Claire Blencowe
Biographic Data
| ID | 189280 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Claire Blencowe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Claire |
| FAMILY NAME | Blencowe |
| SIGNATURE | BLENCOWE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2532-4418 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Spirits of Extraction: Christianity, Settler Colonialism and the Geology of Race
‘Savage’ encounters and the scene of evangelical awakening in Bristol
The chapter takes up the founding stories of Methodism, including John Wesley’s evangelical conversion, his founding of the Methodist movement in Bristol, and the mission to civilise the ‘savage’ coal miners of the region. The chapter highlights the importance of colonial experiences, imaginaries and anxieties in driving Wesley’s awakening and pursuit of ‘truly Christian’ life. Encounters with ‘the savage’ – with the vulnerability and suffering o…
Family Debilitation: Migrant Child Detention and the Aesthetic Regime of Neoliberal Authoritarianism
This paper proposes the term “family debilitation” to point to the ways that institutionalized child abuse operates to perversely generate biopolitical authority, a strategy of negative biopolitics that is integral to the aesthetic regimes of settler colonialism and neoliberal authoritarianism. The paper attends to two scenes of child detention in the US: Scene 1 US/Mexico Border 2017 concerns migrant children caught up in the bordering regimes o…
Disenchanting secularism (or the cultivation of soul) as pedagogy in resistance to populist racism and colonial structures in the academy
This article explores pedagogic strategies for resisting the racism of contemporary populism and age‐old coloniality through challenging secularism in the academy, especially in social theory. Secularism sustains racism and imperialism in the contemporary academy and is inscribed, in part, through the norms of social theory. Post‐secular social theory has been positioned by some as the decolonial answer, but often replicates the most problematic …
Engines of alternative objectivity: Re-articulating the nature and value of participatory mental health organisations with the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company
Through two case studies, the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company, we demonstrate how successful participatory organisations can be seen as 'engines of alternative objectivity' rather than as the subjective other to objective, biomedical science. With the term 'alternative objectivity', we point to collectivisations of experience that are different to biomedical science but are nonetheless forms of objectivity. Taking inspira…
Authority, Experience and the Life of Power
Taking up the challenge of understanding power in its complexity, this volume returns to and revitalises the concept of ‘authority’. It provides a powerful analysis of the ways that relationships of trust, attachment, governance and inequality become possible when subjectivities and bodies are invested in the life of power. The collection offers a vibrant new analysis of the biopolitical, arguing that ‘experience of life’ has become equated with …
Churches, blackness, and contested multiculturalism: Europe, Africa, and North America
Ecological Attunement in a Theological Key: Adventures in Antifascist Aesthetics
This article embarks on adventures in search of antifascist aesthetics-an excursion born of despair at the increasingly racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim poison of our political ground. It asks whether ecological attunement can provide a counter to such capitalist sorcery and barbarism. The article draws on feminist philosophy of science, new materialism, and ecofeminism. What, it asks these guides, can ecological attunement offer to the task o…
Theorising participatory practice and alienation in health research: A materialist approach
Health inequalities research has shown a growing interest in participatory ways of working. However, the theoretical ideas underpinning mainstream approaches to participation remain underexplored. This article contributes to theorising participatory practice for the kind of egalitarian politics to which many of those focused on reducing health inequalities are committed. First, we argue that the ambitions of participatory practice should be conce…
Biopolitical authority, objectivity and the groundwork of modern citizenship
Authority is a powerful concept for coming to terms with the diversity of power. This article reframes the concept of ‘authority’ and articulates its continued relevance in a context of radical contingency and biopolitics. It argues that authority is essentially objectivist. Biopolitics is conceived as a historical process of constituting biological life and economic forces as objectivity. The paper addresses the question of whether biological-ty…
Authority and experience
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
Biopolitical Experience: Foucault, Power and Positive Critique
An original, comprehensive interpretation of Michel Foucault's analysis of biopolitics – situating biopolitics in the context of embodied histories of subjectivity, affective investments and structure
Biology, Contingency and the Problem of Racism in Feminist Discourse
In the 1970s and 1980s a strong opposition and anxiety towards biological and naturalizing knowledges was the norm in feminist discourse. In the past decades the certainties of that 'anti-biologism' have been challenged, in part because of a new recognition of the role of contingency in both biological determination and biological science. What seems to have survived the shift is a set of normative assumptions concerning the role of determinacy a…
Foucault’s and Arendt’s ‘insider view’ of biopolitics: A critique of Agamben
