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Books and Monographs by Udith Dematagoda

Research paper thumbnail of Vladimir Nabokov and the Ideological Aesthetic (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017)

Vladimir Nabokov and the Ideological Aesthetic , 2017

This book is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of V... more This book is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of Vladimir Nabokov has not previously been considered. It is thus the first unambiguous attempt at a study which foregrounds questions of ideology and politics within a field which has been historically resistant to such readings.

https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/79321

Papers by Udith Dematagoda

Research paper thumbnail of The Ideological Aesthetic: the 'Political' as Inevitable and Epiphenomenal

Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities

https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2023.2243158

Research paper thumbnail of The Ideological Aesthetic: the 'Political' as Inevitable and Epiphenomenal

Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 2023

In this paper we outline a theory that explicates the hypertrophy of the “political” in relation ... more In this paper we outline a theory that explicates the hypertrophy of the “political” in relation to contemporary art, literature, and culture. Beginning with a critique of Nicholas Bourriaud’s 2016 work The Exform, we interrogate Bourriaud’s engagement with contemporary art and Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology. We approach Bourriaud’s Althusserian source material through a consideration of its reappraisal by Warren Montag, Althusser’s own Lacanian influences, and through some surprising continuities with the thought of controversial German jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Finally, we attempt to synthesize these discussions into our speculative theory of the “Ideological Aesthetic,” which addresses a conceptual gap in past theoretical discourse on ideology.

Version of Record available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2023.2243158

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Machinic Desire’: Wyndham Lewis, Masculinity and the Sublime Horror of Technological War

Modernist Cultures, 2020

This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his... more This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his varied artistic output. It interrogates how Lewis's initial ambivalence towards an emergent technological society shifted through direct encounters with mechanized warfare, and speculates on the effect of these upon his post-war writing and criticism. By contrasting Lewis's thought against that of his Italian Futurist contemporaries, I will demonstrate the centrality of their divergent conceptions of masculinity in accounting for this opposition – and how Lewis's critique of technological society prefigures contemporary opposition towards the post-humanist philosophy of Accelerationism.

This is an uncorrected Author's original of this paper. The Version of Record (VoR) is available in Modernist Cultures Volume 15, Issue 4, November, 2020:

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/mod.2020.0310

Print ISSN: 2041-1022
Online ISSN: 1753-8629

Research paper thumbnail of ‘National Allegory’ as Negative Dialectic in Wyndham Lewis’s Tarr

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies, 2018

A re-appraisal of Wyndham Lewis' 'Tarr' which engages with Fredric Jameson's notion of national a... more A re-appraisal of Wyndham Lewis' 'Tarr' which engages with Fredric Jameson's notion of national allegory, Benedict Anderson's 'Imagained Communities' and Adorno's negative dialectic, against our current age of resurgent nationalisms.

Research paper thumbnail of Revenge of the Nerds: Recidivist Masculinity, Identity Politics and the online 'Culture Wars'- Journal of Extreme Anthropology, University of Oslo

This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work 'Kill All Normies On... more This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work 'Kill All Normies Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right'. It explores the work's relevance to 'Extreme Masculinties', and places it within the context of the contemporary political situation. The work's main thesis on the aesthetic and libidinal forms and characteristics of the 'Alt-Right' are heavily interrogated and placed within the historical context of previous 'crises' in masculinity. This analysis proceeds to further explore the existence of this contemporary crisis through the broader spectrum of identity politics, and its problematic ideological conflicts and consequences.

This article appears in the journal of Extreme Anthropology, published by the University of Oslo, and is reproduced here through Creative Commons: https://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/JEA/article/view/5359

Research paper thumbnail of Nothing Unless the Cain—Abel Business: the Letters of Joseph Conrad

On the 'The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad' edited by Laurence Davies (Cambridge: CUP, 2015)

Research paper thumbnail of Nabokov’s Mimicry of Freud: Art as Science by Teckyoung Kwon

Studies in the Novel, 2018

Scholars of Vladimir tend to be uncommonly deferential towards their subject, for whom they invar... more Scholars of Vladimir tend to be uncommonly deferential towards their subject, for whom they invariably feel a great deal of personal affection. Discovery of Nabokov's work often came for many at a critical impasse in their personal or professional lives, marking a milestone in their youthful development, a moment of crisis or awakening. In this particular

Research paper thumbnail of Dematagoda, Udith, review of Boyd, Brian, Stalking Nabokov: Selected Essays, in Slavonic and East European Review, 91.3 (2013), 622–24

Research paper thumbnail of Dematagoda, Udith, review of Frank, Siggy, Nabokov's Theatrical Imagination, in Slavonic and East European Review, 91.4 (2013), 882–83

