Brad Evans
Biographic Data
| ID | 3597812 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brad Evans |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brad |
| FAMILY NAME | Evans |
| SIGNATURE | EVANS B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6956-4969 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Responsibility of Writing
Mike Shapiro: My review of your How Black was My Valley for the journal American Book Review has left me with issues and questions I was only able to introduce given the journal’s 1500-word mandate. Because the diverse narrative threads in the book have captured my attention, I want to initiate an essay-length conversation that will bring out aspects of the book’s form in order to give it the critical attention it deserves. Your stunning introduc…
Weaponized ecologies: How cinema addresses nature’s complicity in enforced disappearances
Enforced disappearance is a global problem, which has devastated communities on every continent of the world. Sometimes resolved by the eventual discovery and excavation of clandestine graves, more often the meticulous searching for the abducted and denied offers no lasting resolution as the body is never recovered. Due to the global nature of the problem, it has also taken place in every known environmental setting, from familiar places of human…
Annihilation aesthetics: The disappearances of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Annihilated landscapes: Disappearance, desolation and the memory of the abyss
This article addresses both the conceptualisation and visualisation of annihilation landscapes of suffering and despair. Rethinking the history of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and what it means for understanding the past and present of atrocity, the essay attends to key concerns with the logics of the abyss and the nihilism of technologically enabled destruction. These will be addressed through a number of films that will highlight our …
The brutality of fact: Violence, disappearance and the promise of oblivion in the art of Francis Bacon
This essay addresses the violence of disappearance and oblivion in the artwork of Francis Bacon. Drawing upon the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and wider thinking on the aesthetics of violence, the paper argues that the real violence in Bacon is to attend to the violence of the void. Having explained the theoretical basis for this, the essay proceeds to provide a critique of the violence of disappearance in a technological age, noting how the lines bet…
“Ethnology as an Epic”: The Modern Cinema of Edward S. Curtis and the Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw
In 1914, the American photographer Edward S. Curtis released the first feature-length silent film to star an entirely Indigenous cast. In the Land of the Head Hunters—an epic melodrama of love, war, and ritual—was made with Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw (Kwakiutl) people on location in British Columbia. Curtis then worked with artists and musicians in New York to frame it as commercial entertainment. This interdisciplinary essay explores an inherent tension in…
The Techno-Theodicy: How Technology Became the New Religion
This essay addresses the rise of what is understood to be a global techno-theodicy. Recognizing the pandemic of 2020 as representing the first crisis of the post-liberal order, it maps out the changing nature of religious power as it relates to the appropriation of the abstract, from earlier claims on the monotheistic God to the powers of salvation and redemption invested in technology today. Technology in these terms is no longer seen as enablin…
Narcissus in three acts
This essay will address the narcissism of techno-nihilism into which life is being thrown. Written by a political theorist and artist, it looks specifically at the way technology is colonizing the political and artistic imagination. The essay is written over three acts, which traverse the logics of space and time. Act 1 is written by Brad Evans and situated in the year 2038. Based in Zacatecas, Mexico, he imagines a world where the university is …
The religious left: How the left lost its argument and fell into a moral abyss
The essay addresses the rise of what we elect to call ‘the religious left’. Documenting the collapse between radicality and religiosity as identity politics embraces moral absolutism, the essay offers a critique of the culture wars and the ensuing flight from political confrontation. Attending in particular to the failures of the left, which we recognise as being a failure of the political imagination, so we turn a critical eye on claims of authe…
Conversations on Violence: An Anthology
The Expulsion of Humanity
Violence: An Anthology
Myths of Violence
This essay critically addresses ten prevailing assumptions about violence: (1) violence is natural; (2) violence comes easily to humans; (3) violence attacks a juridical life; (4) violence is the result of underdevelopment; (5) violence is the result of difference; (6) violence is a sign of absolute power; (7) violence is associated with some death drive; (8) violence can be intelligent through a mastery of technology; (9) the opposite of violenc…
American Fascism: Fourteen Deadly Principles of Contemporary Politics
American Fascism:Fourteen Deadly Principles of Contemporary Politics Brad Evans (bio) and Henry A. Giroux (bio) As I speak to you now, the icy water of the ponds and rains Fills the hollows of the mass graves with a frigid and muddy water, as murky as our memory. War nods off to sleep but keeps one eye always open. Who amongst us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warn of the arrival of our new executioners? ...We pretend it all happened…
Imagination warfare: Targeting Youths on the Everyday Battlefields of the 21st Century
