Faculty
Nandita Biswas Mellamphy
Doctoral Membership
Department of Political Science
Email
Education: BA, Manitoba; MA, Western; PhD, Toronto
* On sabbatical July 1 2012 - June 30, 2013 *
Research Interests
Dr. Nandita Biswas Mellamphy’s research interests are situated at the intersection of political theory, post-humanism, and continental philosophy within the context of contemporary complexifying international societies. She is author of The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) as well as essays published in journals such as Foucault Studies; Deleuze Studies; Contre Attaques (France); Symposium: International Journal of Continental Philosophy; Paideusis: International Journal in the Philosophy of Education; Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development; Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts; and in anthologies such as Herman Siemens' and Vasti Roodt’s Nietzsche, Power and Politics (2008), Horst Hutter’s Becoming Loyal to the Earth: Ecology and Life-Affirmation in Nietzsche’s Vision -- Nietzsche’s Teaching as a Therapy for Political Culture (forthcoming 2011), and Keith Ansell Pearson’s Nietzsche and Political Thought (forthcoming 2013).
Her research interests include Nietzschean political thought, zoontotechnics and post-humanism (especially in the work of Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, and Réné Schwaller). Her current research focuses on the post-humanism of what she calls ‘larval terrorism’: the militarization of the contemporary political subject and the changing nature of war under the regime of the ‘war on terror’. In the past four years she has been invited to present her work at international institutions such as Diego Portales University (Santiago, Chile), Cardiff University (Wales, UK), The American University of Paris (France), Villanova University (Pennsylvania), University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and Leiden University (Netherlands).
She is the co-founder with Dan Mellamphy of the annual international Nietzsche Workshop @ Western, and has organized two international interdisciplinary conferences devoted to the study of war and the politics of globalization -- Cultural Diplomacy: Bridging Theory and Practice in the Age of Globalization (UWO 2008) and Rethinking War in the 21st Century (UWO 2010). She has also served on the editorial review boards of The Intergenerational Justice Review (Germany), The Canadian Journal of Political Science, The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, and PhaenEx: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, and is both co-founder and co-ordinator of The Critical Politics Group, a collaborative research group established in 2009 at The University of Western Ontario.
Selected Publications
Monographs:
The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (forthcoming 2010, Palgrave Macmillan).
Articles
‘Negation, Affirmation and the Overcoming of Nihilism in Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Future’ in Phaenex: The Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (forthcoming 2011).
‘Le Nihilisme Nietzschéen comme Problème de la ‘Grande Politique’: Un entretien avec Bernard Stiegler’, Contre-Attaques (forthcoming 2010).
With Dan Mellamphy, ‘What’s the “Matter” with Materialism? Walter Benjamin and the New Janitocracy’ in Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts, 2009, 11(1), pp.162-182.
With Dan Mellamphy, ‘PAULITICS’ in Symposium: International Journal of Continental Philosophy (special issue on Alain Badiou), 2009, volume 12.2, pp. 127-47.
With Dan Mellamphy, ‘The Play’s the Thing: Mathematization as Dramatization’ in Paideusis: International Journal of the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society, 2008, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 35-44.
With Dan Mellamphy, ‘In "Descent" Proposal: Pathologies of Embodiment in Nietzsche, Kafka, and Foucault’, in Foucault Studies, Issue 3, November 2005, 27-48.
With Dan Mellamphy, ‘Ec(h)ologies of the Désêtre’ (forthcoming in Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development, Urbanomic Press, 2011).
Book Chapters
‘Corporealizing Thought: Retranslating the Eternal Return Back Into Politics’ in Nietzsche, Power, Politics, ed. Herman Siemens and Vasti Roodt (Germany: Walter de Gruyter Press, 2008), 701-24.
