The writings of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida pose a serious challenge to the old established, but now seriously compromised forms of thought. In this compelling book, Roy Boyne explains the very significant advances for which they have been responsible, their general importance for the human sciences, and the forms of hope that they offer for an age often characterized by scepticism, cynicism and reaction. The focus of the book is the dispute between Foucault and Derrida on the nature of reason, madness and 'otherness'. The range of issues covered includes the birth of the prison, problems of textual interpretation, the nature of the self and contemporary movements such as socialism, feminism and anti-racialism. Roy Boyne argues that whilst the two thinkers chose very different paths, they were in fact rather surprisingly to converge upon the common ground of power and ethics. Despite the evident honesty, importance and adventurousness of the work of Foucault and Derrida, many also find it difficult and opaque. Roy Boyne has performed a major service for students of their writings in this compelling and accessible book.

Roy convenes the Economy and Society Research Group in the School. He has published books on French philosophy, the sociology of art and cinema, and cultures of risk. He is a member of the executive editorial board of Theory, Culture and Society, and a board member of the recent journal, Creative Industries. He was guest-editor for the 2007 edition, devoted to cinema, of Symbolism: a Journal of Critical Aesthetics. He was Vice-Chair of the Board of Culture North East (until its demise in April 2009). He is writing a book for Sage on regional and international cultural strategy, based in part on research he did whilst visiting professor at the University of Strasbourg in 2007. An interest in economic sociology came out of his role in Culture North East, and he developed an application of the financial derivatives model with the intent of enabling further control over the the socio-economic impacts of ivestment in culture. This is still part of his research plans, alongside the development of case studies on Berlin, the Viaduc de Millau, Futurism, and the Sage Gateshead.

He would welcome applications from potential PhD students in the sociology of culture, the sociology of risk, the sociology of cinema, and also in applications of recent continental philosophy and sociology.

https://www.dur.ac.uk/sass/staff/profile/?id=746