James Phillips – författare

James Phillips's Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle reappraises the cinematic collaboration between the Austrian-American filmmaker Josef von Sternberg (1894-1969) and the German-American actor Marlene Dietrich (1901-92). Considered by his contemporaries one of the most significant directors of interwar Hollywood, Sternberg made seven films with Dietrich that helped establish her as a style icon and star and entrenched his own reputation for extravagance and aesthetic spectacle. These films enriched the technical repertoire of the industry, challenged the sexual mores of the times and notoriously tried the patience of management at Paramount Studios. Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle demonstrates how under Sternberg's direction Paramount's sound stages became laboratories for novel thought experiments. Analysing in depth the last four films on which Sternberg and Dietrich worked together, Phillips reconstructs the "cinematic philosophy" that Sternberg claimed for himself in his autobiography and for whose fullest expression Dietrich was indispensable. This book makes a case for the originality and perceptiveness with which these films treat such issues as the nature of trust, the status of appearance, the standing of women, the ethics and politics of the image, and the relationship between cinema and the world. Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle reveals that more is at stake in these films than the showcasing of a new star and the confectionery of glamour: Dietrich emerges here as a woman who is at ease in the world without being at home in it, an image of autonomy whose critical potential has yet to be realized, let alone exhausted.

Our lives are dominated by technology. We live with and through the achievements of technology. What is true of the rest of life is of course true of medicine. Many of us owe our existence and our continued vigour to some achievement of medical technology. And what is true in a major way of general medicine is to a significant degree true of psychiatry. Prozac has long since arrived, and in its wake an ever-growing armamentarium of new psychotropics; beyond that, neuroscience promises ever more technological advances for the field.However, the effect of technology on the field of psychiatry remains highly ambiguous. On the one hand there are the achievements, both in the science and practice of psychiatry; on the other hand technology's influence on the field threatens its identity as a humanistic practice. In this ambiguity psychiatry is not unique - major thinkers have for a long time been highly ambivalent and concerned about the technological order that now defines modern society. For the future, the danger is that the psychiatrically real becomes that which can be seen, the symptom, and especially that which can be measured. Disorders and treatments might become reduced to what can be defined by diagnostic criteria and what can be mapped out on a scale. This book exams how technology has come to influence and drive psychiatry forward, and considers at just what cost these developments have been made. It includes a range of stimulating and thought-provoking chapters from a range of psychiatrists and philosophers.

A remarkable new play about Cold-War betrayal and the quest for justice 1953. In McCarthy's America, Jakob and Esther Rubenstein are betrayed and punished for an act of industrial espionage. Could this be the greatest miscarriage of justice of the twentieth century?1975. New York. Matthew Maddison meets Anna Levi in front of an art gallery photograph of Jakob and Esther sharing one final kiss before they part. Young, radical and falling in love, together they seek justice for the past.Inspired by a true story, The Rubenstein Kiss explores the mysterious corridors of history to reveal the anguish of a family and a quest for atonement.Publication coincides with the play's premiere at London's Hampstead Theatre on 17 November 2005.'a commendably assured first play ...vividly captures the interlocking nature of sexual and ideological passion' Guardian'This is a bracingly ambitious piece, encompassing the tension between personal and political morality, between idealism and pragmatism, and the power of the past to shape individuals. Astutely and compassionately, Phillips explores each bend in the road that led to the Rubensteins' deaths ...A stimulating debut work of real scope.'The Times

In 1933 the philosopher Martin Heidegger declared his allegiance to Hitler. Ever since, scholars have asked to what extent his work is implicated in Nazism. To address this question properly involves neither conflating Nazism and the continuing philosophical project that is Heidegger's legacy, nor absolving Heidegger and, in the process, turning a deaf ear to what he himself called the philosophical motivations for his political engagement. It is important to establish the terms on which Heidegger aligned himself with National Socialism. On the basis of an untimely but by no means unprecedented understanding of the mission of the German people, the philosopher first joined but then also criticized the movement. An exposition of Heidegger's conception of Volk hence can and must treat its merits and deficiencies as a response to the enduring impasse in contemporary political philosophy of the dilemma between liberalism and authoritarianism.