Research paper thumbnail of Approaches to Teaching Nabokov's Lolita, Zoran Kuzmanovich & Galya Diment (eds), Slavonic & East European Review (SEER). October 2011

Research paper thumbnail of 'Transitional Nabokov', edited by Will Norman & Duncan White - Nabokov Online Journal, V.5, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of Revenge of the Nerds: Recidivist Masculinity, Identity Politics and the Online ‘Culture Wars’

Journal of Extreme Anthropology, 2017

This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work Kill All Normie... more This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work Kill All Normies Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. It explores the work's relevance to 'Extreme Masculinties', and places it within the context of the contemporary poltiical situation. The work's main thesis on the aesthetic and libidinal forms and characteristics of the 'Alt-Right' are heavily interrogated and placed within the historical context of previous 'crises' in masculinity. This analysis proceeds to further explore the existence of this contemporary crisis through the broader spectrum of identity politics, and its problematic ideological conflicts and consequences.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Machinic Desire’: Wyndham Lewis, Masculinity and the Sublime Horror of Technological War

Modernist Cultures, 2020

This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on... more This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his varied artistic output. It interrogates how Lewis's initial ambivalence towards an emergent technological society shifted through direct encounters with mechanized warfare, and speculates on the effect of these upon his post-war writing and criticism. By contrasting Lewis's thought against that of his Italian Futurist contemporaries, I will demonstrate the centrality of their divergent conceptions of masculinity in accounting for this opposition – and how Lewis's critique of technological society prefigures contemporary opposition towards the post-humanist philosophy of Accelerationism.

Research paper thumbnail of 'Speak, Nabokov' by Michael Maar, Nabokov Online Journal V.5, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of ‘The loathsome tint of social intent’: Ideology and aesthetics in the work of Vladimir Nabokov, 1926-1939

This thesis is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of... more This thesis is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of Vladimir Nabokov has not previously been considered. It is the first unambiguous attempt at a reading which foregrounds questions of politics and ideology, and one which does not conform to the intentional narrative of the author’s self-designated political provenance. In this sense, it represents an original contribution to the field. The work of Louis Althusser, in addition to other critics under the aegis of Marxist criticism such as Pierre Macherey and Fredric Jameson, are used to interrogate issues of ideology in Nabokov’s early career; a period between 1926-1939 which coincides with the publication of his first Russian novel to the completion of his first in English.

Conference Presentations by Udith Dematagoda

Research paper thumbnail of The Will to Cower: Ideology, Identity and the European Consciouness in Wyndham Lewis's 'Tarr' - Presented at 'Benign Fiesta: Wyndham Lewis's Texts, Contexts, and Aesthetics' at the University of Nottingham, 11-13 September 2017

My paper seeks to account for the ways in which Wyndham Lewis’s first novel Tarr (1918) poses a n... more My paper seeks to account for the ways in which Wyndham Lewis’s first novel Tarr (1918) poses a number of prescient questions, concerned with the conflicting notions of an emergent European consciousness against chauvinistic national identities, for which we have yet to find adequate solutions. As a young artist, Lewis travelled extensively around Europe developing his aesthetic style, and observing the uneasy relations between different European peoples in the years leading up to the First World War – an atmosphere he captures brilliantly in his incisive first novel. The world which Tarr depicts is in some ways thoroughly modern and recognisable, yet still possesses a very distinct power to unsettle. Prompted by recent political developments, my paper will attempt to analyse the ways in which the inherent tensions among the different cultures which Lewis depicted in Tarr evidenced an awareness of the coming conflicts of the twentieth century, and beyond. My paper will make reference to, among other things, Benedict Anderson’s seminal work on nationalism and the peculiar genealogy of Lewis’s intellectual development, in order to give account of how emergent concepts national identity became embroiled with certain aesthetic, libidinal, and ideological currents which have become ossified, and to some extent continue to inform contemporary political discourse.

Research paper thumbnail of Ideology and the Modernism of Underdevelopment in Despair and The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov, Société Française Vladimir Nabokov, 2nd May 2014, University of Strasbourg, France.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Performing Ideology in Nabokov’s dramatic works’, Faculté  des Lettres, Artes et Sciences Humaines, Table Ronde de Department d’Anglais, June 2013, University of Nice, France.

Research paper thumbnail of Sentimentality  and  the  Ideological  Aesthetic:  ‘The  Gift’  as  Point  of  Interpellation, ‘International Nabokov Readings Conference’, St. Petersburg State University, Vladimir Nabokov Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, 4th-5th July 2012.

