Ian James
Biographic Data
| ID | 3634977 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ian James |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ian |
| FAMILY NAME | James |
| SIGNATURE | JAMES I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0009-0004-2960-5502 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Epimodernism and the Circulation of Life
Epimodernism and the Circulation of Life
The Difference That Makes a Difference
In Of Grammatology Derrida called upon Charles Sanders Peirce as a partial ally in his 'deconstruction of the transcendental signifier'. Here Derridean thought and biodeconstruction are brought into a comparative relation with contemporary Peircean biosemiotic theory. The discussion examines an intertwining of philosophical currents and trajectories that run through both Peirce and the philosophical hinterland of biosemiotics. What can be seen to…
Freeze Peach’
Keith Reader's brief, unfinished article ‘Freeze Peach’ situates contemporary controversies surrounding free speech in relation to material and economic concerns. Ian James's response draws attention to the way Keith does this by bringing together four key figures of late twentieth-century philosophy and theory: Louis Althusser, Jean-François Lyotard, Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish. Ian argues that the conjugation of Marx-inspired theory with th…
Metaphor in Biosemiotics and Deconstruction
This article stages a critical-philosophical encounter between Derridean deconstruction and Peircean biosemiotic theory focussing on the role and status of metaphor within each. It argues that the biosemiotic understanding of metaphor as a structuring principle informing the sign-activity of living organisms and processes offers an alternative understanding of a generalised metaphoricity of life as such and an account of what might be called biol…
Plasticity
Plasticity
Nancy’s Prophetic Voice
This article gives a personal recollection of discussions with Jean-Luc Nancy and offers a reflection on these together with a philosophical analysis of texts written by him that were published in 2020 in the volume La peau fragile du monde (The Fragile Skin of the World). It engages with Nancy’s novel understanding of prophecy to understand his own writing as a form of “prophetic voice” receptive to the emergence of the present and its opening o…
Affectivity, Sense, and Affects
This article argues that attempts by philosophy to think emotions as embodied is caught between the necessity of thinking them as a subjective first-person dimension of experience on the one hand and as an objective biological determination on the other. Philosophy has tended to view these two dimensions, qualitative and quantitative, respectively, as either in a parallelism with each other or alternatively has dispensed with either one or the ot…
The Technique of Thought
The Technique of Thought
Post-Deconstructive Thought and Criticism
Derrida's influence has continued to make a significant and enduring mark on scholarship within the humanities. Within UK French studies alone, significant critical and philosophical engagements with Derrida by figures such as Geoffrey Bennington, Marian Hobson, and Christina Howells ensured that, throughout the 1990s and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, generations of students and scholars continued to be introduced to the phil…
The Nonhuman Demand
This article seeks to address the question of humanity and animality through an elaboration of what will be called here the 'nonhuman demand'. It aims to problematize the category of the 'posthuman' through a critical reading of Rosi Braidotti's 2013 book which bears that name. It is argued that the question of humanity and animality can only be adequately addressed in the context of a nonhuman demand that is made upon thought and to which though…
The Touch of Things
Rejecting the Subject
In one of his most important early works, Ego Sum, published in 1979, Jean-Luc Nancy lamented what he saw as a return of the subject within contemporary philosophical and theoretical discourse. This return of the subject could be discerned most clearly in Lacanian psychoanalysis but also more generally in the way philosophy was borrowing from nonphilosophical, largely anthropological contexts, and in ways that would allow it to determine a “subje…
Immanent authority and the making of community
The attempt to think community today is necessarily marked by the legacy of communal belonging understood as a sharing of identity and the mobilization of totalizing figures, a legacy which, according to Jean-Luc Nancy, is irrevocably tainted by the experience of German National Socialist community. Nancy’s analysis of the ‘nothing’ or absent essence of community understood ontologically as ‘being-with’ poses the challenge of how we may come to t…
Immanence and Technicity
This article examines Jean-Luc Nancy's understanding of sense and the senses in relation to the recent abandonment of the senses by contemporary thinkers such as Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux. Contrasting Nancy's account of embodiment and sensing with Meillassoux's claim that the real can only be known mathematically, this piece argues that Nancean sense must be understood as a relation to the radical outside or non-human exteriority of th…
The new French philosophy
This book gives a critical assessment of key developments in contemporary French philosophy, highlighting the diverse ways in which recent French thought has moved beyond the philosophical positions and arguments which have been widely associated with the terms 'post-structuralism' and 'postmodernism'. These developments are assessed through a close comparative reading of the work of seven contemporary thinkers: Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Luc Nancy, B…
Bernard Stiegler and the Time of Technics
