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Dr Arthur Bradley

Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Culture

Degree: BA (Hons) English Literature PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory

Current Teaching

I currently teach ENGL201 The Theory and Practice of Criticism and the MA Module Contemporary Literature and Technology: Fictions of the Posthuman.

Research Interests

I am a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature & Culture in the Department of English & Creative Writing at Lancaster University. In 2009/10, I was a Visiting Professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.

I have research interests in contemporary literature, continental philosophy and cultural theory. I'm the author of four monographs. Firstly, I published Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), which was described as a 'key text in the gradual (and overdue) dissolution of the boundaries between the sacred and the secular' by the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. My second book was Derrida's Of Grammatology: A Philosophical Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). My next book was The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic after 9/11(London: Continuum, 2010) (co-authored with Andrew Tate) which has been described as 'paradigm-shifting' in a recent Times Higher Education Supplement review. In 2011, I published my most recent book Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) which has been endorsed as 'brilliant' and 'essential reading' by Professor J. Hillis Miller of the University of California at Irvine.

As well as my own work, I've edited four collections of essays: Romantic Biography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Technicity (Prague: Charles University Press, 2007); The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic (London: Continuum, 2010) and The Messianic Now: Religion, Politics, Culture (London: Routledge, 2010). My publications also include essays and articles on contemporary literature, continental philosophy and politics in journals such as Literature and Theology, Textual Practice, Paragraph, Journal of Cultural Research and The Yearbook of English Studies. In 2010-11, I worked with Lindsey Moore and Abir Hamdar as co-investigator on the AHRC Religion & Society Project Islamism in Arab Fiction and Film. Please see the Project website for further information: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/islamism/index.htm

In 2012, I am beginning work on a new monograph provisionally entitled Unbearable Life: Essays on Biopolitical Theology which features readings of Augustine, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Robespierre, Schmitt and Agamben.

Books:

Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida (London: Palgrave Macmillan,2011).

The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic after 9/11 (co-authored with Andrew Tate) (London: Continuum, 2010).

Derrida's Of Grammatology: A Philosophical Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy, Routledge Studies in Religion (London: Routledge, 2004).

Edited collections:

The Messianic Now: Religion, Politics, Culture ed. by Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher (London: Routledge, 2011).

The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic ed. by Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher (London: Continuum, 2010).

Technicity ed. by Louis Armand and Arthur Bradley (Prague: Charles University Press, 2007).

Romantic Biography ed. by Arthur Bradley and Alan Rawes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).

Edited special issues of journals:

'The Messianic Now', special double issue of The Journal of Cultural Research ed. by Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher 13: 3-4 (2009), pp. 208.

Funding awards:

'Islamism in Arabic Fiction and Film'. AHRC/ESRC Religion & Society Programme. Award of £97, 408.

Select recent articles and chapters:

"Untimely Ripp'd": Macbeth and Unbearable Life', in English Studies, special issue on Shakespeare and Theory ed. by François-Xavier Gleyzon and Johann Gregory (forthcoming, 2012).

'Real Time: Bernard Stiegler's Politics of Digitalization' in Modern French Visual Theory: A Critical Reader ed. by Nigel Saint and Andy Stafford (Manchester: MUP, forthcoming 2012).

'Shelley Criticism from Deconstruction to the Present' in The Oxford Handbook of Shelley Studies ed. by Tony Howe and Michael O'Neill (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming, 2012).

'Israel's Vietnam: Framing the Lebanese War' in Terrorism and Narrative Practice ed. by Thomas Austenfeld, Dimiter Daphinoff, and Jens Herlth (Berlin: LIT Verlag,2011).

'The Return of the Religious' in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Literary and Cultural Theory ed. by Michael Ryan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010).

'The Theocracy to Come: Deconstruction, Auto-immunity, Islam', in The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic ed. by Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher (London: Continuum, 2010).

'The Impossibility of Reading: Bloom, de Man, Derrida' in Reading, Writing and Harold Bloom ed. by Alan Rawes and Jonathon Shears (Manchester: MUP, 2010).

'The New Atheist Novel: Literature, Religion and Terror in Amis and McEwan', The Yearbook of English Studies 2009, special issue on Literature and Religion ed. by Andrew Tate (New York: MHRA, 2009).

'The Deconstruction of Christianity: From the Hand of God to the Hand of Man' in Literature, Religion and the Imagination ed. by Mark Knight and Louise Lee (London: Continuum, 2009).

Select recent conference presentations:

'Unbearable Life: Literature, Sovereignty, Biopolitics', keynote lecture, Desire, Literature, Culture conference, University of Malta, 2012.

'"Untimely Ripp'd": Shakespeare, Sovereignty and Unbearable Life', Shakespeare's Imagined Orient, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, 2011.

'Israel's Vietnam: Framing the Lebanon War', Terrorism Through the Lens of Literature, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, 2010.

'City of Cacos: The Beast and the Sovereign in Augustine and Derrida', Traces of Judaism in Contemporary Thought, University of Cracow, Poland, 2010.

'Poetics of the New Atheism', After Atheism: Literature, Science, Belief, Lancaster University, 2010.

'Thinking the Hand: Hapticity, Embodiment and Technology', Beyond Constructionism: Technology, Communication, Community, University of Volda, Norway, 2009.

'The Deconstruction of Christianity: On Touching the Frontiers of Theory', plenary lecture,Frontiers of Theory: Technicity, Art and the New Media, Charles University, Czech Republic, 2007.

Potential Doctoral Proposals

I would be very happy to receive proposals from potential doctoral students with an interest in any of my areas of research specialism: contemporary literature (especially the relationship between literature, politics and terrorism); critical and cultural theory (especially the work of Derrida) and continental philosophy (especially in the areas of politics, technology and the religious).

Associated Keywords: Continental philosophy, Cultural theory, English, Literary and cultural theory, Religion and literature, Romanticism, Technology

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