Professor Mark Featherstone
- Title
- Professor of Social and Political Theory
- Location
- CBC0.028
- Role
- Head of School
Research Cluster Lead (Communities, Identities and Mobilities) - Contact me
- During Office Hours posted on my door, or by appointment via email.
- Phone
- +44 (0) 1782 734179
- m.a.featherstone@keele.ac.uk
Biography
I grew up in Hull in the 1970s. I became a sociologist largely because I wanted to understand the social changes I saw taking place around me and in particular the decline of key industries, the emergence of mass unemployment, and community breakdown. These social effects impacted upon my own family and the families of everybody I knew and have deeply influenced the way I understand society and think about sociology.
Research and scholarship
My research specialisms are social theory, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. I am a sociologist of utopias, dystopias, idealised social systems, and the sociological imagination. I recently published a research monograph on the sociological history of the concepts of utopia and dystopia, entitled Tocqueville’s Virus (Routledge), and am currently working on another study on the relationship between utopia and globalisation called Planet Utopia. This book will also be published on Routledge. Apart from my monograph work, I regularly publish articles in journals such as Journal of Cultural Research, Cultural Politics, Journal of Classical Sociology, theory, and Fast Capitalism. Beyond my own research I am Reviews Editor of the Sociological Review and Cultural Politics. I am also associate member of the Bauman Institute at Leeds University, UK.
Teaching
I teach across the sociology programme and offer elective modules on race and class, globalisation, and utopias and dystopias. I also teach on the Media, Culture, Communication programme at Keele, where I run the core module on cultural analysis. I am also Programme Leader of the Masters programme in Urban Futures and Sustainable Communities.
Apart from teaching on the Sociology programme, I also contribute to the Media and Cultural Studies degree at Keele. My main contribution to this course is a module called Analysing Culture which considers the history of the idea of culture in social thought. Beyond my teaching at Keele, I am also Visiting Associate Professor at Ferris University, Yokohama, where I offer courses in British Sociology, Social and Political Thought, and Globalisation to both undergraduate and graduate students.
- SOC 20049 Contemporary Social Theory
- SOC 30034 Sex, Death, Desire: Psychoanalysis in Social Context - Module Leader
- MDS 20019 Analysing Culture
Selected Publications
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2019. Against the humiliation of thought: The university as a space of dystopic destruction and utopian potential. EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, 297-309, vol. 51(3). link> doi> full text>
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2017. The Letting Go: The Horror of Being Orphaned in Nicolas Winding Refn's Cinema. Journal of Cultural Research. doi> full text>
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2017. Stiegler's University. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 289-306, vol. 39(3). doi> link> full text>
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2017. Trump, A Psy Fi Story: On American Germanicity. CTheory.
Full Publications Listshow
Books
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2019. The sociology of debt. Policy Press.
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2012. The Utopia of Crime. Paris: D-Fiction.
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2006. Tocqueville's Virus: Utopia and Dystopia in Western Social and Political Thought. Routledge.
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2002. Knowledge and the Production of Non-Knowledge. Hampton Press, New Jersey.
Journal Articles
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2022. ‘Circulus Vitiosus Deus’: The Death Drive Now and Then. Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology, 44-60, vol. 14. link> full text>
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2022. Viral Law: Life, Death, Difference, and Indifference from the Spanish Flu to Covid-19. Int J Semiot Law, 1019-1037, vol. 35(3). link> doi> full text>
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2020. Towards a Bureaucracy of the Body. New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory, Politics, 97-113, vol. 100. link> doi> link> full text>
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2020. Apocalypse Now!: From Freud, Through Lacan, to Stiegler's Psychoanalytic 'Survival Project. Int J Semiot Law, 409-431, vol. 33(2). link> doi> full text>
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2020. Psychoanalysing the 21st Century: Introduction. Int J Semiot Law, 403-408, vol. 33(2). link> doi> full text>
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2020. Simmel’s (non-human) humanism: On Simmel’s ‘ethics of endings and futures’. Journal of Classical Sociology, 203-220, vol. 21(2). doi> link> full text>
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2019. Stiegler’s ecological thought: The politics of knowledge in the anthropocene. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-11. doi> full text>
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2019. Primal Crime: Visions of the Law and Its Transgression in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cinema. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique. doi>
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2018. From the Postmodern to the Ecological. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1527-1528, vol. 50(14). doi>
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2018. Simmel's Borderline Sociology. Theory, Culture and Society.
