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

  • Featherstone M. 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>
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. The Letting Go: The Horror of Being Orphaned in Nicolas Winding Refn's Cinema. Journal of Cultural Research. doi> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. Stiegler's University. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 289-306, vol. 39(3). doi> link> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. Planet Utopia: Utopia, Dystopia, Globalisation. (1st ed.). Routledge. doi> link> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. Trump, A Psy Fi Story: On American Germanicity. CTheory.

Full Publications Listshow

Books

  • Featherstone M and Kemple T. 2019. Writing the Body Politic: A John O'Neill Reader. (vol. 1). Routledge. link> doi> link>
  • Featherstone M. 2019. The sociology of debt. Policy Press.
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. Planet Utopia: Utopia, Dystopia, Globalisation. (1st ed.). Routledge. doi> link> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. 2012. The Utopia of Crime. Paris: D-Fiction.
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2006. Tocqueville's Virus: Utopia and Dystopia in Western Social and Political Thought. Routledge.
  • Featherstone M. 2002. Knowledge and the Production of Non-Knowledge. Hampton Press, New Jersey.

Journal Articles

  • Featherstone M. 2022. ‘Circulus Vitiosus Deus’: The Death Drive Now and Then. Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology, 44-60, vol. 14. link> full text>
  • Featherstone M. 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>
  • Featherstone M. 2021. Beyond the disenchanted university: A pharmacology of the British university in the age of Coronavirus. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 1-24. doi> link>
  • Armitage J and Featherstone M. 2021. Viral Culture. Cultural Politics, 1-10, vol. 17(1). doi> link>
  • Featherstone M. 2021. Žižek's Pandemic. Cultural Politics, 124-134, vol. 17(1). doi> link>
  • Featherstone M. 2021. The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity. EMOTION SPACE AND SOCIETY, Article ARTN 100762, vol. 38. link> doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2020. Towards a Bureaucracy of the Body. New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory, Politics, 97-113, vol. 100. link> doi> link> full text>
  • Featherstone M. 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>
  • Featherstone M. 2020. Psychoanalysing the 21st Century: Introduction. Int J Semiot Law, 403-408, vol. 33(2). link> doi> full text>
  • Featherstone M. 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>
  • Featherstone M. 2019. Stiegler’s ecological thought: The politics of knowledge in the anthropocene. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-11. doi> full text>
  • Featherstone M. 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>
  • Featherstone MA. 2018. From the Postmodern to the Ecological. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1527-1528, vol. 50(14). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2018. Simmel's Borderline Sociology. Theory, Culture and Society.
  • Featherstone M. 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>
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. After Bauman. Cultural Politics. doi>
  • Featherstone MA, Bishop R, Armitage J, Kellner D. 2017. Cultural Politics Now. Cultural Politics. doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. The Letting Go: The Horror of Being Orphaned in Nicolas Winding Refn's Cinema. Journal of Cultural Research. doi> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. Stiegler's University. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 289-306, vol. 39(3). doi> link> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. ‘Brexit means Brexit’: On the Horror of the Other in (Neo)Liberal Britain. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. Trump, A Psy Fi Story: On American Germanicity. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. 2017. Chaosmic Spasm. CM: Communication and Media. doi> link> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. The Specter of Neoliberalism: Thanatonomics and the Possibility of Trans-Individualism. Fast Capitalism. full text>
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2007. The End of History: Utopian Realism and the Politics of Idiocy. Journal of Classical Sociology, 109-126, vol. Volume 7(1). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. The Specter of Neoliberalism: Thanatonomics and the Possibility of Trans-Individualism. Fast Capitalism.
  • Featherstone MA. 2016. Luxus: A Thanatology of Luxury from Nero to Bataille. Cultural Politics, vol. 12(1). doi> link> full text>
  • Featherstone M. 2016. The Politics of the Academic Agora. SOCIOLOGICKY CASOPIS-CZECH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 423-427, vol. 52(3). link> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. 2015. The Negative Abyss Surface, Depth, and Violence in Virilio and Stiegler. Cultural Politics. doi> full text>
  • Featherstone MA. The Specter of Neoliberalism: Thanatonomics and the Possibility of Trans-Individualism. Fast Capitalism.
  • Featherstone MA. Utopias: An Introduction. Cultural Politics.
  • Featherstone MA. Chinese Bulimia: Utopia, Dystopia, and The Fat Years. Cultural Politics.
  • Featherstone MA. La pesadilla de Einstein Sobre la tecno-distopía en Bernard Stiegler. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. La pesadilla de Einstein Sobre la tecno-distopía en Bernard Stiegler. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. Hoodie Horror: The Capitalist Other in Postmodern Society. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.
  • Featherstone MA. Einstein's Nightmare: On Bernard Stiegler's Techno-Dystopia. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. 2013. Being-in-Hull, Being-on-Bransholme. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 179-196, vol. 17(2). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2013. Coito Ergo Sum: Serbian Sadism and Global Capitalism in A Serbian Film. Journal of Horror Studies, vol. 4(1). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2013. Even the rats don't come here: The Easten European Roma in Contemporary Paris. Cultural Politics, 1-21, vol. 9(1). doi>
  • Featherstone MA and Johnson B. 2012. Ovo Je Srbija: The Horror of the National Thing in A Serbian Film. Journal of Cultural Research, 63-79, vol. 16(1). doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2011. Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility. BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, 745-748, vol. 62(4). link> doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2011. Utopia of Crime: The Global Culture of Cruelty. Parole.
  • Featherstone MA. 2011. Against the Fake Empire: On Baudrillard’s Late Works. Cultural Politics.
  • Featherstone MA. The Totalitarian Psyche and Nazi Psychoanalysis. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. Utopia Today: Anti-Capitalism and Utopianism. Sociological Review, vol. 55(2).
  • Featherstone MA. Utopia and Fear. Topia.
  • Featherstone MA. ‘Kinetic Utopia’. New York Journal of Sociology, vol. 3(1).
  • Featherstone MA. 2011. Against the Fake Empire: Utopia, dystopia, apocalypticism in Baudrillard's Late Works. Cultural Politics, 465-476, vol. 7(3). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2011. Cracking Cube: Cryptology and Ichnography’. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. 2011. Political Surrealism and Kinetic Utopia. State of Nature.
  • Featherstone MA. 2011. The State of the Network: Irrationality in the Global Age. Journal of Cultural Research, vol. 2(2).
  • JOHNSON BL and Featherstone M. 2011. ‘Ovo Je Srbija’: The Horror of the National Thing in A Serbian Film. Journal of Cultural Research, 63-79, vol. 16(1). link> doi>
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2002. Empire and Utopia: A Psychoanalytic Critique of Totality. Cultural Values, 369-384, vol. 6(4). doi>
  • Featherstone MA, Holohan S, Poole E. 2010. Discourses of the War on Terror: Constructions of Otherness After 7/7. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politis, vol. 6(2). doi>
  • Holohan S, Featherstone MA, Poole E. 2010. Discourses of the War on Terror: Constructions of the Islamic Other in the Wake of 7/7. The International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 169-186, vol. 6(2). doi> link>
  • Featherstone M. 2010. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. SOCIOLOGY, 373-374, vol. 44(2). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Death-Drive America: Reading Scott Wilson’s Critique of Bush’s America. Fast Capitalism, vol. 7(2).
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Virilio’s Apocalypticism. CTheory. link>
  • Featherstone MA. 2009. Economies of Sacrifice: Recognition, Monadism, and Alien-ation. Cultural Values, vol. 5(3). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2009. Appetite for Destruction: On Naomi Klein’s Neo-liberal Utopia-Dystopia. Fast Capitalism, vol. 5(2).
  • Featherstone MA. 2009. The virus of fear and the politics of globalization. Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 179-194, vol. 22(Fall).
  • Featherstone M. 2008. Rebuilding the left. SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 326-333, vol. 56(2). link> doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2008. The anti-capitalist dictionary: Movements, histories, and motivations. SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 326-333, vol. 56(2). link> doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2008. The dictionary of alternatives: Utopianism and organisation. SOCIOL REV, 326-333, vol. 56(2). doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2008. The rise of the global left: The world social forum and beyond. SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 326-333, vol. 56(2). link> doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2008. The state of resistance: Popular struggles in the global south. SOCIOL REV, 326-333, vol. 56(2). doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2008. The hegemony of common sense: Wisdom and mystification in everyday life. CONTEMP SOCIOL, 70-71, vol. 37(1). doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2006. 'Ruin Value'. Journal of cultural research, 301-321, vol. 9(3). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2005. The Redemption of the Real: Walter Benjamin’s Real. Cultural Politics, vol. 1(3).
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2003. The eye of war: Images of destruction in Virilio and Bataille. Journal of Cultural Research, 433-447, vol. 7(4). doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2003. Empire and utopia. Cultural Values, 369-385, vol. 6(4).
  • HOLOHAN S and Featherstone M. 2003. Multiculturalism, Institutional Law, and Imaginary Justice. Law and Critique, 1-27, vol. 14(1). doi>
  • Featherstone M and Holohan S. 2003. The politics of race: Objectivity, subjectivity and the ideologies of multiculturalism. Law and Critique, 1-27, vol. 14(1).
  • Featherstone M. 2002. Empire. SOCIOL REV, 300-303, vol. 50(2). doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2002. "Empire" by M Hardt and A Negri. Sociological Review, 300-303, vol. 50(2).
  • Featherstone MA. 2000. Speed and Violence: Sacrifice in Virilio, Derrida, and Girard. Anthropoetics, vol. 6(2).

