Jonathan Dollimore in Conversation

“Not only a valuable introduction to the work of a vital theorist and critic,Jonathan Dollimore in Conversation is also an important cultural document: it captures what it felt like to be alive intellectually at a particular, intensely contentious and creative historical moment.”

Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University; Pulitzer-prize author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011)

“There is no commentator more incisive or fearless than Jonathan Dollimore, and this interview presents the restless integrity of his mind. It is a bracing meditation on what criticism is and could be. If it argues for the crucial importance of philosophy, at the same time it achieves a real bearing on life — at its most intimate, but also its most political. Dollimore’s distinctive double-take from inside and from outside the University exposes important home-truths. His reaffirmation of Marxism — at a time when economics is playing havoc with everything, including education — is timely. And there are moving surprises here, such as the sudden testimony from the author of the justly celebratedSexual Dissidence to specifically chaste love.”

Ewan Fernie, Professor and Chair at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham; author of The Demonic: Literature and Experience (2013)

Aesthetics, ethics, and politics — how can one mobilize these “figures” alongside desire and spirituality for a radical materialist practice? What is cultural materialism? And how does it foreground itself vis-a-vis humanism and postmodernism? What is the task of criticism and literary pedagogy in the context of literature and the canon under fire? Should we now talk of Theory in the past tense? These are some of the questions addressed by Jonathan Dollimore in the interview with David Jonathan Bayot. This discussion — candid and provocative — introduces a vital voice in literary and cultural criticism today.