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2019. Against the humiliation of thought: The university as a space of dystopic destruction and utopian potential. EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, 297-309, vol. 51(3). link> doi> full text>
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2017. After Bauman. Cultural Politics. doi>
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2017. Cultural Politics Now. Cultural Politics. doi>
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2017. The Letting Go: The Horror of Being Orphaned in Nicolas Winding Refn's Cinema. Journal of Cultural Research. doi> full text>
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2017. Stiegler's University. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 289-306, vol. 39(3). doi> link> full text>
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2017. ‘Brexit means Brexit’: On the Horror of the Other in (Neo)Liberal Britain. CTheory.
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2017. Trump, A Psy Fi Story: On American Germanicity. CTheory.
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The Specter of Neoliberalism: Thanatonomics and the Possibility of Trans-Individualism. Fast Capitalism. full text>
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2007. The End of History: Utopian Realism and the Politics of Idiocy. Journal of Classical Sociology, 109-126, vol. Volume 7(1). doi>
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The Specter of Neoliberalism: Thanatonomics and the Possibility of Trans-Individualism. Fast Capitalism.
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2016. Luxus: A Thanatology of Luxury from Nero to Bataille. Cultural Politics, vol. 12(1). doi> link> full text>
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2016. The Politics of the Academic Agora. SOCIOLOGICKY CASOPIS-CZECH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 423-427, vol. 52(3). link> full text>
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2015. The Negative Abyss Surface, Depth, and Violence in Virilio and Stiegler. Cultural Politics. doi> full text>
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The Specter of Neoliberalism: Thanatonomics and the Possibility of Trans-Individualism. Fast Capitalism.
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Utopias: An Introduction. Cultural Politics.
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Chinese Bulimia: Utopia, Dystopia, and The Fat Years. Cultural Politics.
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La pesadilla de Einstein Sobre la tecno-distopía en Bernard Stiegler. CTheory.
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La pesadilla de Einstein Sobre la tecno-distopía en Bernard Stiegler. CTheory.
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Hoodie Horror: The Capitalist Other in Postmodern Society. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.
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Einstein's Nightmare: On Bernard Stiegler's Techno-Dystopia. CTheory.
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2013. Being-in-Hull, Being-on-Bransholme. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 179-196, vol. 17(2). doi>
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2013. Coito Ergo Sum: Serbian Sadism and Global Capitalism in A Serbian Film. Journal of Horror Studies, vol. 4(1). doi>
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2013. Even the rats don't come here: The Easten European Roma in Contemporary Paris. Cultural Politics, 1-21, vol. 9(1). doi>
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2012. Ovo Je Srbija: The Horror of the National Thing in A Serbian Film. Journal of Cultural Research, 63-79, vol. 16(1). doi>
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2011. Utopia of Crime: The Global Culture of Cruelty. Parole.
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2011. Against the Fake Empire: On Baudrillard’s Late Works. Cultural Politics.
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The Totalitarian Psyche and Nazi Psychoanalysis. CTheory.
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Utopia Today: Anti-Capitalism and Utopianism. Sociological Review, vol. 55(2).
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Utopia and Fear. Topia.
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‘Kinetic Utopia’. New York Journal of Sociology, vol. 3(1).
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2011. Against the Fake Empire: Utopia, dystopia, apocalypticism in Baudrillard's Late Works. Cultural Politics, 465-476, vol. 7(3). doi>
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2011. Cracking Cube: Cryptology and Ichnography’. CTheory.
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2011. Political Surrealism and Kinetic Utopia. State of Nature.
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2011. The State of the Network: Irrationality in the Global Age. Journal of Cultural Research, vol. 2(2).
