Andrew Gibson

Samuel Beckett

What if the dead didn't have to stay dead? Mankind's pursuit of immortality is never-ending, until now. Daniel Justice and his colleagues have finally devised a way to bring the dead back to life. Not as mindless monsters, but as beings who can walk, talk, think, and feel. When society rejects those who have been given a second life, an unlikely leader rises among their ranks to band them together and exact revenge on the ones responsible for their existence. But simple revenge isn't enough. The rest of humanity must pay for their misdeeds and the only payment acceptable is their lives. Now Daniel, the only one willing to try and stop them, gathers a small group of mercenaries brave enough to try and take down these monsters who have commandeered the laboratory responsible for creating the Bloodless. For now the incident is isolated in northwest New Mexico. They will have to face a small army of resurrected family, friends, and enemies that want nothing more than to rip them limb from limb. Can they succeed before the mastermind behind it all eliminates every last living being on the planet?

The Bloodless

This book presents J. M. Coetzee's work as a complex, nuanced counterblast to contemporary, global, neoliberal economics and its societies. Not surprisingly, given his many years in South Africa and Australia, Coetzee writes from a `global-Southern' perspective. Drawing on a wealth ofliterature, philosophy, and theory, this book reads Coetzee's writings as a discreet, oblique but devastating engagement with neoliberal presumptions.It identifies and focuses on various key features of neoliberal culture: its obsession with self-enrichment, mastery, growth; its belief in plenitude, endless resources; its hubris and obsession with (self)-promotion; its desire for ease and easiness, `well-being', euphoria; its fetishization ofmanagerial reason and the culture of security; its unrelenting positivity, its belief in illusory goods and trivial progressivisms. By contrast, Coetzee's writings explore the virtues of irony and self-reduction. He commits himself to difficulty, discomfort, patient and austere, if bleak, inquiry,rigorous questioning, and radical doubt. Destitution and failure come to look like a serious, dignified form of life and thought. The very tones of Coetzee's books run counter to those of our neoliberal democracies. They point in a different direction to an age that has gone astray.

J. M. Coetzee and Neoliberal Culture

Beckett and Badiou offers a provocative new reading of Samuel Beckett's work on the basis of a full, critical account of the thought of Alain Badiou. Badiou is the most eminent of contemporary French philosophers. His devotion to Beckett's work has been lifelong. Yet for Badiou philosophy must be integrally affirmative, whilst Beckett apparently commits his art to a work of negation. Beckett and Badiou explores the coherences, contradictions, and extreme complexities of the intellectual relationship between the two oeuvres. It examines Badiou's philosophy of being, the event, truth, and the subject and the importance of mathematics within his system. It considers the major features of his politics, ethics, and aesthetics and provides an explanation, interpretation, critique, and radical revision of his work on Beckett. It argues that, once revised, Badiou's version of Beckett offers an extraordinarily powerful tool for understanding his work. Badiou and Beckett are instances of a vestigial or melancholic modernism; that is, in the teeth of a contemporary culture that dreams ever more ambitiously of plenitude, they commit themselves to a rigorous concept of limit and intermittency. Truth and value are occasional and rare. It is seldom that the chance event arrives to disturb the inertia of the world. For Badiou, however, it is the event and its consequences alone that matter. Beckett rather insists on the common experience of intermittency as destitution. His art is a series of limit-figures, exquisitely subtle and nuanced forms for a world whose state of seemingly rigid paralysis is also always volatile, delicately balanced.

The Pathos of Intermittency

Beckett and Badiou

This book is about the concept of historical intermittency in five recent and contemporary French philosophers: Alain Badiou, Francoise Proust, Christian Jambet, Guy Lardreau and Jacques Ranciere.

Intermittency

Joe Kerr

London from Punk to Blair is a rich portrait of Europe’s foremost capital. An array of contributors, including poets, journalists, teachers, historians, wanderers, drinkers, photographers, and foodies, offer a selection of personal and subjective readings of the city since the late ’70s. These essays chart a variety of literal and metaphorical explorations through modern and postmodern London, showing how it works, and how it fails to work; what makes it vibrant, and what makes it seedy. From West End galleries to strip pubs in Shoreditch; from millionaires’ loft apartments to buses and suburban Tube stops; from film, fashion, and gay clubs to punk bands, ruinous factories, pigeon filth, and the vagaries of weather, London from Punk to Blair embraces the city like no other book has before. This revised edition includes a new introduction by editor Joe Kerr that brings the book up to date and gives the essays context for the post-recession world. “Full of insight into the diverse experiences that constitute the recent history of London.”—Architects’ Journal “This rewarding collection brings into clear focus those dramatic shifts in the fortunes of the metropolis. . . . Beautiful, revealing insights into particular ways of understanding and using the city.”—London Society Journal

Revised Second Edition

London From Punk to Blair

"This study provides the first comprehensive historical account of Joyce's writings 1898-1915 in the context both of the distinct phases and shifting currents of British-Irish history during the period, and the sometimes rather different phases important in the works"--From jacket.