Working on from the understanding that youths have become a notable, if under-theorized object for power and violence in the everyday battlefields of the twenty-first century, this paper offers a rethinking of the politics of violence in the contemporary period. Moving beyond conventional understandings of the violence that neatly map it out in terms of civilization versus barbarity, it is our contention that both sides to the conflict have effec…
Dangerously exposed: The life and death of the resilient subject
What does it mean to live dangerously? This is not just a philosophical question or ethical call to reflect upon our own individual recklessness. It is a deeply political question being asked by ideologues and policy makers who want us to abandon the dream of ever achieving security and embrace danger as a condition of possibility for life in the future. As this article demonstrates, this belief in the necessity and positivity of human exposure t…
Deleuze & Fascism: Aesthetics
Introduction: Fascism in All its Forms Brad Evans & Julian Reid 1. Desire and Ideology in Fascism Todd May 2. Anti-Fascist Aesthetics Michael J. Shapiro 3. Oppression Desired: Fascism & the Security Imperative Brad Evans 4. Movement and Human Logistics: Pre-emption, Technology and Fascism Geoffrey Whitehall 5. A People of Seers: The Political Aesthetics of Postwar Cinema Revisited Julian Reid 6. Waltzing the Limit Erin Manning 7. Politics on the …
The Liberal War Thesis: Introducing the Ten Key Principles of Twenty-First-Century Biopolitical Warfare
Countering the familiar peace narrative, it became increasingly common during the 1990s to question liberal war-making efforts. This led to the resurgence in "just war" theory, as the desire to save strangers became an increasingly violent pursuit. Although it has since been argued that the exceptional politics aligned with the U.S. war on terror has put this notion of humanitarian war into crisis, this essay argues for a more nuanced reading tha…
Life Resistance: Towards a Different Concept of the Political
In an attempt to reaffirm Deleuze's Nietzschean affinities, this article argues that it is possible to detect in his thought an alternative concept of the political which gives ontological priority to difference. In order to map this out, a Deleuzian reading of the Zapatista experience will be provided, with particular attention given to the manner in which power is re-conceptualised, resistance strategised, subjectivities recast, and political s…
Barbarians to Savages: Liberal War Inside and Out
One of the most important aspects of your work has been to argue why the original sentiment which provoked Deleuze and Guattari’s Nomadology narrative needed to be challenged. With the onset of a global war machine which showed absolutely no respect for state boundaries, matched by the rise of many local fires of resistance which had no interest in capturing state power, the sentiment that “History is always written from the victory of States” co…
Deleuze and War: Introduction
Terror in all Eventuality
Following the events of September 11 th 2001 the “uncertain” has become all the more certain in meaning. The two most notorious “flights” in history have contributed to a global (in)security situation in which we have all in one way or another become connected through an assured vulnerability to the catastrophic “event-to-come”. This dangerous certainty unfortunately seems to be the only truism of the 21 st Century. Naturally, facing these condit…
Post-Interventionary Societies: An Introduction
From the era of post-Cold War humanitarian intervention to the long-term interventions launched in the name of the Global War on Terror, the aftermaths of large-scale violence are commonly referred
Terrorism to Insurgency: Mapping the Post-Intervention Security Terrain
This article examines developments in the Global War on Terror in terms of a shift in focus from terrorism to insurgency. We argue that the recent focus on the problematic of insurgency involves understanding the threat of terrorism as a matter of low-intensity conflict that can best be addressed through technologies of conflict management and peace-building. The article is composed of five sections. It begins with a discussion of the shifting te…
Foucault’s Legacy: Security, War and Violence in the 21st Century
Anticipating the strategic confluence between liberal ways of war and liberal ways of development, the ideas of Michel Foucault have increasingly resonated in the field of security studies. Foregrounding in particular the biopolitical imperative at the heart of liberal governance, critical attention has been given to the manner in which life itself becomes the principle referent object for security practices. In mapping out these key debates, thi…
Foucault’s Legacy: Security, War and Violence in the 21st Century
Anticipating the strategic confluence between liberal ways of war and liberal ways of development, the ideas of Michel Foucault have increasingly resonated in the field of security studies. Foregrounding in particular the biopolitical imperative at the heart of liberal governance, critical attention has been given to the manner in which life itself becomes the principle referent object for security practices. In mapping out these key debates, thi…
Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865-1920
The term culture in its anthropological sense did not enter the American lexicon with force until after 1910 - more than a century after Herder began to use it in Germany and another thirty years after E. B. Tylor and Franz Boas made it the object of anthropological attention. Before Cultures explores this delay in the development of the culture concept and its relation to the description of difference in late nineteenth-century America. In this …
The Liberal War Thesis: Introducing the Ten Key Principles of Twenty-First-Century Biopolitical Warfare
Countering the familiar peace narrative, it became increasingly common during the 1990s to question liberal war-making efforts. This led to the resurgence in "just war" theory, as the desire to save strangers became an increasingly violent pursuit. Although it has since been argued that the exceptional politics aligned with the U.S. war on terror has put this notion of humanitarian war into crisis, this essay argues for a more nuanced reading tha…
