Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Sophie Fuggle

Academic qualifications

Dr Sophie Fuggle holds a BA(Hons) in English and French from the University of Manchester, a Masters degree in European Literature from St Hilda’s College, Oxford University and a PhD from King’s College London. In 2008-9 she was awarded the Crompton studentship for overseas research by King’s College London.

Teaching

Prior to coming to Goldsmiths, Dr Fuggle worked at the Université de Paris Ouest (2007-2009) and King’s College London. She currently convenes the MA in Cultural Studies and is course convenor for ‘Sound, Text and Image’ and ‘Dissertation Research Methods’ within CCS. She also co-organises (with Prof John Hutnyk) a weekly film screening and discussion on themes such as ‘The apocalypse and other disasters’ (Summer 2011) and ‘Education’ (Autumn 2011).

Research interests

Dr Fuggle’s current and existing research falls into two main categories: the relationship between continental philosophy, politics and religion and the study of urban culture. Her doctoral thesis, which is currently under review for publication, focused on conceptions of power in the letters of Saint Paul and work of Michel Foucault. At stake in her examination of the structural and conceptual similarities between the divine power described by Paul and the secular, imminent power relations delineated by Foucault was the possibility of thinking power for our own post-secular moment. A special edition of the Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory on Foucault and Paul co-edited by Dr Fuggle and Valérie Nicolet Anderson was published in late 2010. She is now developing a new research project which focuses on the work of Jean-Pierre Dupuy, situating his ‘catastrophisme éclairé’ within a genealogy of the ‘future-anterior’ as a key, yet underexplored, concept within French thought. Preliminary research has already been presented at conferences held in Santiago, Chile, London and Syracuse, New York.<

Her second area of research is focused on urban culture and, more specifically, contemporary engagements with urban space. As well as having written extensively on urban practices such as parkour, she is co-editor (with Elisha Foust) of ’Word on the Street’ (London: IGRS, forthcoming 2011), a collection of essays looking at the street as both site and product of discourse. She is currently expanding this area of research to a more general consideration of space and culture, co-editing a collection of essays La Ligne d’écume: Towards a New Topography of the French Beach which examines the trope of the beach in twentieth century French literature, film and thought.

Selected publications

Sole authored

Foucault/Paul: Subjects of Power (under review)

Edited Collections/Journals

Word on the Street: Competing Discourses of Public Space, co-edited with Elisha Foust (London: IGRS, forthcoming).

Foucault and Paul: Special Issue of The Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory, co-edited with Valérie Nicolet Anderson, 11.1 (Winter  2010). e-ISSN: 1530-5228.
Available: http://www.jcrt.org/archives/11.1/index.shtml.

Articles/Books Chapters

‘After Power: Rethinking Foucault and Paul in a Post-secular age’ in Foucault Studies vol. 15 (special issue on Foucault and Religion, forthcoming 2013).

‘Technics and Hypomnemata: Self-Writing in Stiegler and Foucault’ in Christina Howells and Gerald Moore (eds), Stiegler and Technics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2013).

‘Postface: The Signature that Remains’ in Sanja Perovic (ed.), Fragments of Religion:  Sacred and Secular Agency in Early Modern France, (London and New York, NY: Continuum, 2011). 

‘Street for Sale: Signs, Space, Discourse’ in Elisha Foust and Sophie Fuggle (eds.), Word on the Street: Competing Discourses of Public Space (London: IGRS, 2011).

‘On the Persistence of Cynic Motifs’ in Foucault and Paul: Special Issue of The Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory, 11.1 (Winter 2010), pp.159-171.
Available: http://www.jcrt.org/archives/11.1/fuggle.pdf.

‘Cortocircuitando el juego del poder. The Wire como crítica a las instituciones’ in George Pelecanos (ed.), The Wire: 10 dosis de la major serie de la televisión (Madrid: Errata Naturae, 2010), pp.143-161, ISBN: 978-84-937889-1-9.

‘Secularizing the Remnant: Foucault and Paul’, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture 6 (2009), ISSN: 1555-5100. Available: http://www.philosophyandscripture.org/Issue6-1/Fuggle.pdf.

‘Parkour: Ambassador for the Banlieue’, Essays in French Literature and Culture (November 2009), pp.57-75, ISSN: 1835-7040.

‘L’animal répugnant, ou l’authentique éthique du devenir dans La Mouche de David Cronenberg’ in Bruno Sibona (ed.), Notre animal intérieur et les théories de la créativité (Paris : Harmattan, 2009), pp.93-105, ISBN : 978-2-296-10118-0.

‘Excavating Government: Giorgio Agamben’s Archaeological Dig’, Foucault Studies, 7 (September 2009), pp.81-98, ISSN: 1832-5203.

‘Short-circuiting the Power Grid: The Wire as Critique of Institutional Power’, Dark Matter Journal, 4 (May 2009). Available: http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/05/29/short-circuiting-the-power-grid-the-wire-as-critique-of-institutional-power/.

‘Discourses of Subversion: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Capoeira and Parkour’, Dance Research, 26.2 (October 2008), pp.204-222, ISSN: 0264-2875.

‘Parkour: Reading or Writing the City?’, in Elizabeth Lindley and Laura McMahon (eds.), Rhythms: Essays in French Literature, Film and Culture (Berne: Peter Lang, 2008 ), pp. 159-170, ISBN: 978-3-03911-349-1.