History, Politics and Aesthetics in the Writings of James Joyce 1898-1915

The Strong Spirit

'Gibson's nuanced historicist semi-colonial reading is particularly effective in the interpretation of the most challenging parts of the novel, especially the last three episodes.' -Clare Hutton, Times Literary Supplement'This thought-provoking study makes a significant and highly original contribution to scholarship on Ulysses... a particular strength of this book is the way in which it seeks to interpret the aesthetic of Ulysses as a whole, rather than focusing on a few key features or episodes.' -Clare Hutton, Times Literary Supplement'Andrew Gibson combines a wealth of knowledge and research... with an admirable sensitivity to the Joycean text. The book has much to do with what postcolonial theory calls 'hybridity' and 'mimicry', but is also densely and precisely historicized... Joyce's Revenge immerses itself in a broad range of specific cultural discourses on subjects from nationalist politics to medical debates to the politics of street names, the politics of Shakespeare and bardolatry, Protestant-Catholic relations, Jewishness, Irish historiography, women's journals, and astronomy. The result is an important new study that will alter the ways we read Ulysses.' -Professor Vincent J. ChengIn this book Andrew Gibson argues that the aesthetic practices that make up Ulysses are responses to the colonial history of Ireland and the colonial politics of Irish culture.

History, Politics, and Aesthetics in Ulysses

Joyce's Revenge

The Ireland of Ulysses was still a part of Britain. This book is the first comprehensive, historical study of Joyce's great novel in the context of Anglo-Irish political and cultural relations in the period 1880-1920. The first forty years of Joyce's life also witnessed the emergence of what historians now call English cultural nationalism. This formation was perceptible in a wide range of different discourses. Ulysses engages with many of them. In doing so, it resists, transforms, and works to transcend the effects of British rule in Ireland. The novel was written in the years leading up to Irish independence. It is powered by both a will to freedom and a will to justice. But the two do not always coincide, and Joyce does not place his art in the service of any existing political cause. His struggle for independence has its own distinctive mode. The result is a unique work of liberation - and revenge.

Do you love Mondays? I do! And Tuesdays, Wednesdays… every day is a great day where I earn my living doing things I love doing, with people I love being with. This book explains how you can do this too and take back control of your own destiny. Are you struggling to make money, despite working all hours? Are you constantly going outside of your comfort zone because, ‘that’s just what people like me have to do’? This book gives you a new formula to follow that will help you find your own space, align your activities with your core values, and help you take steps every day that move you closer to your dream. Are you bored? Frustrated? Do you really want to wait for retirement before you start enjoying yourself? This book provides a toolkit that will help you make the most of every day – to the point where you won’t want to retire! What's Your URP? Working out your Unique Referral Point will help you help more and more people who in turn will help you. Truly using the power of what goes around, comes around. This book shares the secret of finding out how you can earn more through helping others. You can make a difference. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, don’t just make a living; make a life. You can achieve the Business Owner’s goal of Easy Growth... ‘Winning lots more work, without doing lots more work’ Andy Bounds Sales and Communication Expert Best-selling author and international speaker

WHAT'S YOUR URP?

Robert Hampson

R. G. Hampson

Conrad and Theory

Il circo delle meraviglie

The Ireland of Ulysses was still a part of Britain. This book is the first comprehensive, historical study of Joyce's great novel in the context of Anglo-Irish political and cultural relations in the period 1880-1920. The first forty years of Joyce's life also witnessed the emergence of what historians now call English cultural nationalism. This formation was perceptible in a wide range of different discourses. Ulysses engages with many of them. In doing so, it resists, transforms and works to transcend the effects of British rule in Ireland. The novel was written in the years leading up to Irish independence. It is powered by both a will to freedom and a will to justice. But the two do not always coincide, and Joyce does not place his art in the service of any extant political cause. His struggle for independence has its own distinctive mode. The result is a unique work of liberation--and revenge. This eminently learned but lucidly written book transforms our understanding of Joyce's Ulysses. It does so by placing the novel firmly in the historical context of Anglo-Irish political and cultural relations in the period 1880-1920. Gibson argues that Ulysses is a great work of liberation that also takes a complex form of revenge on the colonizer's culture.

