Downing College
Regent Street
CAMBRIDGE
CB2 1DQ
Dr James' research focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary French literature and philosophy. His most recent book explores the relationship between philosophy and science as articulated in the work of four contemporary French thinkers—Jean-Luc Nancy, François Laruelle, Catherine Malabou, and Bernard Stiegler. Situating their writings within both contemporary scientific debates and the philosophy of science, the book elaborates a philosophical naturalism that is notably distinct from the Anglo-American tradition and that also diverges decisively from the ways in which continental philosophy has previously engaged with the sciences. His future research will explore the implications of this post-deconstructive naturalism for literary criticism and aesthetic thought more generally.
Ian James is the author of The Technique of Thought: Nancy, Laruelle, Stiegler and Malabou After Naturalism (Minnesota University Press, 2019), The New French Philosophy (Polity, 2012), Paul Virilio (Routledge, 2007), The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy (Stanford University Press, 2006), and Pierre Klossowski: The Persistence of a Name (Oxford Legenda, 2000). He is also co-editor of Whispers of the Flesh: Essays in Memory of Pierre Klossowski (Diacritics, Spring 2005), Exposures: Critical Essays on Jean-Luc Nancy (Oxford Literary Review, vol. 27, 2005) and Lucidity: Essays in Honour of Alison Finch (Oxford: Legenda, 2016).
Dr James welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests relevant to his interests.
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century French philosophy and literary/critical theory.
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century French literature and culture.
Recent and contemporary French philosophy.
The interplay of philosophy and literature in twentieth- and twenty-first-century French writing.
The relation of the arts to the sciences.
Literary and visual aesthetics.
Spatial theory and representations of spatiality in literature.
Science and Technology in Recent and Contemporary French Philosophy
Books:
Pierre Klossowski: The Persistence of a Name (Oxford: Legenda, 2000)
The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006)
Paul Virilio (London: Routledge, 2007)
The New French Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 2012)
Edited Volumes:
Thought’s Exposure: Critical Essays on Jean-Luc Nancy, with Patrick ffrench, Oxford Literary Review, Volume 27, 2005
Whispers of the Flesh: Essays in Memory of Pierre Klossowski, with Russell Ford, Diacritics, Volume 35, No. 1, Spring 2005
Lucidity: Essays in Honour of Alison Finch, with Emma Wilson (Oxford: Legenda, 2016)