‘Nietzsche’s Pharaonic Thought’ in Becoming Loyal to the Earth: Ecology and Life-Affirmation in Nietzsche’s Vision -- Nietzsche’s Teaching as a Therapy for Political Culture, ed. Horst Hutter (forthcoming Continuum Press, 2012).
‘Que faire Si mon don est dans La ruelle?: Friedrich Nietzsche, François Laruelle, Gilbert Simondon and the Engine of Politics’, in Nietzsche and Political Thought, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson (forthcoming Continuum Press, 2013).
Translations
Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, trans. Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Dan André Mellamphy and Edward Ninian Mellamphy (forthcoming).
Gilbert Simondon, The Genesis of Technicity, trans. Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Dan Mellamphy, Ninian Mellamphy, Deleuze Studies (forthcoming 2012).
François Laruelle, Nietzsche contra Heidegger: Theses for a Nietzschean Politics (in process).
Selected Conference Papers
With Dan Mellamphy, ‘Hiero-Zoontotechnics: Individuation and Techno-Religion’ Zoontotechnics: Animality/Technicity, Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, Wales, May 12-14, 2010.
‘Political, Anti-Political, Over-Political: The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche’, The Symptom in Theory, Deleuze Studies, Cardiff University, Wales, September 8, 2009.
‘Nietzsche’s Experimental Ontology: A Political Physiology of Individuation’, Nietzsche and the Becoming of Life, Institute for Humanities, Diego Portales University, Santiago, Chile, November 2-4, 2009.
‘The Subject as Trans-Individual’, Panel on Trans-Individuation, Technology and Politics, Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, King’s University College, The University of Western Ontario, October 15-17, 2009.
‘The Displaced Origin of Political Life: Retranslating the Eternal Return Back into Politics’, 16th International Conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, University of Leiden, M.
Theses Supervised:
- Laura Rooney: Contemplating Suicide, MA thesis 2011
- Michael Laurence, “Nietzsche’s Political Legacy”, M.A. Political Science, 2009
- Janet Phillips, “Germs, Fear, and Biopolitics: The University’s Response to the H1N1 Pandemic”, M.A. Political Science, 2010
- Stephanie Vieille, “Rethinking Justice in Transitional Justice: The Maori Conception and Customary Mechanism of Justice”, PhD Political Science; 2nd reader; 2012
Master's Research Papers (MRP) Supervised:
- Ryan Lecour, “Dwelling and Ecological Politics”, MRP Political Science (Completed 2011)
- Julianna Khou, “The Problem of Space in Social Science”, MRP Political Science (Completed 2009)
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Wayne Kwan, “Nietzsche’s Cultural Imperative”, MRP Political Science (Completed 2008)
Graduate examination committees (MA and Phd):
- William Samson, “Rights as Praxis”, MA Thesis in Theory and Criticism (2011); member of thesis examination committee.
- Galen Crout, “Expanding the Bounds of Critique: Kant and Benjamin”; MA Thesis in Theory and Criticism (2011); member of thesis examination committee.
- Carolyn Ellis, “Nietzsche’s Children: A Physiological Analysis of the Scholar’s Task”, MA Thesis, Department of Philosophy, Brock University (2010); External university examiner.
- Sarah Nimigan, “Feminism and Transitional Justice”, MA in Political Science (2010); member of thesis examination committee
- Jakub Zdebic, “The Extraordinary Contraction: The Diagram in Deleuze and Guattari's System” PhD in Theory and Criticism (2007); member of thesis examination committee
- Nick Srnicek, “"Assemblage Theory, Complexity and Contentious Politics: The Political Ontology of Gilles Deleuze", MA in Political Science (2007); member of thesis examination committee
- Andrew Robb, “Hegemony and Governmentality: Power and the Possibility of Resistance”, MA in Theory and Criticism (2006); member of thesis examination committee
- Darren MacDonald, “(En)counter Dialogue: Gilles Deleuze Encounters Comparative Philosophy”, MA in Theory and Criticism (2006); member of thesis examination committee