This article revisits Arendt's and Foucault's converging accounts of modern (bio)politics and the entry of biological life into politics. Agamben's influential account of these ideas is rejected as a misrepresentation both because it de-historicizes biological/organic life and because it occludes the positivity of that life and thus the discursive appeal and performative force of biopolitics. Through attention to the genealogy of Arendt's and Fou…
Destroying Duration: The Critical Situation of Bergsonism in Benjamin's Analysis of Modern Experience
The extent to which Walter Benjamin's thought is bound up with the conceptual framework and debates of Bergsonism is overlooked to the detriment of our understanding of both. Benjamin's conception of Erfahrung/ experience is defined in relation to Bergson's conception of experience in the durée/duration. Benjamin implicitly evokes and extends a Bergsonian conception of creativity. This is central to Benjamin's understanding of the political impli…
Foucault’s and Arendt’s ‘insider view’ of biopolitics: A critique of Agamben
This article revisits Arendt's and Foucault's converging accounts of modern (bio)politics and the entry of biological life into politics. Agamben's influential account of these ideas is rejected as a misrepresentation both because it de-historicizes biological/organic life and because it occludes the positivity of that life and thus the discursive appeal and performative force of biopolitics. Through attention to the genealogy of Arendt's and Fou…
Ecological Attunement in a Theological Key: Adventures in Antifascist Aesthetics
This article embarks on adventures in search of antifascist aesthetics-an excursion born of despair at the increasingly racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim poison of our political ground. It asks whether ecological attunement can provide a counter to such capitalist sorcery and barbarism. The article draws on feminist philosophy of science, new materialism, and ecofeminism. What, it asks these guides, can ecological attunement offer to the task o…
Biopolitical authority, objectivity and the groundwork of modern citizenship
Authority is a powerful concept for coming to terms with the diversity of power. This article reframes the concept of ‘authority’ and articulates its continued relevance in a context of radical contingency and biopolitics. It argues that authority is essentially objectivist. Biopolitics is conceived as a historical process of constituting biological life and economic forces as objectivity. The paper addresses the question of whether biological-ty…
Biology, Contingency and the Problem of Racism in Feminist Discourse
In the 1970s and 1980s a strong opposition and anxiety towards biological and naturalizing knowledges was the norm in feminist discourse. In the past decades the certainties of that 'anti-biologism' have been challenged, in part because of a new recognition of the role of contingency in both biological determination and biological science. What seems to have survived the shift is a set of normative assumptions concerning the role of determinacy a…
Authority and experience
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
Destroying Duration: The Critical Situation of Bergsonism in Benjamin's Analysis of Modern Experience
The extent to which Walter Benjamin's thought is bound up with the conceptual framework and debates of Bergsonism is overlooked to the detriment of our understanding of both. Benjamin's conception of Erfahrung/ experience is defined in relation to Bergson's conception of experience in the durée/duration. Benjamin implicitly evokes and extends a Bergsonian conception of creativity. This is central to Benjamin's understanding of the political impli…
Family Debilitation: Migrant Child Detention and the Aesthetic Regime of Neoliberal Authoritarianism
This paper proposes the term “family debilitation” to point to the ways that institutionalized child abuse operates to perversely generate biopolitical authority, a strategy of negative biopolitics that is integral to the aesthetic regimes of settler colonialism and neoliberal authoritarianism. The paper attends to two scenes of child detention in the US: Scene 1 US/Mexico Border 2017 concerns migrant children caught up in the bordering regimes o…
Disenchanting secularism (or the cultivation of soul) as pedagogy in resistance to populist racism and colonial structures in the academy
This article explores pedagogic strategies for resisting the racism of contemporary populism and age‐old coloniality through challenging secularism in the academy, especially in social theory. Secularism sustains racism and imperialism in the contemporary academy and is inscribed, in part, through the norms of social theory. Post‐secular social theory has been positioned by some as the decolonial answer, but often replicates the most problematic …
Engines of alternative objectivity: Re-articulating the nature and value of participatory mental health organisations with the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company
Through two case studies, the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company, we demonstrate how successful participatory organisations can be seen as 'engines of alternative objectivity' rather than as the subjective other to objective, biomedical science. With the term 'alternative objectivity', we point to collectivisations of experience that are different to biomedical science but are nonetheless forms of objectivity. Taking inspira…
Destroying Duration: The Critical Situation of Bergsonism in Benjamin's Analysis of Modern Experience
The extent to which Walter Benjamin's thought is bound up with the conceptual framework and debates of Bergsonism is overlooked to the detriment of our understanding of both. Benjamin's conception of Erfahrung/ experience is defined in relation to Bergson's conception of experience in the durée/duration. Benjamin implicitly evokes and extends a Bergsonian conception of creativity. This is central to Benjamin's understanding of the political impli…
Foucault’s and Arendt’s ‘insider view’ of biopolitics: A critique of Agamben
