedes violence. Similarly, it often leaves Burgess willfully ignorant of the political - as his naïve holiday to St Petersburg at the height of the cold war demonstrates.
Whether the conclusions Burgess draws from his experiences are insightful or not, his novelistic output undoubtedly provides an interesting insight into the twentieth-century as viewed between borders.
"
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Both published in 1973, BS Johnson’s Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry and Alan Burns’ The Angry Brigade both feature terrorists as their main protagonists. At that historical moment such a focus was undoubtedly controversial; Irish and... more
Both published in 1973, BS Johnson’s Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry and Alan Burns’ The Angry Brigade both feature terrorists as their main protagonists. At that historical moment such a focus was undoubtedly controversial; Irish and Welsh nationalist groups were growing increasingly violent and England itself was reeling in the midst of an anarchist bombing campaign. It is these anarchists, The Angry Brigade, that provide the inspiration for Burns’ “documentary novel”. Johnson, present at the trial of the Angry Brigade alongside Burns, goes further by making a lone terrorist the anti-hero of his black-comedy. Best known as “experimental” writers, neither Burns nor Johnson had written any overtly political novels until this point.
With a conservative government in power whose Industrial Relations Act slashed trade unions’ right to strike, the atmosphere of Britain in 1973 was combative politically and tense economically. My argument is that under such conditions the excesses of the terrorist mindset become relatable and, distanced by the devices of the comedic novel, the portrayal of terrorist acts provides a sense of catharsis for the powerless reader. The hyperbolic frustrations vented in classic slapstick comedies are here expressed through the machine-gun, the spray can, and the bomb. Importantly, these novels also imply that the reader hold certain sympathies in common with the terrorists’ cause – an implication perhaps unimaginable today.
With a conservative government in power whose Industrial Relations Act slashed trade unions’ right to strike, the atmosphere of Britain in 1973 was combative politically and tense economically. My argument is that under such conditions the excesses of the terrorist mindset become relatable and, distanced by the devices of the comedic novel, the portrayal of terrorist acts provides a sense of catharsis for the powerless reader. The hyperbolic frustrations vented in classic slapstick comedies are here expressed through the machine-gun, the spray can, and the bomb. Importantly, these novels also imply that the reader hold certain sympathies in common with the terrorists’ cause – an implication perhaps unimaginable today.
Research Interests:
"Blake Morrison, in his 1996 introduction to A Clockwork Orange describes the novel as “a work of the highest artistic and moral integrity”. Nevertheless, this staunch defence follows a long list of the novel’s negative associations:... more
"Blake Morrison, in his 1996 introduction to A Clockwork Orange describes the novel as “a work of the highest artistic and moral integrity”. Nevertheless, this staunch defence follows a long list of the novel’s negative associations: gang-raped nuns, pornography, Kubrick’s stylised violence and Burgess’ own apparent regrets over the work, just to name a few. Like it or not, it seems the novel is now inextricably tied to controversy. In this paper I shall argue that, rather than a side-issue, this controversy is absolutely central to the artistic merit of the novel as a whole.
Published a full decade after A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Cohen’s sociological study of the Mods and Rockers phenomenon, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, identifies a recurrent pattern by which social outrage explodes certain relatively minor incidents into national “moral panics”. These incidents are not the root of these national panics, according to Cohen, but rather it is series of social prejudices that find their incarnation in an imagined version of the incidents, and thus respond accordingly. The trans-historical qualities of the “moral panic” can readily be seen in A Clockwork Orange: from the invented fashion and nadsat-slang of the droogs, readily comparable with any youth subculture, to the Augustinian and Pelagian political parties that represent a timeless conservative/liberal divide. A Clockwork Orange is almost a blueprint for the “folk devils” and “moral crusaders” described in Cohen’s book.
However, I would argue that it is through this defamiliarisation that Burgess’ novel moves beyond a reactionary sense of “panic”, and into the realms of cathartic art. By enlisting the youth’s “feral underclass” alongside Catholic theology, the novel cuts to the quick of human nature itself – giving voice to the devils. Concluding my paper with a short narratological analysis, I argue that Alex can very much be viewed as the Jungian archetype of a trickster spirit who, read against the writer character, follows a typical pattern of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, or rather a theological cycle of transgression/persecution/redemption.
As an apotheosis of “moral panic”, is it any wonder that A Clockwork Orange resulted in causing one itself?"
Published a full decade after A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Cohen’s sociological study of the Mods and Rockers phenomenon, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, identifies a recurrent pattern by which social outrage explodes certain relatively minor incidents into national “moral panics”. These incidents are not the root of these national panics, according to Cohen, but rather it is series of social prejudices that find their incarnation in an imagined version of the incidents, and thus respond accordingly. The trans-historical qualities of the “moral panic” can readily be seen in A Clockwork Orange: from the invented fashion and nadsat-slang of the droogs, readily comparable with any youth subculture, to the Augustinian and Pelagian political parties that represent a timeless conservative/liberal divide. A Clockwork Orange is almost a blueprint for the “folk devils” and “moral crusaders” described in Cohen’s book.