Terrorism to Insurgency: Mapping the Post-Intervention Security Terrain
This article examines developments in the Global War on Terror in terms of a shift in focus from terrorism to insurgency. We argue that the recent focus on the problematic of insurgency involves understanding the threat of terrorism as a matter of low-intensity conflict that can best be addressed through technologies of conflict management and peace-building. The article is composed of five sections. It begins with a discussion of the shifting te…
Post-Interventionary Societies: An Introduction
From the era of post-Cold War humanitarian intervention to the long-term interventions launched in the name of the Global War on Terror, the aftermaths of large-scale violence are commonly referred
Revolution without Violence
What other guerrilla force has convened a national democratic movement, civic and peaceful so that armed struggle becomes useless? What other guerrilla force asks its base of support about what it
The State of Violence
The Zapatista Insurgency: Bringing the Political Back into Conflict Analysis
This article will argue that the political dimensions to Zapatista insurgency offer a significant challenge to the prevailing understanding of conflict. Whilst the Liberal account of war is underwritten by notions of (1) cultural barbarism; and (2) socioeconomic regression, their commitment to autonomy exposes the political bias of this reading. Indeed, by drawing our attention toward the relationships between Liberal power and indigenous autonom…
Cushing's Zuni Sketchbooks: Literature, Anthropology, and American Notions of Culture
Cushing’s Zuni Sketchbooks: Literature, Anthropology, and American Notions of Culture Brad Evans (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. “Frank H. Cushing,” accompanying Sylvester Baxter’s “The Aboriginal Pilgrimage,” Century 24 (1882), 528. Cushing is here pictured in his most classic pose, wearing much the same Zuni costume later painted by Thomas Eakins. In the summer of 1882, a physically scarred white man pictured in the c…
Cushing's Zuni Sketchbooks: Literature, Anthropology, and American Notions of Culture
Cushing’s Zuni Sketchbooks: Literature, Anthropology, and American Notions of Culture Brad Evans (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. “Frank H. Cushing,” accompanying Sylvester Baxter’s “The Aboriginal Pilgrimage,” Century 24 (1882), 528. Cushing is here pictured in his most classic pose, wearing much the same Zuni costume later painted by Thomas Eakins. In the summer of 1882, a physically scarred white man pictured in the c…
Catherine Russell's recovery of the head‐hunters
Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865-1920
The term culture in its anthropological sense did not enter the American lexicon with force until after 1910 - more than a century after Herder began to use it in Germany and another thirty years after E. B. Tylor and Franz Boas made it the object of anthropological attention. Before Cultures explores this delay in the development of the culture concept and its relation to the description of difference in late nineteenth-century America. In this …
The State of Violence
The Zapatista Insurgency: Bringing the Political Back into Conflict Analysis
This article will argue that the political dimensions to Zapatista insurgency offer a significant challenge to the prevailing understanding of conflict. Whilst the Liberal account of war is underwritten by notions of (1) cultural barbarism; and (2) socioeconomic regression, their commitment to autonomy exposes the political bias of this reading. Indeed, by drawing our attention toward the relationships between Liberal power and indigenous autonom…
Introduction: Rethinking the Disciplinary Confluence of Anthropology and Literary Studies
Introduction: Rethinking the Disciplinary Confluence of Anthropology and Literary Studies Brad Evans It may well be that the disciplinary confluence of literary studies and anthropology is over—over, at least, in the way it has been understood since, as the story goes, Stephen Greenblatt came to the realization that when Clifford Geertz argued for interpreting culture as if it were a text, he opened the door to interpreting literature as if it we…
Revolution without Violence
What other guerrilla force has convened a national democratic movement, civic and peaceful so that armed struggle becomes useless? What other guerrilla force asks its base of support about what it
Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness; The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940
Book Review| December 01 2009 Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness; The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940 Brad Evans Brad Evans Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2009) 81 (4): 859–861. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2009-058 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Brad Evans; Not Quite White: White Trash and t…
Life Resistance: Towards a Different Concept of the Political
In an attempt to reaffirm Deleuze's Nietzschean affinities, this article argues that it is possible to detect in his thought an alternative concept of the political which gives ontological priority to difference. In order to map this out, a Deleuzian reading of the Zapatista experience will be provided, with particular attention given to the manner in which power is re-conceptualised, resistance strategised, subjectivities recast, and political s…
Barbarians to Savages: Liberal War Inside and Out
One of the most important aspects of your work has been to argue why the original sentiment which provoked Deleuze and Guattari’s Nomadology narrative needed to be challenged. With the onset of a global war machine which showed absolutely no respect for state boundaries, matched by the rise of many local fires of resistance which had no interest in capturing state power, the sentiment that “History is always written from the victory of States” co…
