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Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

 

Tobias Barnett

College: Robinson

Email: tldb2@cam.ac.uk

Supervisor: Professor Martin Crowley

Research Topic: 

'The Colonial Milieu: Empire, Science and the Architectonics of Modern French Thought' 

Research  

Positioned at the intersection of modern French thought, cultural, intellectual and conceptual history, and the history of Empire, Toby's doctoral research explores interactions, in late-19th- and early-20th-century France, between colonial politics, understandings of human life, and disciplinarity in the natural and human sciences.  

Toby's thesis proposes that modern French thought's sustained interest in (and exposure to) the human 'milieu' — a concept Georges Canguilhem (1952) famously described as 'a universal and obligatory mode of apprehending the experience and existence of living things' — expresses itself as a need to negotiate between competing frames of reference: matter and spirit; humanism and antihumanism; the empirical and the transcendental, to name a few. With a particular focus on French medico-philosophical and anthropological thought, the philosophy of education, and history and philosophy of science, Toby seeks to affirm the political origins of this dynamic. Specifically, his work examines how the practical and epistemic project of French colonialism interacted with the fundamental concept of milieu to radically inflect its use as an adaptive means to interrogate a) relations between humans and their surroundings and b) the ever-changing form — and political scope — of philosophy itself. 

Examining such figures as François-Joseph-Victor Broussais, Hippolyte Taine, Félix Ravaisson, Alain and Georges Canguilhem, Toby's research traces forgotten, imperial genealogies in modern French intellectual culture, casting new light on the historical formation — and political mediation — of the modern French 'human sciences'. In so doing, Toby also seeks  to problematise the influence of French (as opposed to German) intellectual history on contemporary trends in philosophical thought typified, in recent years, by the work of Bernard Stiegler and Catherine Malabou. 

 

Research Interests 

Toby's broader research interests span: Modern and contemporary French thought and culture; critical and literary theory; history of empire; history and philosophy of science; historical epistemology, critical history and the philosophy of history; theories of technology and technicity; political architectures and architectural theory; hermeneutics and information theory; the politics of mediation and decision-making; the 'pre-history' of cybernetics (19th-c); cultural materialism and the work of Raymond Williams. 

 

About 

Before beginning his doctoral studies at Cambridge, Toby obtained an undergraduate degree in French and German from University College London, studying at the Sorbonne in his third year, and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, with a thesis on aesthetic strategy and geo-politics in the Franco-Algerian 'docu-fiction' (1975-2019). Toby has also worked as a translator (also in Paris) and studied in Germany, at the Universität zu Köln. In 2022, Toby returned to Cambridge as Crausaz-Wordsworth Scholar in the Humanities at Robinson College. 

 

Awards, Scholarships and Prizes

  • Peter Bayley Fund Award - University of Cambridge (2024) 
  • Vice-Chancellor’s Award - Cambridge Trust (2022-2025) 
  • Crausaz Wordsworth Scholarship in Humanities - Robinson College, Cambridge (2022-2025) 
  • Research Award - Institute of International Visual Art (Iniva) (2021) 
  • Jennings Prize - Wolfson College, Cambridge (2021) 

 

Teaching

Course Supervisor

  •  FRB2 - Translation from French 

Seminar leader 

  • Critical Theory (Tripos Parts IA, IB, and II; on behalf of Corpus Christi, Queens', Gonville & Caius, Jesus, Robinson and Trinity Hall) 

 

Publications

  • *2024. 'Catherine Malabou's Historical Epistemology', in Paragraph (*Forthcoming July 2024)
  • 2022. ‘Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Terminal Sud (2019) and the resurgence of a Franco-Algerian archive’, in Expressions maghrébines, Vol.21, No. 2., pp. 171-189.

 

Selected Papers and Invited Talks

  • 'Form and Function at the Historical Limit: New Modes of Rationality in Contemporary French Thought', Society for French Studies (SFS) Graduate Conference, King's College London, London, UK, 19 May 2023. 
  • ''Memory Supports' and 'Agents of Belief': The Technical Economy of Culture in Bernard Stiegler's La technique et le temps (1994-2001) and Marie-José Mondzain's Image, Icône, Economie (1996)', Robinson College, Cambridge MCR/SCR Conference, Cambridge, UK, 28 January 2023. 
  • 'Culture as Technology: Technical Affinities in the Work of Bernard Stiegler and Marie-José Mondzain', Cambridge French Graduate Research Seminar, Cambridge, UK, 2 December 2022.
  • ‘Kader Attia and Repair’, Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), Future Collect Conference: Handle with Care, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK, 25 November 2021.  

 

Conference Panels 

  • Panel co-chair for ‘(Post)colonial Legacies' session, University of Cambridge French Graduate Conference, University of Cambridge, 13 January 2023.

 

Outreach

Since 2022, Toby has delivered outreach sessions on behalf of the Cambridge MMLL Faculty, which have seen him share research with prospective undergraduate applicants in Modern Languages (17-18), and teachers of French A-Level: 

  • 'Film between France and Algeria: Rabah Ameur-ZaÏmeche', Diversity in French and Francophone Studies: A CPD workshop for teachers of French. University of Cambridge / Association of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF). 20 February 2023.   
  • La rencontre Algérie-France: Aesthetic Strategy in Terminal Sud (2019) and La Bataille d’Alger (1966)’. Why Not Languages? @ Cam, University of Cambridge. 21 June 2022. 

 

Other projects, activities and roles

In Lent 2024, Toby co-organises the cross-Faculty and cross-School research seminar series 'Transhistorical Humanities? Methods in Conversation'. Held at King's College, Cambridge, the series seeks to bring together leading academics working across languages and historical time periods to reflect on questions of method, historicity and disciplinarity and their broader relation to the contemporary humanities. 

Toby is also co-convenor, alongside Professor Emma Wilson and Maddison Sumner, of the Cambridge Modern French Research Seminar (MFRS) and, with Duarte Benard da Costa and Maddison Sumner, of the Cambridge French Graduate Research Seminar (FGRS). As of September 2023, he is Conference Assistant to The Society for French Studies.