Dr Fabienne Collignon
School of English
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature
+44 114 222 0242
Full contact details
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
91Ö±²¥
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I joined the School of English in September 2012 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2017. Before coming to 91Ö±²¥, I held a short-term post at the University of Glasgow, where I also completed my PhD in 2009, and a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. From September 2018 to February 2020, I was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at Universität zu Köln.
- Research interests
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My work is indexed to critical theory and examines the politics of subject formation, as well as techno-cultural events and spatiality. My first monograph, Rocket States: Atomic Weaponry and the Cultural Imagination (Bloomsbury, 2014), maps the technological unconscious of the American Cold War and is concerned with identifying the recurring figures and fantasies of the conflict: cyborgic assemblages; fictions of total security; gadget love.
My second book, The Insectile and the Deconstruction of the Non/Human (Routledge, 2022) defines, conceptualizes, and evaluates a condition I’m calling ‘entomological fascination,’ which refers to specific aspects of subject formation, namely the constellation between subjectivity, fascination and the ‘insectile.’ My investigation concerns an engagement with a range of formal features pertaining to the insectile—its enactments, cultural dreamwork, fantasy transformations—‘in-forming’ the so-called human subject across the archives of psychoanalysis, seventeenth century still life painting, novels from the nineteenth century to the present day, and post-1970s film. You can access the book here:
I’m currently working on a critical-creative and cultural-historical project tracing theories of narcissism beginning with Freud, and further referring to the writings of Anna Freud, Erich Fromm, Heinz Kohut, Herbert Alexander Rosenfeld, Otto Kernberg, Alice Miller, André Green, Christina Wieland. The project uses the hybrid form to investigate the ‘legibility’ of covert emotional abuse occurring in narcissistic family systems and uses psychoanalytic theories to structure the (daily) experience of being caught in such a ‘nexus’ of domination. It is, as such, attentive to the discourses available and unavailable to speak about traumatic dailiness, concerned to find a medium in which to talk about that experience; the project is, at the same time, alive to the liberatory promise and potential of psychoanalytic theory.
I’ve also co-edited The Dictionary of Neoliberal Terms (with Matthew Cheeseman & John Miller) and do a variety of other creative writing projects. I have published a pamphlet on, and love letter to, the (former) Borussia Dortmund captain Marco Reus, available here:
- Publications
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Books
- The Insectile and the Deconstruction of the Non/Human. New York: Routledge.
- Rocket States: Atomic Weaponry and the Cultural Imagination. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Journal articles
- . New Review of Film and Television Studies, 22(1), 161-181.
- . Modernism/modernity, 29(1), 101-121.
- . Textual Practice.
- . Textual Practice, 34(4), 523-541.
- . Extrapolation, 60(3), 229-248.
- . New Formations, 95, 87-102.
- . Journal of American Studies, 49(1), 99-123.
- The Ballistic Flight of an Automatic Duck. Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon, 1(2).
- . Configurations, 19(1), 49-71.
- Silo Psychosis. C-Theory(In the Name of Security).
- Aberrations in the Heartland: An Interview with Rachel Chavkin, Artistic Director of TEAM. European Journal of American Studies(1).
- . Textual Practice, 22(3), 547-562.
Chapters
- Techno-criticism and/against the Value of the Flesh In Ladkin S, McKay R & Bojesen E (Ed.), Against Value in the Arts and Education (pp. 113-142). London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
- Insect technics: watching war machines In Beck J & Bishop R (Ed.), Cold War Legacies: Systems, Theory, Aesthetics Edinburgh University Press
- , The World According to Philip K. Dick (pp. 48-65). Palgrave Macmillan UK
- Soft Machines, The Globalization of Space
- Thomas Pynchon’s Half-Lit, Hollow Worlds, Between Science and Fiction: The Hollow Earth as Concept and Conceit Hamburg: Lit Verlag.
Book reviews
- . PARALLAX, 19(2), 95-97.
Website content
- Soft Technology. Retrieved from
- The Posthuman as Inhuman: To Lend an Ear, To Fall.
- The Insectile and the Deconstruction of the Non/Human. New York: Routledge.
- Research group
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I’m interested in supervising projects oriented towards critical theory, particularly concerning theories of technology and forms of subjectivity, and on contemporary literature and film/cultural studies; etc. I’m also interested in the critical/cultural aspects of football—occasioned by my enthusiastic support of Borussia Dortmund—on which I’ve supervised some MA dissertations.
- Teaching activities
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EGH120 Darwin, Marx, Freud
EGH21001/2 Literature & Critical Theory
EGH238 Radical Theory
EGH31015 Dissertation