However, I would argue that it is through this defamiliarisation that Burgess’ novel moves beyond a reactionary sense of “panic”, and into the realms of cathartic art. By enlisting the youth’s “feral underclass” alongside Catholic theology, the novel cuts to the quick of human nature itself – giving voice to the devils. Concluding my paper with a short narratological analysis, I argue that Alex can very much be viewed as the Jungian archetype of a trickster spirit who, read against the writer character, follows a typical pattern of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, or rather a theological cycle of transgression/persecution/redemption.
As an apotheosis of “moral panic”, is it any wonder that A Clockwork Orange resulted in causing one itself?"
Research Interests:
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This article explores the influence of John Berger on Eva Figes’ novel Light (1981). The novel describes a day in the life of Claude Monet. Figes’ depiction of Monet’s artistic processes reflects her own explorations of literary-critical... more
This article explores the influence of John Berger on Eva Figes’ novel Light (1981). The novel describes a day in the life of Claude Monet. Figes’ depiction of Monet’s artistic processes reflects her own explorations of literary-critical theory as well as showing the clear influence of Berger’s ideas. The article uses archive materials newly recently made available at the British Library to outline the personal relationship between the two writers. It uses this to build a picture of mutual influence, both interpersonal and interdisciplinary, between two of the leading critics, Marxist and Feminist, of the 1970s.
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Hosts in the Machine Trebor Scholz, Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers are Disrupting the Digital Economy, New York, Polity Press, 2016, 242 pp.When capitalism imagines itself it dreams of machinery. It sees the spinning jenny and not... more
Hosts in the Machine Trebor Scholz, Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers are Disrupting the Digital Economy, New York, Polity Press, 2016, 242 pp.When capitalism imagines itself it dreams of machinery. It sees the spinning jenny and not the highland clearances. It sees the laptop and not the plant in China. And now, in the era of cloud computing and the internet of things, we are invited to believe that all that is, is air, and to talk of solids melting is an anachronism. But the internet isn't air, it is made of metal and plastic, and the work that it does is most often done by people. This basic comprehension of how things really work is the starting point of Trebor Scholz's latest book. Uberworked and Underpaid is a survey of the twenty-first century economy with the labour left in, and, from this foundation, it provides some of the most important insights that the field of media scholarship has produced for a long while.Throughout the work Scholz emphasises how far technological mysticism distorts labour, law and life. The Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) is a key example here; a virtual labour exchange which recruits thousands of workers from the US, India and Brazil to perform minor tasks which users on the receiving end of the transaction would consider automatic. For instance, the 'Amazon Remembers' service invites a user to upload a photo which is then identified and located for them online. The work is done by a worker, or 'Turker', who is then 'paid ten cents' (p22), while the user believes the search to be the work of a machine. The software Soylent works the same way only for spelling and grammar checks. As someone who has worked for an online copywriting company, this is the machine that I, as a reviewer, recognise. Everything on the internet is done by someone, but usually not the person you expect. Exploitative labour practices become slightly more visible when human interaction is part of the service; see Uber, TaskRabbit or - in the UK - Deliveroo. The sleight of hand, however, is the same: hide the worker from the customer through an automated app, and hide them from the government by calling them 'independent contractors' rather than employees. As Scholz astutely comments, this is not happening now because of new technology but because of new social conditions: these business models are 'reliant [both] on the availability of an abundance of cheap labour and a permissive regulatory environment' (p44). Amazon Mechanical Turk, notably, was not only deemed too exploitative to operate in Europe but also in China where workers are required at the very least to be paid in money, rather than Amazon gift vouchers.Rather than present an anti-exploitation polemic, however, Scholz is also careful to present the voices of the workers themselves. In the case of AMT Turkers these voices reveal as many positive responses as negative ones. Working from home and flexible hours are cited as benefits, plus the inclusion of gamification principles into interface design makes it possible to transform some mundane tasks into compulsive, Candy Crush-esque puzzles. Scholz mentions a number of these game-like softwares beyond the AMT which incorporate user feedback to hone their system's overall accuracy. Some of these gamified systems are well-designed enough that users contribute to them for free. One example given is the Google Image Labeller, which pits two players against each other listing keywords when presented with images, the aim being to get a match. If both players input the same keyword they both win; the players get points and Google gets a verified keyword to feed back into Google Image Search. Another was the reCAPCHA human verification system which, as you may have noticed, has recently developed from text identification to image identification and utilises the same user feedback principles. …
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Nicola Barker’s H(A)PPY (2017) depicts a dystopian future in which all speech is monitored and regulated. Politically dubious topics are flagged, metanarratives like religion and history are censored, and even words expressing heightened... more
Nicola Barker’s H(A)PPY (2017) depicts a dystopian future in which all speech is monitored and regulated. Politically dubious topics are flagged, metanarratives like religion and history are censored, and even words expressing heightened emotional states are marked as dangerous. Barker uses innovative techniques to visualise the warping of language under conditions of totalitarian surveillance. In analysing Barker’s novel, this paper applies the findings of digital discourse studies to the novel’s content while arguing that its experimental techniques reflect a distinct break from the digital information stream. Barker’s innovations are a formal route to escape the deadlock of our current politics.