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Professor James Martin

Staff details

Professor James Martin

Position

Professor of Political Theory

Department

Politics and International Relations

Email

j.martin (@gold.ac.uk)

James Martin is a political theorist with interests in public speech, ideology, and fascism

James' research focuses on 'interpretive' approaches to politics and political analysis. He has published books and articles on radical political ideas and thinkers in Italy and France, and on features of public speech and rhetorical methods of analysis.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD on the political thought of Antonio Gramsci. University of Bristol 1994
  • MA in Political Thought. University of Kent 1989
  • BA (Hons), Politics and Sociology. University of East Anglia 1988

Research interests

Much of James' work is concerned with how the critical analysis of politics can be informed by interpretive approaches to meaning and experience. This has brought him into contact with theories of culture and ideology, rhetoric, emotions, as well as a range of post-phenomenological philosophies. In his early research, he explored these themes in relation to the Gramscian tradition of political analysis. More recently, he has concentrated on the analysis of political speech, publishing his book, Politics and Rhetoric, in 2014. In 2013-15, he was a Leverhulme Research Fellow exploring affects and political rhetoric. That project led to his book, Psychopolitics of Speech (2019), which employed Lacanian psychoanalysis to think about speech as a means to incite and manage desire. He has recently written a short book, Hegemony (2022), on the different uses of that concept in political theory and analysis. Currently, he is working on post-secular politics and the revival of religiosity in public speech. Between 2010 and 2020, James convened the Rhetoric, Discourse and Politics Specialist Group of the UK Political Studies Association.

Featured publications

Publications and research outputs

Book

Martin, James. 2022. Hegemony. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 9781509521616

Martin, James. 2019. Psychopolitics of Speech: Uncivil Discourse and the Excess of Desire. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag. ISBN 9783837639193

Martin, James. 2013. Politics and Rhetoric: A Critical Introduction. Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-70667-4

Edited Book

Martin, James; Atkins, Judi; Finlayson, Alan and Turnbull, Nick, eds. 2014. Rhetoric in British Politics and society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137325525

Martin, James, ed. 2013. Chantal Mouffe: Hegemony, Radical Democracy, and the Political. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-82522-1

Martin, James, ed. 2008. The Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law, and the State. London: Verso. ISBN 978 1 84467 199 1

Book Section

Martin, James. 2022. Marx's Rhetoric. In: Dilip Gaonkar and Keith Topper, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190220945

Martin, James. 2018. Rhetoric and the Emotions. In: Andreas Hetzel and Gerald Posselt, eds. Handbuch Rhetorik und Philosophie [Handbook of Rhetoric and Philosophy]. 9 Germany: Walter De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 607-623. ISBN 978-3-11-031819-7

Martin, James. 2018. Intersecting Planes: Futurism, Fascism, and Gramsci. In: J. London, ed. One Hundred Years of Futurism: Aesthetics, Politics and Performance. Bristol UK: Intellect Ltd, pp. 79-99. ISBN 9781783208425

Article

Martin, James and Newman, Saul. 2023. Recontesting the Sacred: political theology as ideological method. Journal of Political Ideologies, ISSN 1356-9317

Martin, James. 2023. Rhetoric, death, and the politics of memory. Critical Discourse Studies, 20(5), pp. 477-490. ISSN 1740-5904

Martin, James. 2022. Rhetoric, Discourse and the Hermeneutics of Public Speech. Politics, 42(2), pp. 170-184. ISSN 0263-3957

Other

Martin, James. 2020. Facing The Enemy: Is Wartime Language Useful For Fighting Coronavirus? (Video intervention). Huffington Post.

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