Chapters

  • Featherstone M. 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>
  • Featherstone M. 2020. The Libertine: Criminal Luxury, the Sadean System, and Materialist Horror. In Crime, Harm, and Consumerism. Routledge. link> doi> link>
  • Featherstone M. The Architecture of Authoritarian Luxury. In The Third Realm of Luxury: Connecting Real Places and Imaginary Spaces. (10 vols.). Bloomsbury. doi> link>
  • Featherstone M. 2019. Paul Virilio's Global Britain. In French Thought and Literary Theory in the UK. Routledge. doi> link>
  • Featherstone M. 2019. Paul Virilio's Global Britain. In French Thought and Literary Theory in the U.K. (9 vols.). Irving Goh. doi> link>
  • Featherstone M. 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>
  • Featherstone M. 2019. Ecologies of Indebtedness. In The sociology of debt. Policy Press. full text>
  • Featherstone M. 2019. Introduction - Towards a Sociology of Debt. In The sociology of debt. Policy Press. link> full text>
  • Featherstone M. 'Wanna Fight?: Utopia-Dystopia in Nicolas Winding Refn's Recent Cinema. In Law, Cinema, and the Ill City: Imagining Justice and Order in Real and Fictional Cities. Routledge. link> doi> link>
  • Featherstone MA. 2016. Carnotopia: The Culture of Sadism in Nymphomaniac, Shame, and Thanatomorphose. In Transgression in Anglo-American Cinema. Wallflower. full text>
  • Featherstone MA. Velocita e Violenza. Il Sacrifio in Virilio, Derrida e Girard’. In Scene e Linguaggi Dell’ Origine: Anthropologia Generativa e Deconstruzione.
  • Featherstone MA. 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.
  • Featherstone MA. 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.
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Utopian Bodies. In Acting bodies and social networking. Pirani BM and Varga I (Eds.). University Press of America.
  • Featherstone M. 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