Adrian May
My first research interest is the cultural history of modern and contemporary France, especially post-war French thought and intellectual culture. I have a broad interest in periodical publications as key sites where theory and philosophy coincide with concrete political and aesthetic concerns. By studying the review Lignes in my doctoral thesis, I investigated what happened to the radical, French theoretical left after the 1970s and the heydays of post-structuralism and post-modernism.
The thesis developed a methodology of Cultural History which, through Lignes, situated contemporary debates within their contextual moments of emergence. I have therefore become increasingly interested in contemporary French history and politics, and specifically the relationship between French and EU policy and the intellectual and cultural sector. Consequently, I am undertaking a new research project examining the relationship between art and politics in France since the 1980s, especially concerning how strategies of cultural politics have changed in response to globalisation, austerity, and the politicisation of immigration.
Having undertaken my first undergraduate degree and master’s program in English literature, I am interested in working in comparative literature frameworks, especially working with 20th and 21st Century French, English and American fiction. I am also interested in cinema (especially the work of Jean-Luc Godard) and French visual art throughout the 20th and 21st centuries (having previously written on Sophie Calle and French conceptual art).
Supervisors: Martin Crowley
The thesis developed a methodology of Cultural History which, through Lignes, situated contemporary debates within their contextual moments of emergence. I have therefore become increasingly interested in contemporary French history and politics, and specifically the relationship between French and EU policy and the intellectual and cultural sector. Consequently, I am undertaking a new research project examining the relationship between art and politics in France since the 1980s, especially concerning how strategies of cultural politics have changed in response to globalisation, austerity, and the politicisation of immigration.
Having undertaken my first undergraduate degree and master’s program in English literature, I am interested in working in comparative literature frameworks, especially working with 20th and 21st Century French, English and American fiction. I am also interested in cinema (especially the work of Jean-Luc Godard) and French visual art throughout the 20th and 21st centuries (having previously written on Sophie Calle and French conceptual art).
Supervisors: Martin Crowley
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Conference Presentations by Adrian May
Created by Michel Surya in 1987, the impact of La Communauté désoeuvrée is clear his conception of the revue as a space of intellectual comparution: not a fusional community of writers with a univocal position, but a jointly articulated and collective presentation of singular responses to common concerns. Nancy’s collaborations with Jean-Christophe Bailly to de-ontologise community have been especially utilised by Lignes, penetrating into its discussions of Europe, racism, the new social movements, The Satanic Verses and aesthetic fragmentation.
Yet Nancy often argues that philosophy should retreat from politics, so his participation in Lignes alongside the likes of Badiou, Rancière and Balibar is perhaps surprising. Some of his sharpest political texts have been published in Lignes, but also some of his most cautionary. Lignes published original Nancy essays such as ‘La pensée dérobé’, and he personally edited an entire issue on Nietzsche. Yet his place in the revue was never comfortable: a onetime member of the editorial board, and despite stressing his intellectual and personal friendship for Lignes, he resigned in 2007, stating that since there was no, and should be no political project for a revue in the contemporary period, revues themselves no longer have a function. Whilst Nancy occupies a privileged position in the intellectual genealogy constructed by Lignes, especially in the wake of Nietzsche, Bataille and Blanchot, the increasingly militant tone of the more recent issues made him clearly anxious, and impelled him to distance himself from this milieu to which his own thought had played such a pivotal role.
This paper, then, will examine the tensions inherent in Nancy’s participation, and subsequent non-participation, in a specific arena of intellectual and political thought: what for Nancy constitutes the role and remit of philosophical thought, and what crosses over to the political? What, within the political, are legitimate actions and interventions, given Nancy’s aversion to exclusive communitarian positions and clearly defined subjective identifications? What types of writing are appropriate to each? These are the frontiers I wish to probe.
Thesis Chapters by Adrian May
Books by Adrian May
Papers by Adrian May
Created by Michel Surya in 1987, the impact of La Communauté désoeuvrée is clear his conception of the revue as a space of intellectual comparution: not a fusional community of writers with a univocal position, but a jointly articulated and collective presentation of singular responses to common concerns. Nancy’s collaborations with Jean-Christophe Bailly to de-ontologise community have been especially utilised by Lignes, penetrating into its discussions of Europe, racism, the new social movements, The Satanic Verses and aesthetic fragmentation.
Yet Nancy often argues that philosophy should retreat from politics, so his participation in Lignes alongside the likes of Badiou, Rancière and Balibar is perhaps surprising. Some of his sharpest political texts have been published in Lignes, but also some of his most cautionary. Lignes published original Nancy essays such as ‘La pensée dérobé’, and he personally edited an entire issue on Nietzsche. Yet his place in the revue was never comfortable: a onetime member of the editorial board, and despite stressing his intellectual and personal friendship for Lignes, he resigned in 2007, stating that since there was no, and should be no political project for a revue in the contemporary period, revues themselves no longer have a function. Whilst Nancy occupies a privileged position in the intellectual genealogy constructed by Lignes, especially in the wake of Nietzsche, Bataille and Blanchot, the increasingly militant tone of the more recent issues made him clearly anxious, and impelled him to distance himself from this milieu to which his own thought had played such a pivotal role.
This paper, then, will examine the tensions inherent in Nancy’s participation, and subsequent non-participation, in a specific arena of intellectual and political thought: what for Nancy constitutes the role and remit of philosophical thought, and what crosses over to the political? What, within the political, are legitimate actions and interventions, given Nancy’s aversion to exclusive communitarian positions and clearly defined subjective identifications? What types of writing are appropriate to each? These are the frontiers I wish to probe.