College: King’s College                    

Email: svm32@cam.ac.uk                

Supervisor: Dr Ian James    

Research Topic: The Critique of Political Economy in Contemporary French Thought (Frédéric Lordon, Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler)

About

Before starting her PhD, Solange Manche completed an MA in literary theory, jointly delivered by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the École Normale Supérieure (Paris). She completed her BA (hons) in English Language and Culture at the University of Utrecht.

Research

Solange Manche’s doctoral project is concerned with the resurgence of the critique of political economy in contemporary French philosophy, after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Focusing on the thought of Catherine Malabou, Frédéric Lordon, and Bernard Stiegler, she works on the relation between the temporalities of financialisation and individuation. Other aspects of her research include social movements, new forms of labour, French cinema activism, and the reception of Hegel and Marx in France.

She is currently preparing a post-doc project on the return of economic planning and the question of communism with a focus on France, but not exclusively.

Scholarships/Prizes

Gates Cambridge PhD Scholarship (2018-2022)

Trevor Brown Bursary, the Cambridge Society of Paris (2020)

The Association for German Studies Travel Grant (2020-2021)

The German Cambridge Society Award for Study in Germany (2019)

William B. Wisdom Grant, the Thomas Wolfe Society (2018)

Development Research Grant, the Netherlands Institute at Athens (2016)

Teaching

Solange has supervised undergraduate students for FR6, (20th and 21st century literature, cinema, and thought) and has supervised an undergraduate dissertation in FR12 (Ethics and experience: literature, thought, and visual culture of the French-speaking world). She has also taught a seminar in critical theory at Queen’s College.

Publications

Forthcoming: “The problem is proletarianism, not capitalism: a critique of Bernard Stiegler’s ‘contributive economy’,” Radical Philosophy 2.11 (2021)

Forthcoming: Co-authored with Juan Sebastian Carbonell, “Repoliticising the Future of Work: Automation and the End of Techno-optimism,” Journal of Cultural Economy (2022)

“Utopia and the de-proletarianisation of the future: Urban Pharmaka in Anarchist Space,” Urban Utopias: Memory, Rights, and Speculation. Jadavpur University Press, 2020.

Book review: Communisme et stratégie (2019) by Isabelle Garo. Marx & Philosophy Review of Books (2020).

“Wither 68: The Gilets Jaunes movement and the return of the intellectual.” French Studies Bulletin 41.154 (2020): 41-45.

“#WeAreTheEarth. Rethinking Ecology and Community: The Case of Humanist Anarchism,” book chapter in #NousSommes. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang UK (2019): 28-38.           

Book review: The Neganthropocene by Bernard Stiegler. Ed. Daniel Ross. Junctions (2019): 71-74.

 “Fostering strategies of Resistance: The Art Space and Escape from Alienation,” Forma.Revista d'Estudis Comparatius (2017): 53-65.

Translations

Chantal Jaquet, “Thinking Social Mobility with Spinoza,” Crisis and Critique 7.3 (2021) French to English.

Isabelle Garo, “Changing Life? Fortunes and Misfortunes of “Biopolitics” in the Age of Covid-19,” Crisis and Critique 7.3 (2021): 81-106. French to English. 

Conference papers (selected)

“Finance’s Phineas Gage: Thinking Financial Subject Formation with Contemporary French thought,” Forschungskolloquium (Joseph Vogl), Humboldt University, 5th of May (2021)

“Liquid Ontology: Frédéric Lordon’s Spinozist Critique of Finance,” ACLA, online, 8-11 April (2021)

Invited speaker at the Humanities Honours Programme annual congress on the topic of Dystopia. Utrecht University, 1st of September (2020)

Invited: “Macron’s Mid-Term Review” panel discussion with Jim Shields (Warwick) and Andrew Connell, Clare College Politics Society, Cambridge, 5th March (2020)

“Reason and the Neganthropocene: Considering Bernard Stiegler’s Cure for the Coming Extinction,” Historical Materialism, SOAS London, 7-10th November (2020)

“Times of Generalised Crises: Narrative Structure and Critique in Jean-Luc Godard’s post-2008 films,” The European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, Structures and Voices: Story Telling in Post-Digital Times, 13th-15th June (2019)

“The End of an Era: Insurrection, Anonymity, and the Return of the Intellectual in Times of Yellow Resistance,” Postgraduate conference of the Society for French Studies, The Return of The Author, Durham University, 27th of April (2019)

Invited: “Pourquoi sommes-nous là? Critique du néolibéralisme en sciences humaines et la violence de l’absence de toute valeur économique,” Actualités de la non-violence ? École Normale Supérieure, Paris 8th-11th of November (2018) Recorded event

“Memory, Technics and Utopia: Urban Pharmaka in Anarchist Space,” Urban Utopias: Memory, Rights, and Speculation, Utrecht University, 21st- 22nd of February (2018)

“#WeAreTheEarth. Rethinking Ecology and Community: The Case of Humanist Anarchism,” #NousSommes, University of Cambridge, 5th-6th of May (2017)

“Art as Agriculture: Thinking about the Role of the Artist’s Presence,” Absence & Presence, Hong Kong University, part of the Humanities Honours Programme exchange between Utrecht University and Hong Kong University, 15th of April (2016)

Other activities and roles:

Solange Manche is a co-convenor of the Reading Marx Seminar and edits for the King’s Review.