Associate Professor James Phillips

Associate Professor James Phillips

Associate Professor

MA in Comparative Literature and Critical Theory (Monash), PhD in Philosophy (UTas)

Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA)
School of Humanities & Languages

I have been at UNSW since 2006, first as a Vice-Chancellor's postdoctoral fellow, then as an ARC Australian Research Fellow (2007-2011), before taking up a combined research-teaching position in Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Languages.

I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Queensland, undertook an MA in Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at Monash University, and was then awarded my Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Tasmania in 2002.  During my doctoral studies I spent nine months in Innsbruck as an OeAD scholar and six months in Potsdam as a DAAD scholar.  I have since then been a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and a resident associate at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.

Apart from the publications listed below, I have also translated two books: Christoph Menke, Tragic Play: Irony and Theater from Sophocles to Beckett (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009) and Alexander García Düttmann, Philosophy of Exaggeration (London: Continuum, 2007).

Phone
+61 2 9065 1055
Location
369 Morven Brown
  • Books | 2019
    Phillips J, 2019, Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle, Oxford University Press, USA, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sternberg-and-dietrich-9780190915247?cc=au&lang=en&
    Books | 2007
    Phillips JA, 2007, The Equivocation of Reason: Kleist reading Kant, Original, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA
    Books | 2005
    Phillips JA, 2005, Heidegger`s Volk: Between National Socialism and Poetry, Original, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA
  • Book Chapters | 2021
    Phillips J; Severn JR, 2021, 'It Begins with the Theatre: Barrie Kosky’s Workshop', in Phillips J; Severn JR (ed.), Barrie Kosky’s Transnational Theatres, Springer, Cham, pp. 1 - 30, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75028-2_1
    Book Chapters | 2021
    Phillips J, 2021, 'Barrie Kosky's Grotesques and the Ecstasy of Theatre', in Phillips J; Severn JR (ed.), Barrie Kosky’s Transnational Theatres, Springer, Cham, pp. 137 - 155, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75028-2_7
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Phillips J, 2019, 'Metaphor and the Unprecedented: Byron's 'Darkness' and Responding to Ecological Disaster', in Collett A; Murphy O (ed.), Romantic Climates: Literature and Science in an Age of Catastrophe, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 159 - 171, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16241-2_9
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Phillips J, 2019, 'Metaphor and the Unprecedented: Byron’s ‘Darkness’ and Responding to Ecological Disaster', in Romantic Climates: Literature and Science in an Age of Catastrophe, Springer International Publishing, pp. 159 - 171, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16241-2_9
    Book Chapters | 2009
    Phillips JA, 2009, 'Beckett's Boredom', in Essays on Boredom and Modernity, edn. 1, Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp. 109 - 126
    Book Chapters | 2008
    Phillips JA, 2008, 'Glauber Rocha: Hunger and Garbage', in Phillips J (ed.), Cinematic Thinking, edn. 1, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, pp. 90 - 108
    Book Chapters | 2008
    Phillips JA, 2008, 'Introduction: What Can Cinema Do?', in Phillips J (ed.), Cinematic Thinking, edn. 1, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, pp. 1 - 9
  • Edited Books | 2021
    Phillips J; Severn JR, (ed.), 2021, Barrie Kosky's Transnational Theatres, Springer, Cham, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75028-2
    Edited Books | 2008
    Phillips J, (ed.), 2008, Cinematic Thinking: Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=11139
  • Journal articles | 2024
    Phillips J, 2024, 'A fallible narrator and an inscrutable object: desire as structure in Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband', Studies in East European Thought, pp. 1 - 13, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11212-024-09642-5
    Journal articles | 2024
    Phillips J, 2024, 'On Arendt’s Reading of Kant’s Third Critique: What Politics Can (and Cannot) Learn from Aesthetics', Arendt Studies, 8, pp. 195 - 222, http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/arendtstudies202312456
    Journal articles | 2024
    Phillips J, 2024, 'Tennessee Williams’ escapology and the heterotopia of ‘The Mysteries of the Joy Rio’', Textual Practice, ahead-of-print, pp. 1 - 18, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2024.2347247
    Journal articles | 2022
    Phillips J, 2022, 'Kant, the Canon, and Pleasure's Transcendental Sociability', College Literature, 49, pp. 682 - 710, https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/867193
    Journal articles | 2022
    Phillips J, 2022, 'The Troubling Relationship between Pleasure and Universality in Kant’s Impure Aesthetic Judgements', Kant Studien: philosophische Zeitschrift der Kant-Gesellschaft, 113, pp. 219 - 37, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/kant-2022-2011
