Dr Arthur Bradley

PhD Supervision Interests

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).

Profile

I am a Reader in Comparative Literature in the Department of English & Creative Writing at Lancaster University. I have research interests in contemporary literature, critical and cultural theory and religion. In 2009/10, I was a Visiting Professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and in 2013 I am a Visiting Fellow at Durham University, UK.

I am the author of four monographs. Firstly, Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy (Routledge, 2004) was an exploration of the place of negative theology in the work of such thinkers as Jacques Derrida, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Marion. It was described as a ?key text' in the field by the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. My second book ? Derrida's Of Grammatology: A Philosophical Guide (Indiana University Press, 2008) was the first critical guide to one of Jacques Derrida's most significant and influential works. To turn to my more recent work, The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic after 9/11 (Bloomsbury, 2010) (co-author Andrew Tate) is an analysis of the literary reception of the New Atheism in the work of such novelists as Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie. This book was described as ?paradigm-shifting' by the Times Higher Education Supplement and it has also been reviewed in The Journal of Modern Literature, Choice, Religious Studies Review and the Journal of Contemporary Religion. Finally, my most recent book Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) is a critical genealogy of deconstructive philosophy of technology and includes readings of Marx and Engels, Freud, Heidegger, Lacan, Derrida and Stiegler. In his endorsement, J. Hillis Miller (University of California, Irvine) describes it as a ?brilliant book' and ?essential reading'.

I have also published more than 30 articles and essays in such journals as: Paragraph, Textual Practice, The Yearbook of English Studies, The Journal of Cultural Research, Comparative Critical Studies, English Studies, Literature and Theology and Theology & Sexuality. As well as my own work, I have co-edited 4 collections of essays including most recently two volumes on the messianic in contemporary philosophy entitled The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic and The Messianic Now: Religion, Politics, Culture. In 2010, I was Co-Investigator alongside Lindsey Moore and Abir Hamdar) for the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society research project on Islamism in Arab Fiction and Film (2010/11). This 1-year project attracted funding of £97,408 to investigate the representation of Islamism in Arabic literary and filmic texts between 1947 and the present.

In 2013, I am working on a new book on literature and political theology which is provisionally entitled Unbearable Life.

PUBLICATIONS

Books:

Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. viii +202.

The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic after 9/11 (co-authored with Andrew Tate) (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), pp. ix +136.

Derrida's Of Grammatology: A Philosophical Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 166.

Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. xiii + 244.

Edited Books:

The Messianic Now: Religion, Philosophy, Culture ed. by Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. vi + 208.

The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic ed. by Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher (London: Continuum, 2010), pp. xii + 225.

Technicity ed. by Arthur Bradley and Louis Armand (Prague: Charles University Press, 2007), pp ix + 330.

Romantic Biography ed. by Arthur Bradley and Alan Rawes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. xvi + 226.

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.

Select recent journal articles and chapters:

?Untimely Ripp'd?: Shakespeare, Sovereignty 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 and the Politics of Digitalization' in French Visual Theory: A Critical Reader ed. by Nigel Saint and Andy Stafford (Manchester: MUP, 2013), pp. 278-98.

?Shelley Criticism from Deconstruction to the Present' in The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley ed. by Tony Howe and Michael O'Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 672-87 

?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), pp. 219-34.

?The Theocracy to Come: Islamism, Fundamentalism, Secularism', in The Politics to Come: Power, Secularity and the Messianic ed. by Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher (London: Continuum, 2010), pp. 174-90.

?On a Messianic Tone Recently Introduced in Philosophy', in ?The Messianic Now', special double issue of The Journal of Cultural Research ed. by Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher 13: 3-4 (2009), pp. 183-90.

• Culture, Politics, Eschatology: A Symposium

  21/09/2012 → 22/09/2012
  Paolo Palladino, Arthur Bradley, Bulent Diken, Charles Gere
  The symposium's theme is the continuing cultural and political relevance of eschatology. In recent years, diverse contemporary commentators have attended to eschatology. The symposium takes its cue fr ... Read more»

• The Journal of Cultural Research

  Arthur Bradley (Guest editor)
  Activity: Editorial activity
  Read more»