This article revisits Arendt's and Foucault's converging accounts of modern (bio)politics and the entry of biological life into politics. Agamben's influential account of these ideas is rejected as a misrepresentation both because it de-historicizes biological/organic life and because it occludes the positivity of that life and thus the discursive appeal and performative force of biopolitics. Through attention to the genealogy of Arendt's and Fou…
Biology, Contingency and the Problem of Racism in Feminist Discourse
In the 1970s and 1980s a strong opposition and anxiety towards biological and naturalizing knowledges was the norm in feminist discourse. In the past decades the certainties of that 'anti-biologism' have been challenged, in part because of a new recognition of the role of contingency in both biological determination and biological science. What seems to have survived the shift is a set of normative assumptions concerning the role of determinacy a…
Biopolitical Experience: Foucault, Power and Positive Critique
An original, comprehensive interpretation of Michel Foucault's analysis of biopolitics – situating biopolitics in the context of embodied histories of subjectivity, affective investments and structure
Biopolitical authority, objectivity and the groundwork of modern citizenship
Authority is a powerful concept for coming to terms with the diversity of power. This article reframes the concept of ‘authority’ and articulates its continued relevance in a context of radical contingency and biopolitics. It argues that authority is essentially objectivist. Biopolitics is conceived as a historical process of constituting biological life and economic forces as objectivity. The paper addresses the question of whether biological-ty…
Authority and experience
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
Theorising participatory practice and alienation in health research: A materialist approach
Health inequalities research has shown a growing interest in participatory ways of working. However, the theoretical ideas underpinning mainstream approaches to participation remain underexplored. This article contributes to theorising participatory practice for the kind of egalitarian politics to which many of those focused on reducing health inequalities are committed. First, we argue that the ambitions of participatory practice should be conce…
Authority, Experience and the Life of Power
Taking up the challenge of understanding power in its complexity, this volume returns to and revitalises the concept of ‘authority’. It provides a powerful analysis of the ways that relationships of trust, attachment, governance and inequality become possible when subjectivities and bodies are invested in the life of power. The collection offers a vibrant new analysis of the biopolitical, arguing that ‘experience of life’ has become equated with …
Churches, blackness, and contested multiculturalism: Europe, Africa, and North America
Ecological Attunement in a Theological Key: Adventures in Antifascist Aesthetics
This article embarks on adventures in search of antifascist aesthetics-an excursion born of despair at the increasingly racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim poison of our political ground. It asks whether ecological attunement can provide a counter to such capitalist sorcery and barbarism. The article draws on feminist philosophy of science, new materialism, and ecofeminism. What, it asks these guides, can ecological attunement offer to the task o…
Engines of alternative objectivity: Re-articulating the nature and value of participatory mental health organisations with the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company
Through two case studies, the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company, we demonstrate how successful participatory organisations can be seen as 'engines of alternative objectivity' rather than as the subjective other to objective, biomedical science. With the term 'alternative objectivity', we point to collectivisations of experience that are different to biomedical science but are nonetheless forms of objectivity. Taking inspira…
Family Debilitation: Migrant Child Detention and the Aesthetic Regime of Neoliberal Authoritarianism
This paper proposes the term “family debilitation” to point to the ways that institutionalized child abuse operates to perversely generate biopolitical authority, a strategy of negative biopolitics that is integral to the aesthetic regimes of settler colonialism and neoliberal authoritarianism. The paper attends to two scenes of child detention in the US: Scene 1 US/Mexico Border 2017 concerns migrant children caught up in the bordering regimes o…
Disenchanting secularism (or the cultivation of soul) as pedagogy in resistance to populist racism and colonial structures in the academy
This article explores pedagogic strategies for resisting the racism of contemporary populism and age‐old coloniality through challenging secularism in the academy, especially in social theory. Secularism sustains racism and imperialism in the contemporary academy and is inscribed, in part, through the norms of social theory. Post‐secular social theory has been positioned by some as the decolonial answer, but often replicates the most problematic …
Spirits of Extraction: Christianity, Settler Colonialism and the Geology of Race
‘Savage’ encounters and the scene of evangelical awakening in Bristol
The chapter takes up the founding stories of Methodism, including John Wesley’s evangelical conversion, his founding of the Methodist movement in Bristol, and the mission to civilise the ‘savage’ coal miners of the region. The chapter highlights the importance of colonial experiences, imaginaries and anxieties in driving Wesley’s awakening and pursuit of ‘truly Christian’ life. Encounters with ‘the savage’ – with the vulnerability and suffering o…
Sociology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Biopower (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works)