    Journal articles | 2022
    Phillips J, 2022, 'The Troubling Relationship between Pleasure and Universality in Kant’s Impure Aesthetic Judgements', Kant-Studien, 113, pp. 219 - 237, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/kant-2022-2011
    Journal articles | 2021
    Phillips J, 2021, 'Finitude and the Precritical Imagination: Heidegger's Confrontation with Idealism in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and its Bearing on his Philosophy of Art', Southern Journal of Philosophy, 59, pp. 606 - 628, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12428
    Journal articles | 2020
    Phillips J, 2020, 'Beauty is a Fact under Siege: John Ruskin as Critic in a State of Ecological Emergency', Journal of Victorian Culture, 25, pp. 63 - 76, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcz043
    Journal articles | 2020
    Phillips J, 2020, 'Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops To Conquer: The Stakes of Shame and the Prospects of Politeness', ELH: English Literary History, 87, pp. 999 - 1023, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/elh.2020.0035
    Journal articles | 2020
    Phillips J, 2020, 'The Rules and Politics of Storyworlds: Fictionalizing the Everyday in E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia Novels', Philosophy and Literature, 44, pp. 52 - 65, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/phl.2020.0003
    Journal articles | 2018
    Phillips J, 2018, 'Jacques Tati and the Unbound Gag: Notes for a Cinematic Phenomenology of Judgement', Film International, 16, pp. 54 - 65, http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/fiin.16.2.54_1
    Journal articles | 2018
    Phillips JA, 2018, 'The Eternal Return of the Same and the Missed Opportunity of Heidegger’s Nietzsche: Sacrificing the Perspectivism of Moods to the History of Being', Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 22, pp. 141 - 158, http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/symposium20182219
    Journal articles | 2018
    2018, 'THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SAME AND THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY OF HEIDEGGER'S NIETZSCHE: SACRIFICING THE PERSPECTIVISM OF MOODS TO THE HISTORY OF BEING', SYMPOSIUM-CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 22, pp. 140 - 157, https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000432400500009&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=891bb5ab6ba270e68a29b250adbe88d1
    Journal articles | 2017
    Phillips J, 2017, 'The Cuckoo’s Egg in Honneth’s Hegel-Inspired Theory of Recognition: The Hobbesian Myth of Autonomy Revisited', Critical Horizons, 18, pp. 19 - 32, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14409917.2017.1275167
    Journal articles | 2017
    Phillips JA, 2017, 'Straddling the Senses of a Contested Term: A Comment on the Use of ‘Aesthetic’ in Mohan Matthen's ‘The Pleasure of Art’', Australasian Philosophical Review, 1, pp. 90 - 94, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/24740500.2017.1296388
    Journal articles | 2016
    Phillips J, 2016, 'For the unruly subject the covenant, for the Christian sovereign the grace of God: The different arguments of Hobbes' Leviathan', Philosophy & Social Criticism, 42, pp. 1082 - 1104, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0191453715607590
    Journal articles | 2016
    Phillips JA; McMahon J; Burns Coleman E; Macarthur D; von Sturmer D, 2016, 'Between philosophy and art: A collaboration at The Lock-Up, Newcastle', Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 5, pp. 135 - 150, http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/ajpc.5.2-3.135_1
    Journal articles | 2016
    Phillips JA, 2016, 'Anti-Oedipus: The Ethics of Performance and Misrecognition in Matsumoto Toshio’s Funeral Parade of Roses', SubStance, 45, pp. 33 - 48, http://dx.doi.org/10.3368/ss.45.3.33
    Journal articles | 2015
    Phillips J, 2015, 'Hegel and Heidegger on the Essence of Beauty: Plotting a Trajectory from Kant's Third Critique', Philosophy Today, 59, pp. 23 - 36, http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/philtoday201411649
    Journal articles | 2015
    Phillips JA, 2015, 'Arendt and Deleuze on Totalitarianism and the Revolutionary Event: Among the Peoples of the Fall of the Berlin Wall', Deleuze Studies, 9, pp. 112 - 136, http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/dls.2015.0176
    Journal articles | 2014
    Phillips J, 2014, 'Agamben's Limbos: Robert Walser and the Refugee', Textual Practice, 28, pp. 289 - 303, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2013.835748
    Journal articles | 2014
    Phillips JA, 2014, 'Instead of a Preface: Dostoevsky and Philosophising', The Dostoevsky Journal: an independent review, 14, pp. i - vii
    Journal articles | 2014
    Phillips JA, 2014, 'Sovereignty's Ontological Indecision: Derrida and Heidegger on the Other Line (Between the Human and the Animals)', SubStance, 43, pp. 68 - 82, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/substance/v043/43.2.phillips.html
    Journal articles | 2013
    Phillips JA, 2013, 'Between the Tyranny of Opinion and the Despotism of Rational Truth: Arendt on Facts and Acting in Concert', New German Critique, 40, pp. 97 - 112, http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/0094033X-2077717