This paper examines Bernard Stiegler's thinking about technics as developed in the first two volumes of his Technics and Time trilogy. It does so against the backdrop of Francis Fukuyama's highly influential thinking about technologically driven historical progress in The End of History and the Last Man (1992). The paper argues that Stiegler's account of an originary supplemental logic structuring the relation of the human to the technical offers…
Leaving the parental home in Australia over the generations
Phenomenology in Diaspora
This article examines Paul Virilio’s account of modern technology and situates it in relation to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and, in particular, to the account of technology and the life-world given in his major work of the 1930s, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Against the accusations levelled by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont that Virilio abuses scientific terminology and concepts, this piece argues that…
Mobile Media and Applications – From Concept to Cash
Art - Technics
On Interrupted Myth
This article engages critically with Jean‐Luc Nancy’s thinking of community such as it develops in his collaboration with Philippe Lacoue‐Labarthe in the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political (1980–1984) and in the major work which arises from this collaboration, The Inoperative Community (1986). It examines some of the responses to Nancy’s thinking on community (principally by Nancy Fraser, Simon Critchley and more recently by Andre…
The Fragmentary Demand
This introduction to the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy gives an overview of his philosophical thought to date and situates it within the broader context of contemporary French and European thinking. The book examines Nancy’s philosophy in relation to five specific areas: his account of subjectivity; his understanding of space and spatiality; his thinking about the body and embodiment; his political thought; and his contribution to contemporary aes…
Leaving the parental home in Australia over the generations
On Interrupted Myth
This article engages critically with Jean‐Luc Nancy’s thinking of community such as it develops in his collaboration with Philippe Lacoue‐Labarthe in the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political (1980–1984) and in the major work which arises from this collaboration, The Inoperative Community (1986). It examines some of the responses to Nancy’s thinking on community (principally by Nancy Fraser, Simon Critchley and more recently by Andre…
Bernard Stiegler and the Time of Technics
This paper examines Bernard Stiegler's thinking about technics as developed in the first two volumes of his Technics and Time trilogy. It does so against the backdrop of Francis Fukuyama's highly influential thinking about technologically driven historical progress in The End of History and the Last Man (1992). The paper argues that Stiegler's account of an originary supplemental logic structuring the relation of the human to the technical offers…
Art - Technics
The Nonhuman Demand
This article seeks to address the question of humanity and animality through an elaboration of what will be called here the 'nonhuman demand'. It aims to problematize the category of the 'posthuman' through a critical reading of Rosi Braidotti's 2013 book which bears that name. It is argued that the question of humanity and animality can only be adequately addressed in the context of a nonhuman demand that is made upon thought and to which though…
The Touch of Things
Immanence and Technicity
This article examines Jean-Luc Nancy's understanding of sense and the senses in relation to the recent abandonment of the senses by contemporary thinkers such as Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux. Contrasting Nancy's account of embodiment and sensing with Meillassoux's claim that the real can only be known mathematically, this piece argues that Nancean sense must be understood as a relation to the radical outside or non-human exteriority of th…
The Persistence of the Subject
Simulacrum and the Play of Parody in the Writing of Pierre Klossowski
Journal Article SIMULACRUM AND THE PLAY OF PARODY IN THE WRITING OF PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI Get access IAN JAMES IAN JAMES DOWNING COLLEGECAMBRIDGE Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume LIV, Issue 3, July 2000, Pages 299–311, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/LIV.3.299 Published: 01 July 2000
The Persistence of the Subject
Mobile Media and Applications – From Concept to Cash
Art - Technics
On Interrupted Myth
This article engages critically with Jean‐Luc Nancy’s thinking of community such as it develops in his collaboration with Philippe Lacoue‐Labarthe in the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political (1980–1984) and in the major work which arises from this collaboration, The Inoperative Community (1986). It examines some of the responses to Nancy’s thinking on community (principally by Nancy Fraser, Simon Critchley and more recently by Andre…
The Fragmentary Demand
This introduction to the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy gives an overview of his philosophical thought to date and situates it within the broader context of contemporary French and European thinking. The book examines Nancy’s philosophy in relation to five specific areas: his account of subjectivity; his understanding of space and spatiality; his thinking about the body and embodiment; his political thought; and his contribution to contemporary aes…
Phenomenology in Diaspora
This article examines Paul Virilio’s account of modern technology and situates it in relation to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and, in particular, to the account of technology and the life-world given in his major work of the 1930s, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Against the accusations levelled by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont that Virilio abuses scientific terminology and concepts, this piece argues that…
Leaving the parental home in Australia over the generations