Research paper thumbnail of Vladimir Nabokov and the Ideological Aesthetic (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017)

Vladimir Nabokov and the Ideological Aesthetic , 2017

This book is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of V... more This book is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of Vladimir Nabokov has not previously been considered. It is thus the first unambiguous attempt at a study which foregrounds questions of ideology and politics within a field which has been historically resistant to such readings.

https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/79321

Research paper thumbnail of The Ideological Aesthetic: the 'Political' as Inevitable and Epiphenomenal

Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities

https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2023.2243158

Research paper thumbnail of The Ideological Aesthetic: the 'Political' as Inevitable and Epiphenomenal

Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 2023

In this paper we outline a theory that explicates the hypertrophy of the “political” in relation ... more In this paper we outline a theory that explicates the hypertrophy of the “political” in relation to contemporary art, literature, and culture. Beginning with a critique of Nicholas Bourriaud’s 2016 work The Exform, we interrogate Bourriaud’s engagement with contemporary art and Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology. We approach Bourriaud’s Althusserian source material through a consideration of its reappraisal by Warren Montag, Althusser’s own Lacanian influences, and through some surprising continuities with the thought of controversial German jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Finally, we attempt to synthesize these discussions into our speculative theory of the “Ideological Aesthetic,” which addresses a conceptual gap in past theoretical discourse on ideology.

Version of Record available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2023.2243158

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Machinic Desire’: Wyndham Lewis, Masculinity and the Sublime Horror of Technological War

Modernist Cultures, 2020

This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his... more This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his varied artistic output. It interrogates how Lewis's initial ambivalence towards an emergent technological society shifted through direct encounters with mechanized warfare, and speculates on the effect of these upon his post-war writing and criticism. By contrasting Lewis's thought against that of his Italian Futurist contemporaries, I will demonstrate the centrality of their divergent conceptions of masculinity in accounting for this opposition – and how Lewis's critique of technological society prefigures contemporary opposition towards the post-humanist philosophy of Accelerationism.

This is an uncorrected Author's original of this paper. The Version of Record (VoR) is available in Modernist Cultures Volume 15, Issue 4, November, 2020:

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/mod.2020.0310

Print ISSN: 2041-1022
Online ISSN: 1753-8629

Research paper thumbnail of ‘National Allegory’ as Negative Dialectic in Wyndham Lewis’s Tarr

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies, 2018

A re-appraisal of Wyndham Lewis' 'Tarr' which engages with Fredric Jameson's notion of national a... more A re-appraisal of Wyndham Lewis' 'Tarr' which engages with Fredric Jameson's notion of national allegory, Benedict Anderson's 'Imagained Communities' and Adorno's negative dialectic, against our current age of resurgent nationalisms.

Research paper thumbnail of Revenge of the Nerds: Recidivist Masculinity, Identity Politics and the online 'Culture Wars'- Journal of Extreme Anthropology, University of Oslo

This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work 'Kill All Normies On... more This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work 'Kill All Normies Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right'. It explores the work's relevance to 'Extreme Masculinties', and places it within the context of the contemporary political situation. The work's main thesis on the aesthetic and libidinal forms and characteristics of the 'Alt-Right' are heavily interrogated and placed within the historical context of previous 'crises' in masculinity. This analysis proceeds to further explore the existence of this contemporary crisis through the broader spectrum of identity politics, and its problematic ideological conflicts and consequences.

This article appears in the journal of Extreme Anthropology, published by the University of Oslo, and is reproduced here through Creative Commons: https://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/JEA/article/view/5359

Research paper thumbnail of Nothing Unless the Cain—Abel Business: the Letters of Joseph Conrad

On the 'The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad' edited by Laurence Davies (Cambridge: CUP, 2015)

Research paper thumbnail of Nabokov’s Mimicry of Freud: Art as Science by Teckyoung Kwon

Studies in the Novel, 2018

Scholars of Vladimir tend to be uncommonly deferential towards their subject, for whom they invar... more Scholars of Vladimir tend to be uncommonly deferential towards their subject, for whom they invariably feel a great deal of personal affection. Discovery of Nabokov's work often came for many at a critical impasse in their personal or professional lives, marking a milestone in their youthful development, a moment of crisis or awakening. In this particular

Research paper thumbnail of Dematagoda, Udith, review of Boyd, Brian, Stalking Nabokov: Selected Essays, in Slavonic and East European Review, 91.3 (2013), 622–24

Research paper thumbnail of Dematagoda, Udith, review of Frank, Siggy, Nabokov's Theatrical Imagination, in Slavonic and East European Review, 91.4 (2013), 882–83