    Journal articles | 2013
    Phillips JA, 2013, 'Jean-Luc Nancy's Fraternal First Philosophy of the "With": Rethinking Communion', Theory and Event, 16, https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v016/16.2.phillips.html
    Journal articles | 2013
    Phillips JA, 2013, 'Mimesis and Justice: The Realism of Vidas Sêcas', Culture Theory and Critique, 54, pp. 183 - 193, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2013.782677
    Journal articles | 2012
    Phillips JA, 2012, 'Eric Rohmer's Die Marquise von O..., or Marriage Under Ambiguous Circumstances', Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur, 104, pp. 232 - 243
    Journal articles | 2012
    Phillips JA, 2012, 'The Case for a Convergence of the Beautiful and the Sublime: Kant. Aesthetic Form and the Temptations of Appearance', The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 43, pp. 161 - 177
    Journal articles | 2012
    Phillips JA, 2012, 'The Fates of Flesh: Cinematic Realism Following Bazin and Mizoguchi', Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 17, pp. 9 - 22
    Journal articles | 2012
    Phillips JA, 2012, 'The Practicalities of the Absolute: Justice and Kingship in Shakespeare's Richard II', ELH - English Literary History, 79, pp. 161 - 177, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/elh.2012.0002
    Journal articles | 2011
    Phillips JA, 2011, 'Placing Ugliness in Kant's Third Critique: A Reply to Paul Guyer', Kant - Studien, 102, pp. 385 - 395, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/kant.2011.027
    Journal articles | 2010
    Phillips JA, 2010, 'Restoring Place to Aesthetic Experience: Heidegger's Critique of Rilke', Critical Horizons: Journal of Social and Critical Theory, 11, pp. 341 - 358, http://philpapers.org/rec/PHIRPT
    Journal articles | 2010
    Phillips JA, 2010, 'Wordsworth and the Fraternity of Joy', New Literary History, 41, pp. 613 - 632, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2010.0021
    Journal articles | 2008
    Phillips JA, 2008, 'After Blanchot: Literature, Criticism, Philosophy', International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 16, pp. 106 - 110
    Journal articles | 2008
    Phillips JA, 2008, 'In the Company of Predators: Beowulf and the Monstrous Descendants of Cain', Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 13, pp. 41 - 51, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09697250802550921
    Journal articles | 2008
    Phillips JA, 2008, 'Marriage in Jane Eyre: From Contract to Conversation', Bronte Studies, 13, pp. 203 - 217, http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/174582208X338559
    Journal articles | 2007
    Phillips JA, 2007, 'The Two Faces of Love in Wuthering Heights', Bronte Studies, 32, pp. 96 - 105, http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/147489307X182844
    Journal articles | 2006
    Phillips JA, 2006, 'Life in Space: William Burroughs and the Limits of the Society of Control', Literature and Aesthetics, 16, pp. 95 - 112
    Journal articles | 2005
    Phillips JA, 2005, 'Dying is not Death: The Difference between Blanchot`s Fiction and Hegel`s Concept', Colloquy, 10, pp. 57 - 68, http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/others/colloquy/issue10/phillips.pdf
    Journal articles | 2004
    Phillips JA, 2004, 'Beckett's Boredom and the Spirit of Adorno', Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd`Hui, 14, pp. 251 - 260, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25781470
    Journal articles | 2004
    Phillips JA, 2004, 'From Radical to Banal Evil: Hannah Arendt against the Justification of the Unjustifiable', International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 12, pp. 129 - 158, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672550410001679828
    Journal articles | 2003
    Phillips J, 2003, 'Lifeline', Parallax, 9, pp. 71 - 72, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1353464032000103645
  • Conference Papers | 2003
    Phillips J, 2003, 'Beckett's boredom and the spirit of Adorno', in Uhlmann A; Houppermans S; Clement B (eds.), AFTER BECKETT D'APRES BECKETT, EDITIONS RODOPI B V, AUSTRALIA, Sydney, pp. 251 - 259, presented at Samuel Beckett Symposium on After Beckett/d Apres Beckett, AUSTRALIA, Sydney, 06 January 2003 - 09 January 2003, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18757405-90000191

I am currently engaged in a book project on the philosophy of fiction, drawing on the concepts of "world" in Kant and Heidegger.

Forthcoming publications:

Busby Berkeley at Warner Bros.: Ideology and Utopia in the Hollywood Musical (New York: Bloomsbury, February 2025)

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/busby-berkeley-at-warner-bros-9798765124819/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Philosophy Group Convenor 

Research Committee Member - School of Humanities and Languages

 

My Research Supervision

Ph.D.: Finnegan Hassey on Arendt's concept of nationalism (joint supervisor: Jess Whyte)

MA: Sofia Kartavtseva on Sade and aesthetics

My Teaching

I teach political philosophy, aesthetics and the history of German philosophy.

In 2025 I will be teaching in T1 the philosophy component of ARTS4249 "Advances in the Humanities", in T2 ARTS2384 "Political Philosophy" and in T3 ARTS3360 "Examining Pivotal Texts" with a focus on Plato.