Dr Jean-Paul Martinon
Staff details

Jean-Paul Martinon is a writer based in London. He writes in an attempt to make sense of time: its staging in museums, its advent, its gender, its neglect, and the way it is used and abused to structure human life. His research focuses primarily on contemporary continental philosophy with a particular interest in the work of Spinoza, Levinas, Nancy, Chalier, Kagame, Mudimbe, and Meillassoux.
Academic qualifications
- PhD University of Reading 2001
Teaching and Supervision
His teaching covers a number of topics such as time and history, art and ethics, curating and the curatorial, as well as African thought. He co-founded the PhD Curatorial / Knowledge Programme. He welcomes proposals for research on any aspect of contemporary culture with a preference for proposals that articulates their project through continental philosophy.
- VC53134B: The Time Between Us
- VC71120A: MA Core Course C - Every Now & Then: Time & History
Research interests
Jean-Paul has written monographs on a Victorian workhouse (Swelling Grounds, Rear Window, 1995), the idea of the future in the work of Derrida, Malabou and Nancy (On Futurity, Palgrave, 2007), the temporal dimension of masculinity (The End of Man, Punctum, 2013), the concept of peace after the Rwandan genocide (After “Rwanda,” Rodopi, 2013), and how curating can be a form of ethics (Curating as Ethics, Minnesota, 2021). He is also the editor of The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating (Bloomsbury, 2014). He is currently working on two book projects: one on Pyrrho exploring an alternative to time as measurement (Time as Air or Pyrrho's Turbulent Reality, forthcoming) and one on Spinoza exploring the task of emending both mind and body (Spinoza: Journal of an Emendation, forthcoming).
Publications and research outputs
Book
Martinon, Jean-Paul and Madani, Adnan. 2024. Visual Cultures as World-Forming. Berlin: Sternberg Press. ISBN 9783956795374
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2020. Curating as Ethics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9781517908652
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2013. After "Rwanda": In Search of a New Ethics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-3711-3
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2013. The End of Man. New York: Punctum Books. ISBN 9780615766782
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2007. On Futurity / Malabou, Derrida and Nancy. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230506848
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2005. Swelling Grounds: A history of Hackney Workhouse. Rear Window Publications. ISBN 0 9521040 4 0
Edited Book
Martinon, Jean-Paul, ed. 2013. The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781472525604
Book Section
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2021. Alexis Kagame. In: Eugene O’Brien, ed. Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2015. Im-mundus or Nancy’s Globalising-World-Formation. In: Sanja Dejanovic, ed. Nancy and the Political. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 219-244. ISBN 9780748683185
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2015. Shame: Intentionality in Reverse. In: Suzana Milevska, ed. On Productive Shame, Reconciliation and Agency. 16 Berlin: Sternberg Press, pp. 66-78.
Doussan, Jenny. 2013. Eros, Plague, Olfaction: Three Allegories of the Curatorial. In: Jean-Paul Martinon, ed. The Curatorial A Philosophy of Curating. London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, pp. 79-92. ISBN 9781472525604
Rogoff, Irit. 2013. The Expanding Field. In: Jean-Paul Martinon, ed. The Curatorial: A philosophy of curating. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 41-48. ISBN 9781472525604
Crone, Bridget. 2013. Curating, Dramatization and the Diagram. In: Jean-Paul Martinon, ed. The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. Bloomsbury, pp. 207-214. ISBN 9781472525604
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2010. Bearers and Proper Names. In: Suzana Milevska, ed. The Renaming Machine. Ljubljana: PARASITE Institute Slovenia, pp. 60-71. ISBN 9789616807029
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2008. 33, 34, 35… The Life of The Limits. In: Josef Steiff and Tristan D Tamplin, eds. Battlestar Galactica and philosophy : mission accomplished or mission frakked up? 33 Chicago: Open Court, pp. 249-260. ISBN 9780812697087
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2006. Museum and Restlessness. In: H. Genoways, ed. Museum Philosophy for the Twentieth-first Century. Alta Mira Press, pp. 59-69. ISBN 9780759107540
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2005. Grafts, Repetitions, and Polymorphous Bodies: Daniel Buren at the Wordsworth Trust. In: Robert Robert, ed. Daniel Buren. The Wordsworth Trust, pp. 29-44. ISBN 1905256019
Martinon, Jean-Paul and Ogg, Kirsty. 2004. To Change an Opinion. In: , ed. The Showroom Annual 2003/4. The Showroom, pp. 25-29. ISBN 0952104040
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2003. Fact or Fiction? In: A. George, ed. Art, Lies and Videotape: Exposing Performance. Tate Publishing, pp. 40-51. ISBN 1854375377
Article
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2021. Curators Serving the Public Good. Philosophies, 6, 28. ISSN 2409-9287
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2019. Race and Universality: Meillassoux Meets Eze and Wiredu. Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 30, pp. 49-71. ISSN 1367-3769
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2019. Marx 1845 or the Fateful Rejection of Anschauung. CR: The New Centennial Review, 18(3), pp. 73-96. ISSN 1539-6630
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2018. The Birth of Language or the Necessity of Rule. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 81(3), pp. 413-424. ISSN 0041-977X
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2017. Edging Disciplines. Journal of Curatorial Studies, 6(2), pp. 221-229. ISSN 2045-5836
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2017. Time Unshackled. New Formations, 92, pp. 11-24. ISSN 0950-2378
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2016. Between Earth and Sky. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 24(1), pp. 25-44. ISSN 1936-6280
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2015. The Equivocal Concept: The Work of Bourahima Ouattara. International Journal of Francophone Studies, 18(2-3), pp. 339-358. ISSN 1936-6280
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2012. Valentin Mudimbe or the Work of Invention. Darkmatter, 8, pp. 1-4. ISSN 2041-3254
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2011. Between Freedoms: Jean-Luc Nancy’s Haunting Categorical Imperative. Mono Kurgusuz Labirent(10-11), ISSN 1306-715X
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2008. Switzerland: Joanna Hodge’s Derrida on Time. Radical Philosophy(149), pp. 62-64. ISSN 0300-211X
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2006. Museum, Plasticity, Temporality. Museum Management and Curatorship, 21(2), pp. 157-167. ISSN 0964-7775
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2005. Strategies of (In)visibility. Republicart - EIPCP Web Journal, pp. 1-6. ISSN 1811-1696
Conference or Workshop Item
Andrews, Jorella G. and Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2018. 'A Fearless Look at the Unspeakable: Visual Cultures Public Programme Sping Term 2018'. In: Visual Cultures Public Programme. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom Jan-Feb 2018.