Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) is the contemporary philosopher to whom Badiou returns more than any other. His engagement with Deleuze is however neither homogeneous nor unequivocally critical, as it is often thought to be. In short, Deleuze figures in Badiou’s work as his preeminent philosophical disputant.
Three years ago, Richard Macdonald and I compared Dai Vaughan (1933-2012) with two other ‘outstanding figures of his generation’, Robin Wood (1931-2009) and V F Perkins (1936-). The comparison is worth extending. Wood and Perkins are now regarded as key figures…
Jean Baudrillard on Muslims in France, the simulation of freedom in America, the demise of the intellectual and why French theory is like the Statue of Liberty.
There is a shortage of men in neo-Victorianism. Or that, at least, is how it would appear to look at many critical works on neo-Victorianism at the present time. Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize winning novel, The Luminaries (2013), with…
By Ashley Woodward Peter Shaffer’s play Equus is perhaps best known to some today as ‘the one in which Harry Potter gets his kit off’ (as one of my students put it). Yet apart from the fact that it’s controversial…
By William Knox Violence is an area much neglected by Scottish historians unlike those working in other countries, such as England, Western Europe and the USA, where its study has become central to our understanding of social relations, in particular class and…
By Michael Nathanson The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, i.e., impasse over land ownership of the former mandatory Palestine, is rooted in and continuously being stoked by competing narratives. The Zionist movement adopted the master narrative of the Hebrew Bible, anchored by the…
Three years ago, Gerry Hassan and I published a book entitled ‘The Strange Death of Labour Scotland’. We envisaged that, unless radical steps were taken, Labour’s influence in Scotland would steadily decline. Speaking personally, I did not envisage a total…
Dear Bob, ‘Tis I, Would-Be, unicorn with panther’s breath. Are you aware, Bob, that Black Panthers are generally the melanistic color variant of either a leopard or jaguar? This may seem a petty inconsequential factoid but think of the poor…