Deleuze and War: Introduction
Terror in all Eventuality
Following the events of September 11 th 2001 the “uncertain” has become all the more certain in meaning. The two most notorious “flights” in history have contributed to a global (in)security situation in which we have all in one way or another become connected through an assured vulnerability to the catastrophic “event-to-come”. This dangerous certainty unfortunately seems to be the only truism of the 21 st Century. Naturally, facing these condit…
Post-Interventionary Societies: An Introduction
From the era of post-Cold War humanitarian intervention to the long-term interventions launched in the name of the Global War on Terror, the aftermaths of large-scale violence are commonly referred
Terrorism to Insurgency: Mapping the Post-Intervention Security Terrain
This article examines developments in the Global War on Terror in terms of a shift in focus from terrorism to insurgency. We argue that the recent focus on the problematic of insurgency involves understanding the threat of terrorism as a matter of low-intensity conflict that can best be addressed through technologies of conflict management and peace-building. The article is composed of five sections. It begins with a discussion of the shifting te…
Foucault’s Legacy: Security, War and Violence in the 21st Century
Anticipating the strategic confluence between liberal ways of war and liberal ways of development, the ideas of Michel Foucault have increasingly resonated in the field of security studies. Foregrounding in particular the biopolitical imperative at the heart of liberal governance, critical attention has been given to the manner in which life itself becomes the principle referent object for security practices. In mapping out these key debates, thi…
The Liberal War Thesis: Introducing the Ten Key Principles of Twenty-First-Century Biopolitical Warfare
Countering the familiar peace narrative, it became increasingly common during the 1990s to question liberal war-making efforts. This led to the resurgence in "just war" theory, as the desire to save strangers became an increasingly violent pursuit. Although it has since been argued that the exceptional politics aligned with the U.S. war on terror has put this notion of humanitarian war into crisis, this essay argues for a more nuanced reading tha…
Dangerously exposed: The life and death of the resilient subject
What does it mean to live dangerously? This is not just a philosophical question or ethical call to reflect upon our own individual recklessness. It is a deeply political question being asked by ideologues and policy makers who want us to abandon the dream of ever achieving security and embrace danger as a condition of possibility for life in the future. As this article demonstrates, this belief in the necessity and positivity of human exposure t…
Deleuze & Fascism: Aesthetics
Introduction: Fascism in All its Forms Brad Evans & Julian Reid 1. Desire and Ideology in Fascism Todd May 2. Anti-Fascist Aesthetics Michael J. Shapiro 3. Oppression Desired: Fascism & the Security Imperative Brad Evans 4. Movement and Human Logistics: Pre-emption, Technology and Fascism Geoffrey Whitehall 5. A People of Seers: The Political Aesthetics of Postwar Cinema Revisited Julian Reid 6. Waltzing the Limit Erin Manning 7. Politics on the …
Imagination warfare: Targeting Youths on the Everyday Battlefields of the 21st Century
Working on from the understanding that youths have become a notable, if under-theorized object for power and violence in the everyday battlefields of the twenty-first century, this paper offers a rethinking of the politics of violence in the contemporary period. Moving beyond conventional understandings of the violence that neatly map it out in terms of civilization versus barbarity, it is our contention that both sides to the conflict have effec…
Myths of Violence
This essay critically addresses ten prevailing assumptions about violence: (1) violence is natural; (2) violence comes easily to humans; (3) violence attacks a juridical life; (4) violence is the result of underdevelopment; (5) violence is the result of difference; (6) violence is a sign of absolute power; (7) violence is associated with some death drive; (8) violence can be intelligent through a mastery of technology; (9) the opposite of violenc…
American Fascism: Fourteen Deadly Principles of Contemporary Politics
American Fascism:Fourteen Deadly Principles of Contemporary Politics Brad Evans (bio) and Henry A. Giroux (bio) As I speak to you now, the icy water of the ponds and rains Fills the hollows of the mass graves with a frigid and muddy water, as murky as our memory. War nods off to sleep but keeps one eye always open. Who amongst us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warn of the arrival of our new executioners? ...We pretend it all happened…
Conversations on Violence: An Anthology
The Expulsion of Humanity
Violence: An Anthology
“Ethnology as an Epic”: The Modern Cinema of Edward S. Curtis and the Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw
In 1914, the American photographer Edward S. Curtis released the first feature-length silent film to star an entirely Indigenous cast. In the Land of the Head Hunters—an epic melodrama of love, war, and ritual—was made with Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw (Kwakiutl) people on location in British Columbia. Curtis then worked with artists and musicians in New York to frame it as commercial entertainment. This interdisciplinary essay explores an inherent tension in…
Sociology (23 works) · Political science (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (17 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Art (11 works) · History (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works)