Bernard Stiegler and the Time of Technics
This paper examines Bernard Stiegler's thinking about technics as developed in the first two volumes of his Technics and Time trilogy. It does so against the backdrop of Francis Fukuyama's highly influential thinking about technologically driven historical progress in The End of History and the Last Man (1992). The paper argues that Stiegler's account of an originary supplemental logic structuring the relation of the human to the technical offers…
The new French philosophy
This book gives a critical assessment of key developments in contemporary French philosophy, highlighting the diverse ways in which recent French thought has moved beyond the philosophical positions and arguments which have been widely associated with the terms 'post-structuralism' and 'postmodernism'. These developments are assessed through a close comparative reading of the work of seven contemporary thinkers: Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Luc Nancy, B…
Immanent authority and the making of community
The attempt to think community today is necessarily marked by the legacy of communal belonging understood as a sharing of identity and the mobilization of totalizing figures, a legacy which, according to Jean-Luc Nancy, is irrevocably tainted by the experience of German National Socialist community. Nancy’s analysis of the ‘nothing’ or absent essence of community understood ontologically as ‘being-with’ poses the challenge of how we may come to t…
Immanence and Technicity
This article examines Jean-Luc Nancy's understanding of sense and the senses in relation to the recent abandonment of the senses by contemporary thinkers such as Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux. Contrasting Nancy's account of embodiment and sensing with Meillassoux's claim that the real can only be known mathematically, this piece argues that Nancean sense must be understood as a relation to the radical outside or non-human exteriority of th…
Rejecting the Subject
In one of his most important early works, Ego Sum, published in 1979, Jean-Luc Nancy lamented what he saw as a return of the subject within contemporary philosophical and theoretical discourse. This return of the subject could be discerned most clearly in Lacanian psychoanalysis but also more generally in the way philosophy was borrowing from nonphilosophical, largely anthropological contexts, and in ways that would allow it to determine a “subje…
The Touch of Things
The Technique of Thought
The Technique of Thought
Post-Deconstructive Thought and Criticism
Derrida's influence has continued to make a significant and enduring mark on scholarship within the humanities. Within UK French studies alone, significant critical and philosophical engagements with Derrida by figures such as Geoffrey Bennington, Marian Hobson, and Christina Howells ensured that, throughout the 1990s and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, generations of students and scholars continued to be introduced to the phil…
The Nonhuman Demand
This article seeks to address the question of humanity and animality through an elaboration of what will be called here the 'nonhuman demand'. It aims to problematize the category of the 'posthuman' through a critical reading of Rosi Braidotti's 2013 book which bears that name. It is argued that the question of humanity and animality can only be adequately addressed in the context of a nonhuman demand that is made upon thought and to which though…
Affectivity, Sense, and Affects
This article argues that attempts by philosophy to think emotions as embodied is caught between the necessity of thinking them as a subjective first-person dimension of experience on the one hand and as an objective biological determination on the other. Philosophy has tended to view these two dimensions, qualitative and quantitative, respectively, as either in a parallelism with each other or alternatively has dispensed with either one or the ot…
Plasticity
Plasticity
Nancy’s Prophetic Voice
This article gives a personal recollection of discussions with Jean-Luc Nancy and offers a reflection on these together with a philosophical analysis of texts written by him that were published in 2020 in the volume La peau fragile du monde (The Fragile Skin of the World). It engages with Nancy’s novel understanding of prophecy to understand his own writing as a form of “prophetic voice” receptive to the emergence of the present and its opening o…
Freeze Peach’
Keith Reader's brief, unfinished article ‘Freeze Peach’ situates contemporary controversies surrounding free speech in relation to material and economic concerns. Ian James's response draws attention to the way Keith does this by bringing together four key figures of late twentieth-century philosophy and theory: Louis Althusser, Jean-François Lyotard, Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish. Ian argues that the conjugation of Marx-inspired theory with th…
Metaphor in Biosemiotics and Deconstruction
This article stages a critical-philosophical encounter between Derridean deconstruction and Peircean biosemiotic theory focussing on the role and status of metaphor within each. It argues that the biosemiotic understanding of metaphor as a structuring principle informing the sign-activity of living organisms and processes offers an alternative understanding of a generalised metaphoricity of life as such and an account of what might be called biol…
The Difference That Makes a Difference
In Of Grammatology Derrida called upon Charles Sanders Peirce as a partial ally in his 'deconstruction of the transcendental signifier'. Here Derridean thought and biodeconstruction are brought into a comparative relation with contemporary Peircean biosemiotic theory. The discussion examines an intertwining of philosophical currents and trajectories that run through both Peirce and the philosophical hinterland of biosemiotics. What can be seen to…
Philosophy (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Critical Theory and Philosophy (5 works)