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Talks by Oliver Davis

  • 'The Psychedelic Renascence of Democracy', research paper for the seminar ‘Promises and Perils of the Psychedelic Renaissance: A Critical Perspective from the Humanities’ (organized by Alberto Ribas-Casasayas and Ana Luengo), ACLA annual conference, Montreal, March 14th-17th 2024.

  • Presentation to the Sex and Ethics Symposium, organized by John Paul Ricco, with Tim Dean, University of Toronto, Friday 27 October 2023.
  • 'Reconceptualizing the political trouble with psychedelics', La Trobe Contemporary Drug Problems Conference, Paris, 6-8 September 2023.

  • 'Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic translation of religious mysticism', International Philosophical Seminar, Ortisei, June 2023.

  • 'Crossfaded', Reading Le Manifeste conspirationniste research workshop, ILCS, Senate House, London, 26 May 2023.

  • 'The politics of healing trauma', Breaking Convention, Exeter, 20-22 April 2023.
  • 'What good are psychedelic humanities?', presentation to a research workshop at The Psychedelic Humanities Lab at the New School, 14 April 2023.
  • 'Henri Michaux and the psychedelic humanities', Oxford Modern French research seminar, Thursday 26 January 2023.
  • 'Henri Michaux and the psychedelic humanities', UCL French Research Seminar/IAS, 18 January 2023.
  • 'Conceptualising the role of patient autonomy and "autoheteronomy" in psychedelically assisted psychotherapy', Drug Science Medical Psychedelics Working Group, 9 November 2022, Academy of Medical Sciences, London.
  • ‘Henri Michaux: adventures of a reluctant psychedelic psychonaut’, Centre for the Study of Inequality, Difference and Culture, NTU, 26 October 2022.
  • 'Henri Michaux's mescaline adventures', Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France annual conference, 8-9 September 2022.
  • 'L'effet de Serres', International Philosophical Seminar, Gröden, July 2022.
  • 'Sovereignty and autonomy in the recent work of Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval', The Ends of Autonomy December colloquium, 16 December 2020.
  • 'Algorithmic governmentality and the modern bureaucratic ideal: species of abstraction and autonomy', The Ends of Autonomy July colloquium, 8 July 2020.
  • 'The plan: bureaucracy, cleanliness and (de)sublimated anality in the Guiana penal colony', Framing the Penal Colony conference, The National Justice Museum, Nottingham, 22-23 November 2019.
  • 'The French penal colony as governmental technique: administering miscounted harms', as part of a panel of papers on the French penal colony with Sophie Fuggle and Charles Forsdick, Society for French Studies conference, Royal Holloway, 1st July 2019.
  • 'The police order of neoliberal bureaucracy', research paper for the London critiques of security symposium organized by Amedeo Policante, Thursday 9th May, May Day Rooms and Archives, 88 Fleet Street, London.
  • 'Hatred of Sex: reflections on the contemporary governance of sex', Department of English Literature, Edinburgh University, Friday 9 November, 16.30.
  • 'The pastoral-coercive governance of "Chemsex"', RHUL, 10 July 2018.
  • 'Managing (in)security in Paris in Mai '68', research paper for '1968, Unveiling Hidden Discourses' conference, Warwick University, Saturday 19 May 2018.
  • 'Who were the police in Mai '68?', invited research paper for 68 workshop, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, Wednesday 16 May 2018.
  • Invited research paper, 'The bureaucracies of neoliberal governance vs. the customary rights of the poor', for the Department of Sociology & Anthropology research seminar, Concordia University, Montreal, Friday 16th March 2018.
  • Invited research paper, '(In)security governance in Mai '68', Département d'études françaises, Concordia University, Montreal, Monday 19th March 2018.
  • 'Vulnerability, Viability and the Life of AIDS: Elisabeth Lebovici in conversation with Oliver Davis', IAS Common Ground, Ground Floor, South Wing, Wilkins Building, UCL, 29th January, 6pm.
  • Research paper, ‘The prison-form of social-scientific prison writing: a genealogical critique of Didier Fassin’s L’Ombre du monde (2015)’, as part of a panel of papers with Sophie Fuggle and Charles Forsdick, 'Against Prison Writing: Reimagining French and Francophone Carceral Spaces', MLA Convention, New York City, 4th-7th January 2018.
  • Keynote paper, 'For a Theory of Unforeseen Consequences: side-effects, unwieldy knowledge and literature’, BCLA postgraduate conference, 11 November 2017, Warwick.