Research paper thumbnail of Approaches to Teaching Nabokov's Lolita, Zoran Kuzmanovich & Galya Diment (eds), Slavonic & East European Review (SEER). October 2011

Research paper thumbnail of 'Transitional Nabokov', edited by Will Norman & Duncan White - Nabokov Online Journal, V.5, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of Revenge of the Nerds: Recidivist Masculinity, Identity Politics and the Online ‘Culture Wars’

Journal of Extreme Anthropology, 2017

This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work Kill All Normie... more This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work Kill All Normies Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. It explores the work's relevance to 'Extreme Masculinties', and places it within the context of the contemporary poltiical situation. The work's main thesis on the aesthetic and libidinal forms and characteristics of the 'Alt-Right' are heavily interrogated and placed within the historical context of previous 'crises' in masculinity. This analysis proceeds to further explore the existence of this contemporary crisis through the broader spectrum of identity politics, and its problematic ideological conflicts and consequences.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Machinic Desire’: Wyndham Lewis, Masculinity and the Sublime Horror of Technological War

Modernist Cultures, 2020

This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on... more This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his varied artistic output. It interrogates how Lewis's initial ambivalence towards an emergent technological society shifted through direct encounters with mechanized warfare, and speculates on the effect of these upon his post-war writing and criticism. By contrasting Lewis's thought against that of his Italian Futurist contemporaries, I will demonstrate the centrality of their divergent conceptions of masculinity in accounting for this opposition – and how Lewis's critique of technological society prefigures contemporary opposition towards the post-humanist philosophy of Accelerationism.

Research paper thumbnail of 'Speak, Nabokov' by Michael Maar, Nabokov Online Journal V.5, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of ‘The loathsome tint of social intent’: Ideology and aesthetics in the work of Vladimir Nabokov, 1926-1939

This thesis is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of... more This thesis is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of Vladimir Nabokov has not previously been considered. It is the first unambiguous attempt at a reading which foregrounds questions of politics and ideology, and one which does not conform to the intentional narrative of the author’s self-designated political provenance. In this sense, it represents an original contribution to the field. The work of Louis Althusser, in addition to other critics under the aegis of Marxist criticism such as Pierre Macherey and Fredric Jameson, are used to interrogate issues of ideology in Nabokov’s early career; a period between 1926-1939 which coincides with the publication of his first Russian novel to the completion of his first in English.

Research paper thumbnail of The Will to Cower: Ideology, Identity and the European Consciouness in Wyndham Lewis's 'Tarr' - Presented at 'Benign Fiesta: Wyndham Lewis's Texts, Contexts, and Aesthetics' at the University of Nottingham, 11-13 September 2017

My paper seeks to account for the ways in which Wyndham Lewis’s first novel Tarr (1918) poses a n... more My paper seeks to account for the ways in which Wyndham Lewis’s first novel Tarr (1918) poses a number of prescient questions, concerned with the conflicting notions of an emergent European consciousness against chauvinistic national identities, for which we have yet to find adequate solutions. As a young artist, Lewis travelled extensively around Europe developing his aesthetic style, and observing the uneasy relations between different European peoples in the years leading up to the First World War – an atmosphere he captures brilliantly in his incisive first novel. The world which Tarr depicts is in some ways thoroughly modern and recognisable, yet still possesses a very distinct power to unsettle. Prompted by recent political developments, my paper will attempt to analyse the ways in which the inherent tensions among the different cultures which Lewis depicted in Tarr evidenced an awareness of the coming conflicts of the twentieth century, and beyond. My paper will make reference to, among other things, Benedict Anderson’s seminal work on nationalism and the peculiar genealogy of Lewis’s intellectual development, in order to give account of how emergent concepts national identity became embroiled with certain aesthetic, libidinal, and ideological currents which have become ossified, and to some extent continue to inform contemporary political discourse.

Research paper thumbnail of Ideology and the Modernism of Underdevelopment in Despair and The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov, Société Française Vladimir Nabokov, 2nd May 2014, University of Strasbourg, France.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Performing Ideology in Nabokov’s dramatic works’, Faculté  des Lettres, Artes et Sciences Humaines, Table Ronde de Department d’Anglais, June 2013, University of Nice, France.

Research paper thumbnail of Sentimentality  and  the  Ideological  Aesthetic:  ‘The  Gift’  as  Point  of  Interpellation, ‘International Nabokov Readings Conference’, St. Petersburg State University, Vladimir Nabokov Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, 4th-5th July 2012.

Research paper thumbnail of Towards a Hermeneutic of the Ideological Aesthetic in Nabokov’s Works,‘Nabokov and Morality’, Symposium, 5th & 6th of May 2011, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom.