William Watkin

William Watkin is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Philosophy. He has been at Brunel university for over ten years. During that time he has served as head of English and deputy head of the School. He has also served on Senate, sat on numerous committees across the university and participated in developing the university’s strategic plan. Within the school he set up the MA in Contemporary Literature and Culture and the Archive of the Now. He also oversaw and wrote English’s successful RAE2008 bid.

Research Overview

Prof. Watkin will supervise projects on any aspects of the work of Agamben, Badiou, Nancy and Deleuze. Further he will consider supervising students on any areas of literary theory, continental philosophy, contemporary literature, experimental poetry and poetics in general.

His current research interest is indifference as a development, completion and critique of discourses of difference that have predominated in the humanities for the last forty years. He just completed a monograph on the work of philosopher Giorgio Agamben in relation to indifference. Agamben is one of Watkin’s areas of specialisation, having published the first critical monograph on Agamben and literature in 2010. He is currently working on Deleuze and indifference.

His other major project is a consideration of the complex relation between poetry and philosophy since Heidegger, which conceives of poetry/literature as a mode of thinking or, as Watkin calls it, logopoiesis. His 2010 Agamben monograph is part of a three volume study of logopoiesis which will include work on Nancy and Badiou in the years to come.

Previously Watkin has published books on the New York School of poetry in relation to avant-gardism and theoretical consideration of literatures of mourning in the modern era. He has published numerous articles on contemporary experimental poetry: Ashbery, O’Hara, Koch, Schulyer, Hejinian, Silliman, Bernstein, and Du Plessis
 
 

Teaching Activity

William Watkin has taught a wide variety of areas at Brunel. His current teaching interests revolve around the changing face of literary theory in the new millennium. He runs courses on the relation of philosophy to literature and the arts from the historical origins of aesthetics through to the most contemporary philosophical statements on aesthetics and literature.  He has also taught contemporary literature for many years, specialising in contemporary poetry and poetics. He has a wider interest in poetics and has taught the history of poetry. Another interest is the avant-garde and experimentalism. He taught modernism and the avant-garde for many years and continues to run seminars on experimental, contemporary poetry.

Key Publications:

“The Poetics of Presentation: Lyn Hejinian’s My Life Project and the work of Giorgio Agamben” Textual Practice 2012.

“The / Turn and the “ ” Pause: Agamben, Derrida and the Stratification of Poetry” in Textures Series, Lexington Press 2011.

“Poetry’s Promiscuous Plurality: On a Part of Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Muses[PG1] ” in Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking SUNY 2011.

The Literary Agamben: Adventures in Logopoiesis (London: Continuum University Press, March 2010).
“Derrida’s Limits: Aporias between ‘Ousia and Grammē’,” Derrida Today 3.1 (2010): 113-136.

“Projective Recursion: The Structure of Ron Silliman’s Tjanting,” Jacket 39 (2010).

“Taking steps beyond elegy: poetry, philosophy, lineation, and death,” Textual Practice 23.6 (2009): 1051-1065.

“The Materialization of Prose: Poiesis versus Dianoia in the work of Godzich & Kittay, Schklovsky, Silliman and Agamben,” Paragraph 31.3 (2008): 344-364.

“‘Systematic rule-governed violations of convention’: Ron Silliman’s Poetic Procedures,” Contemporary Literature 48.4, 2007: 499-529.

“Counterchange: Derrida’s Poetry,” in Encountering Derrida: Legacies and Futures of Deconstruction (London: Continuum, 2007).

On Mourning: Theories of Loss in Modern Literature. (Edinburgh University Press, 2004).

“Revolution, Melancholia and Materiality in the Work of Julia Kristeva”. Paragraph 26.3 (2003): 86-107.

“Friendly Little Communities: Derrida’s Politics of Death.” Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics 15.2 (2002): 219-237.

In the Process of Poetry: The New York School and the Avant-Garde. (Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell University Press, 2001).

“Poetry Machines: Repetition in the Early Poetry of Kenneth Koch.” EnterText 1.1
(Dec. 2000): 83-117.

Publications

Journal Papers

(2013) Watkin, W., The Poetics of Presentation: Lyn Hejinian's My Life Project and the Work of Giorgio Agamben, Textual Practice 27 (2) : 225- 248

(2010) WATKIN, W., Projective Recursion: The Structure of Ron Silliman’s Tjanting., Jacket

(2009) Watkin, W. and Philips, D., Introduction: Contemporary writing environments, Textual Practice 23 (6) : 905- 911

(2009) Watkin, W., Taking steps beyond elegy: poetry, philosophy, lineation, and death, Textual Practice 23 (6) : 1013- 1027

(2008) Watkin, W., The materialization of prose: poiesis versus dianoia in the work of Godzich and Kittay, Schklovsky, Silliman and Agamben, Paragraph 31 (3) : 344- 364

(2008) Watkin, W., 'Though we keep company with cats and dogs': onomatopoeia, glossolalia and happiness in the work of Lyn Hejinian and Giorgio Agamben, Jacket 36 (Late 2008)

(2008) DuPlessis, RB. and Watkin, W., “Draft 33: Deixis”/notes on “deixis”: a midrashic chain: an exchange of thoughts, Jacket 36 (Late 2008)

(2007) Watkin, W., "Systematic rule-governed violations of convention": The poetics of procedural constraint in Ron Silliman's BART and the Chinese Notebook, Contemporary Literature 48 (4) : 499- 529

(2003) Watkin, W., Melancholia, revolution and materiality in the work of Julia Kristeva, Paragraph 26 (3) : 86- 107

(2002) Watkin, W., Friendly little communities: Derrida's politics of death, Strategies Journal of Theory Culture & Politics 15 (2) : 219- 237

(2002) Watkin, W., "Let's make a list": James Schuyler's taxonomic autobiography, Journal of American Studies 36 43- 68 Download publication

(2000) WATKIN, W., Poetry Machines: Repetition in the Early Poetry of Kenneth Koch, EnterText 1 (1) : 83- 117

(2000) Watkin, W., ‘I want you to give me on a dish the head...’: symbolism, decollation and femininity in Mallarmé’s ‘Hérodiade’, Psychoanalytic Studies 2 (2) : 141- 157

Book Chapters

(2012) WATKIN, W., The / Turn and the “ ” Pause: Agamben, Derrida and the Stratification of Poetry. In: . Lexington

(2012) WATKIN, W., Poetry’s Promiscuous Plurality: On a Part of Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Muses”. In: Morin, M-E. and Gratton, P. eds. Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking. SUNY

(2007) WATKIN, W., Counterchange: Derrida’s Poetry. In: Wortham, S. and Weiner, A. eds. Encountering Derrida. Continuum Intl Pub Group

Books

(2010) Watkin, W., The literary Agamben: adventures in logopoiesis. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

(2004) Watkin, W., On mourning: theories of loss in modern literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

(2001) Watkin, W., In the process of poetry: the New York school and the Avant-Garde. Lewisburg, [Pa.]: Bucknell University Press