  • Research paper, 'Vicissitudes of the Vertical: on Peter Sloterdijk's You Must Change Your Life', IPS, Gröden, 25 June - 5 July 2017.
  • Discussant at 'Beyond Bars: Stories from Former Prisoners', St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, 78 Bishopsgate, London, 31 May 2017, 2.30-5pm.
  • Short talk for 'Activist aesthetics: spoken-word poetry in activism & education', event organised by Dr Sam Burgum, Humanities Studio, 17 May 2017, 5-7pm.
  • Research paper, ‘Surface, contact, encounter: the politics of Jacques Rancière’s in(ter)disciplinary research’, Queen's University Belfast, Friday 12 May 2017.
  • Respondent to Roberto Esposito, 'The Dispositif of the Person', CRPLA seminar, Warwick University, MS.05, Wednesday 3 May 2017.
  • Research paper, 'Ranking and qui perd gagne', Freedom and the Subject of Theory conference, Venice, Tuesday 28th March 2017.
  • 'Queer Perspectives on Prison and Security', talk for Warwick LGBTUA+ history month, Friday 24 February, 4pm, S0.18.
  • Reseach paper, 'Theorising the advent of weaponised drones as techniques of domestic paramilitary policing', PAIS International Relations and Security lunchtime seminar, Warwick, Monday 13 February, 1-2pm, S1.69.
  • Research paper, 'Policing Mai 68: theories, techniques, legacy', in a joint session with Nick Hewlett, SMLC Research Seminar Series, Warwick, Wednesday 25th January 2017, 1-2pm, H4.50.
  • Respondent, 'Anti-Post-Queer', Critical Sexology seminar, Birmingham University, 9 December 2016, from 2pm.
  • 'Theorising the advent of weaponised drones as techniques of domestic paramilitary policing', research paper for 'The Body of War: Drones and Lone Wolves' symposium, Lancaster University, 24-25 November 2016.
  • 'Security Studies and "la criminologie": the Securitarian Turn in University-level Research in Britain and France', research paper as part of a panel of papers ('Securitarian Transitions') with Jeremy Ahearne and Sophie Fuggle for the ASMCF Annual Conference, Aston, 6-7 September 2016.
  • ‘Rancière’s “Ten Theses on Politics”', presentation for 'Reading Rancière Reading the Classics', workshop organised by Ahuvia Kahane & Ellen O’Gorman, 7th-8th September 2016, RHUL 11 Bedford Square, London.
  • 'Prison and the senses', research paper for Authority & Political Technologies 2016: Biopolitical Matters symposium, Warwick University, 13-14 June 2016.
  • 'Lessons from Rancière-Jacotot for a critical pedagogy of neoliberalism’s double text', research paper for Rancière and Critical Pedagogy symposium, Coventry University, 20 May 2016.
  • Roundtable discussion of Sur les toits (Drolc, 2013), organised by Marijn Nieuwenhuis, with Stuart Elden, Anastasia Chamberlen and the director, MS.04, 18 May 2016.
  • 'Policing the new proletariat', research paper for Work Stories: Documenting, Narrating and Representing the French Workplace, IMLR, 15-16 April 2016.
  • '"Prison Everywhere": Intolerable Side-Effects of the Psychoactive Substances Act (2016) and the Complicitous Silence of Bureaucratic-Carceral Queer', research paper for 'Prohibition: Responses from the Humanities and Social Sciences', Warwick University, 23 March 2016.
  • 'Discipline’s dream of control: techniques of coercive governance at the Mettray reformatory', research paper for the Modern French Research Seminar, Maison Française d'Oxford, 28 January 2016.
  • 'Jean Genet’s unpublished script for a telefilm rejoinder to Foucault’s Mettray: The Language of the Wall [1981-2]' at 'Time Served: Discipline and Punish 40 Years On', 11-12 September 2015, Galleries of Justice, Nottingham.
  • 'Spending a James Penney; or, the cycle of hubris and nemesis', research paper delivered at (Re)situating Queer Theory on the Critical Left, Warwick, 22 May 2015.
  • Chair, panel discussion: Intervals of Cinema II, Rancière and Cinephilia in London. A panel discussion with Jacques Rancière, Erika Balsom and Catherine Grant, organised by the collective A Nos Amours and Verso, Saturday 31 January 2015, 1pm start, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, London. For a video recording of the first hour and a half click here.
  • Round table, ‘Queerly Theorising Higher Education & Academia: Interdisciplinary Conversations’, The Centre for Higher Education Studies at The Institute of Education, London.
  • Keynote lecture, 'Jacques Rancière's politics of parataxis from the 1960s to the present', Artistic Research: The Future of the Image, Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania, 21 August 2014.
  • 'Falling ineluctably through the nebeneinander: parataxis in the "aesthetic regime of art"', IPS, Gröden, Südtirol, 29 June 2014.