Have you ever wanted a simpler life? Simpler relationships with partners, families, friends or at work? When you are stuck, would you like to find a simple and effective way to move forward? Would you like things to be different? Or to make a difference for others? Following on from the acclaimed ‘What’s Your URP?’, Andrew Gibson combines elements of storytelling, networking, social capital, and a host of useful tools to help you take control of your life. The methods he shares will reduce the time and money you spend on unnecessary complexities, help you look for the simple and effective next steps, and make more of a difference for yourself and your network. This book will change the way you look at life. You will spend more time looking outwards at how you help others, and in turn, you will build a supportive network that will help you. You will spend less time worrying about what others think, and more time noticing the positives and the differences you and others are making. After you have read this book, you will enjoy a fresh perspective, and perhaps even a new path. Every journey starts with a small step, and this book will help you every step of the way.

MAKE LIFE SIMPLE

This book is the first major study of the theme of misanthropy, its history, arguments for and against it, and its importance for us today. Misanthropy is not strictly a Philosophy, it is an inconsistent thought that has often been mocked. But from Timon of Athens to Motörhead it has proven durable and irresistible, and attracted a huge range of fascinating figures. Human beings have always deeply distrusted who and what they are. This book does not seek to explain that distrust away or pour scorn on it. It asks, instead, how far misanthropy might have reason on its side -albeit a confused reason- with more appeal than many people might have first supposed.

The Critique of Humanity

Misanthropy

Writer Samuel Beckett (1906–89) is known for depicting a world of abject misery, failure, and absurdity in his many plays, novels, short stories, and poetry. Yet the despair in his work is never absolute, instead it is intertwined with black humor and an indomitable will to endure––characteristics best embodied by his most famous characters, Vladimir and Estragon, in the play Waiting for Godot. Beckett himself was a supremely modern, minimalist writer who deeply distrusted biographies and resisted letting himself be pigeonholed by easy interpretation or single definition. Andrew Gibson’s accessible critical biography overcomes Beckett’s reticence and carefully considers the writer’s work in relation to the historical circumstances of his life. In Samuel Beckett, Gibson tracks Beckett from Ireland after independence to Paris in the late 1920s, from London in the ’30s to Nazi Germany and Vichy France, and finally through the cold war to the fall of communism in the late ’80s. Gibson narrates the progression of Beckett’s life as a writer—from a student in Ireland to the 1969 Nobel Prize winner for literature—through chapters that examine individual historical events and the works that grew out of those experiences. A notoriously private figure, Beckett sought refuge from life in his work, where he expressed his disdain for the suffering and unnecessary absurdity of much that he witnessed. This concise and engaging biography provides an essential understanding of Beckett's work in response to many of the most significant events of the past century.

This book is the first major study of the theme of misanthropy, its history, arguments both for and against it, and its significance for us today. Misanthropy is not strictly a philosophy. It is an inconsistent thought, and so has often been mocked. But from Timon of Athens to Motörhead it has had a very long life, vast historical purchase and is seemingly indomitable and unignorable. Human beings have always nursed a profound distrust of who and what they are. This book does not seek to rationalize that distrust, but asks how far misanthropy might have a reason on its side, if a confused reason. There are obvious arguments against misanthropy. It is often born of a hatred of physical being. It can be historically explained. It particularly appears in undemocratic cultures. But what of the misanthropy of terminally defeated and disempowered peoples? Or born of progressivisms? Or the misanthropy that quarrels with specious or easy positivities (from Pelagius to Leibniz to the corporate cheer of contemporary `total capital`)? From the Greek Cynics to Roman satire, St Augustine to Jacobean drama, the misanthropy of the French Ancien Regime to Swift, Smollett and Johnson, Hobbes, Schopenhauer and Rousseau, from the Irish and American misanthropic traditions to modern women`s misanthropy, the book explores such questions. It ends with a debate about contemporary culture that ranges from the `dark radicalisms`, queer misanthropy, posthumanism and eco-misanthropy to Houellebecq, punk rock and gangsta rap.

In Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel Andrew Gibson sets out to demonstrate that postmodern theory has actually made possible an ethical discourse around fiction. Each chapter elaborates and discusses a particular aspect of Levinas' thought and raises questions for that thought and its bearing on the novel. It also contains detailed analyses of particular texts. Part of the book's originality is its concentration on a range of modernist and postmodern novels which have seldom if ever served as the basis for a larger ethical theory of fiction. Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel discusses among others the writings of Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Jane Austen, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust and Salman Rushdie.

From Leavis to Levinas

Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel

Professor of Modern Literature and Theory Andrew Gibson

In the thousands, perhaps millions, of words written about Joyce, Ireland often takes a back seat to his formal experimentalism and the modernist project as a whole. In James Joyce, Andrew Gibson challenges this conventional portrait, demonstrating that the tightest focus—Joyce as an Irishman—yields the clearest picture.

Andrew Gibson

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