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2002. Empire and Utopia: A Psychoanalytic Critique of Totality. Cultural Values, 369-384, vol. 6(4). doi>
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2010. Discourses of the War on Terror: Constructions of Otherness After 7/7. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politis, vol. 6(2). doi>
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2010. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. SOCIOLOGY, 373-374, vol. 44(2). doi>
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2010. Death-Drive America: Reading Scott Wilson’s Critique of Bush’s America. Fast Capitalism, vol. 7(2).
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2010. Virilio’s Apocalypticism. CTheory. link>
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2009. Economies of Sacrifice: Recognition, Monadism, and Alien-ation. Cultural Values, vol. 5(3). doi>
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2009. Appetite for Destruction: On Naomi Klein’s Neo-liberal Utopia-Dystopia. Fast Capitalism, vol. 5(2).
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2009. The virus of fear and the politics of globalization. Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 179-194, vol. 22(Fall).
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2008. The dictionary of alternatives: Utopianism and organisation. SOCIOL REV, 326-333, vol. 56(2). doi>
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2008. The state of resistance: Popular struggles in the global south. SOCIOL REV, 326-333, vol. 56(2). doi>
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2008. The hegemony of common sense: Wisdom and mystification in everyday life. CONTEMP SOCIOL, 70-71, vol. 37(1). doi>
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2006. 'Ruin Value'. Journal of cultural research, 301-321, vol. 9(3). doi>
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2005. The Redemption of the Real: Walter Benjamin’s Real. Cultural Politics, vol. 1(3).
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2003. The eye of war: Images of destruction in Virilio and Bataille. Journal of Cultural Research, 433-447, vol. 7(4). doi>
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2003. Empire and utopia. Cultural Values, 369-385, vol. 6(4).
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2003. Multiculturalism, Institutional Law, and Imaginary Justice. Law and Critique, 1-27, vol. 14(1). doi>
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2003. The politics of race: Objectivity, subjectivity and the ideologies of multiculturalism. Law and Critique, 1-27, vol. 14(1).
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2002. Empire. SOCIOL REV, 300-303, vol. 50(2). doi>
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2002. "Empire" by M Hardt and A Negri. Sociological Review, 300-303, vol. 50(2).
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2000. Speed and Violence: Sacrifice in Virilio, Derrida, and Girard. Anthropoetics, vol. 6(2).
Chapters
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Against the Humiliation of Thought: The University as Space of Dystopic Destruction and Utopian Potential. In Educational Ills and the (Im)Possibility of Utopia. (10 vols.). Routledge. link>
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2019. Prometheus and the Degenerate: Arno Breker, Hans Bellmer, and Francis Bacon's Extreme Realism. In Representing the Experience of War and Atrocity Interdisciplinary Explorations in Visual Criminology. Palgrave Macmillan. full text>
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2019. Introduction - Towards a Sociology of Debt. In The sociology of debt. Policy Press. link> full text>
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2016. Carnotopia: The Culture of Sadism in Nymphomaniac, Shame, and Thanatomorphose. In Transgression in Anglo-American Cinema. Wallflower. full text>
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Velocita e Violenza. Il Sacrifio in Virilio, Derrida e Girard’. In Scene e Linguaggi Dell’ Origine: Anthropologia Generativa e Deconstruzione.
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2010. Event Horizon: Utopia-Dystopia in Bauman's Thought. In Bauman's Challenge: sociological issues for 21st century. Tester K and Davis M (Eds.). Palgrave.
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2010. Event Horizon: Utopia-Dystopia in Bauman’s Thought. In Bauman's Challenge: Sociological Issues for the 21st Century. Tester M and Davis M (Eds.). Palgrave Macmillan.
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2010. Utopian Bodies. In Acting bodies and social networking. Pirani BM and Varga I (Eds.). University Press of America.
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2002. The obscure politics of conspiracy theory. In The age of anxiety. Parker P (Ed.).
PhD students
I am happy to supervise PhD students in the areas of:
- Social Theory
- Critical Theory
- Psycho-Social Studies
- Globalisation
- Utopias and Dystopias
- The history of Sociology
School of Social, Political and Global Studies
Chancellor's Building CBA1.039
Keele University
Staffordshire, ST5 5BG
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 734346
Undergraduate and postgraduate enquiries
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 734346
Email: spgs.office@keele.ac.uk