  • 'Dix conseils d'un jeune chercheur anglais pour bien faire l'amour à la nouvelle université néolibérale et réflexion sur la production de savoirs politisés (études de genre, études queer, etc.) dans l’ancienne demeure de l’ancien universel’, Lille 3 (Skype presentation to 'Voix et voies de femmes' research group study day), 11 April 2014.
  • Public lecture: 'Cultivating the Intractable: Rancière’s egalitarian (anti-)method in aesthetics and politics', Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem, The Netherlands, 11 April 2014.
  • 'Understanding “radical equality”, the divide between Rancière and liberal political theory and the force of his distinction between politics and policing', New Europe College-Institute for Advanced Study, Bucharest, Romania, 26 March 2014.
  • ‘La forteresse vide; Seguin Island’, as part of a panel entitled 'The French Factory Dismembered/Remembered', with Jackie Clarke and Jeremy F. Lane, 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, New York City, 8 March 2014.
  • 'Foucault Tomorrow: Codicil for a Queer Pharmatopia', at the inaugural 'Critical Sexology in the Midlands' research seminar: 'Rethinking Foucault for 21st-Century Sexuality Studies', Birmingham University, 14 February 2014.
  • ‘The Institutional Entrenchment of Queer in the French Academy: an état présent with a new-universalist analysis of ambivalence about futurity, expertise, theory and “neo-liberalism”’ at 'Queer Theory and Academia: The Case of France in an International Frame', Warwick University, 14 December 2013.
  • Roundtable, 'Methodologies and the National Question', Queer Italian Film Study Day, Warwick University, 27 June 2013.
  • Roundtable, with Cath Lambert, Rahul Rao and Jonathan Heron, at the 'Gendered Knowledges' one-day interdisciplinary workshop, Warwick University, 12 June 2013.
  • '"French republican universalism" and the "event" of queer theory', French Research Seminar, Birmingham University, 19 February 2013.
  • Keynote lecture: 'Jacques Rancière: aesthetics, equality and the feel of contingency', TBLR (Text, Image, Sound, Space) two-day seminar on Jacques Rancière and aesthetics, Bergen University, 29 and 30 November 2012.
  • Roundtable, 'Aesthetics as Method', with Christine Battersby, L.H.M. Ling and Nirmal Puwar, as part of workshop entitled 'The Political Aesthetics of Power and Protest', Warwick University, 25 September 2012.
  • Chair and organizer, 'Close Encounter' session with Jacques Rancière, 'Politics/Aesthetics', International Association for Philosophy and Literature annual conference, Tallinn, Estonia, 2 June 2012.
  • 'The Politics of Self-Esteem', Sheffield University, 17 May 2012.
  • 'Eastwood Reading Beauvoir Reading Eastwood: Ageing and Combative Self-Assertion in Gran Torino and Old Age', presentation to the third BRAID Project workshop, Copenhagen 16-17 June 2011.
  • 'Didier Eribon's strategic sociologism', University of Stirling, 23 April 2011.
  • 'Are "sex pigs" political subjects? Queer sexual self-animalization and political theory', as part of a panel with Denis Provencher and Dan Maroun entitled 'Queering the Non/Human in French Studies', at the 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, San Francisco, 30 March - 2 April 2011.
  • 'What follows from Jacotisme? Exploring Jacques Rancière’s concept of "declarative" or "active" equality’, Twentieth and Twenty-First Century French Research Seminar, Cambridge University, 26 October 2010. To see a video of the talk and a 5-minute interview about the topic click here.
  • Public discussion with Jacques Rancière on the occasion of the launch of the Dutch translations of La Fable cinématographique and Le Destin des images, Amsterdam EYE Film Instituut, September 2010. To see a video of the interview on the Octavo Publicaties website click here.
  • 'A queer reply to Adam Phillips' "escapological" psychoanalysis of bareback', as part of a panel with Patrick ffrench (KCL) and Hector Kollias (KCL) at the 'Writings of Intimacy in the 20th and 21st Centuries' conference, Loughborough University, September 2010.
  • 'A Rancierian reflection on class nostalgia in times of crisis: Didier Eribon's Retour à Reims (2009)', ASMCF annual conference, Nottingham Trent University, September 2010.
  • 'Psychoanalysis contemplates queerness: cases of resistance and identification in recent French and British psychoanalytic discourse', February 2010, at King's College London's Queer@Kings research seminar.
  • 'Jacques Rancière lectures on aesthetics', at the research seminar of Warwick University's Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts, October 2009.