Arka Chattopadhyay is B.A., M.A., MPhil in English Literature, from Presidency College and Jadavpur University, India and PHD from Western Sydney University. His thesis looked at the interface of mathematical form and literature in the works of Samuel Beckett using Lacanian psychoanalysis as a historical sequence that thinks through the problematic of mathematizing discourse. He is the founding co-editor of the online literary journal Sanglap (http://sanglap-journal.in/) and a contributing editor to Harold Pinter Review. He is currently working on a volume on Badiou and Modernism.Publications:
Books:
Monograph:
Chattopadhyay, Arka. Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019.
Edited Volume:
Chattopadhyay, Arka (co-edited with Sourit Bhattacharya and Samrat Sengupta, Nabarun Bhattacharya: Aesthetics and Politics in a World after Ethics, New Delhi and London: Bloomsbury, 2020,
Articles:
- Chattopadhyay, Arka. Is there a parallax in the mind? Samuel Beckett and distance in the psychic archive”, Textual Practice 35 (2), 2021, pp. 211-226.
- Chattopadhyay, Arka. “I am Jack the ripper, a golden eagle: ethical alterity and dangers of narrative travel in world literature”, Interventions 21 (1), 2019. pp. 35-53.
- Chattopadhyay, Arka. “Harold Pinter’s aging male speakers: affect of exhaustion and metaphors of agency”, The Harold Pinter Review 3 (1), 2019, pp. 1-13.
Areas of Interest:
Literary Modernisms, Mathematics and Literature Bengali Literature, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Continental Philosophy, Posthumanism Avant-Garde Theatre, Translation and World Literature
Statement of Interest:
Arka Chattopadhyay has a long-standing interest in posthumanism, especially its cluster of critical concentration on inanimate objects, not to mention animal studies and technology. He is keen to examine the interface of Lacanian psychoanalysis and object-oriented thinking and the question of the human animal as a speaking-being in late-Lacan. He is interested in the possibility of a trans-human, environmental notion of the unconscious and has written on fantasy as a trans-human trope in the past. What fascinates him further is a non-instrumentalist notion of the partially mathematized human subject where the mathematization will create a gulf between the subject and its human dimension. Arka has delivered a conference keynote on posthumanist objects in literature in a 2020 Midnapore College event. He has written on object-oriented philosophy and literature in an article, published in French translation in 2020 and has another forthcoming book chapter on objects in Modernist literature. He is currently working on a monograph on posthumanism.