In 1933 the philosopher Martin Heidegger declared his allegiance to Hitler. Ever since, scholars have asked to what extent his work is implicated in Nazism. To address this question properly involves neither conflating Nazism and the continuing philosophical project that is Heidegger's legacy, nor absolving Heidegger and, in the process, turning a deaf ear to what he himself called the philosophical motivations for his political engagement. It is important to establish the terms on which Heidegger aligned himself with National Socialism. On the basis of an untimely but by no means unprecedented understanding of the mission of the German people, the philosopher first joined but then also criticized the movement. An exposition of Heidegger's conception of Volk hence can and must treat its merits and deficiencies as a response to the enduring impasse in contemporary political philosophy of the dilemma between liberalism and authoritarianism.

The Equivocation of Reason: Kleist Reading Kant asks how the literary works of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist might be considered a critique and elaboration of Kantian philosophy. In 1801, the twenty-three-year-old Kleist, attributing his loss of confidence in our knowledge of the world to his reading of Kant, turned from science to literature. Kleist ignored Kant's apology of the sciences to focus on the philosopher's doctrine of the unknowability of things in themselves. From that point on, Kleist's writings relate confrontations with points of hermeneutic resistance. Truth is no longer that which the sciences establish; only the disappointment of every interpretation attests to the continued sway of truth. Though he adheres to Kant's definition of Reason as the faculty that addresses things in themselves, Kleist sees no need for its critique and discipline in the name of the reasonableness (prudence and common sense) of the experience of the natural sciences. Setting transcendental Reason at odds with empirical reasonableness, Kleist releases Kant's ethics and doctrine of the sublime from the moderating pull of their examples.

Each essay in Cinematic Thinking is organized around an interpretation of a postwar filmmaker and the philosophical issues his or her work raises. The filmmakers covered are Alfred Hitchcock, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Altman, Carlos Saura, Glauber Rocha, Margarethe von Trotta, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Claire Denis. As the authors collected here are philosophers, rather than film critics, the volume approaches its subjects with a different set of interests and commitments from the bulk of works in film theory. Memory, judgment, subjectivity, terrorism, feminism, desire, race relations, experience, the work of mourning, and utopia are among the questions discussed in relation to some of the most significant films of the last fifty years. This collection analyzes the theoretical and political contexts in which the films were made and examines their reception down to the present day.

Each essay in Cinematic Thinking is organized around an interpretation of a postwar filmmaker and the philosophical issues his or her work raises. The filmmakers covered are Alfred Hitchcock, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Altman, Carlos Saura, Glauber Rocha, Margarethe von Trotta, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Claire Denis. As the authors collected here are philosophers, rather than film critics, the volume approaches its subjects with a different set of interests and commitments from the bulk of works in film theory. Memory, judgment, subjectivity, terrorism, feminism, desire, race relations, experience, the work of mourning, and utopia are among the questions discussed in relation to some of the most significant films of the last fifty years. This collection analyzes the theoretical and political contexts in which the films were made and examines their reception down to the present day.

She came to us one dawn. The girl. Far outOne dawn alone beneath the wine dark sea.One day it starts to rain and no-one knows why. And it doesn’t stop. Far out on the North Sea a fisherman raises a girl in his net, miraculously alive from the deep sea. Is she one of the migrants now washing up on English shores? Or someone sent for some higher purpose?Commissioned by Hull UK City of Culture 2017 this epic and extraordinary collaboration between multi-award-winning artists James Phillips and Slung Low is the culmination of a year-long project. Four parts told across three different mediums, this complete text includes four stunningly written dramas that ask fundamental questions about our future, our communities and our collective responsibilities.“A State of the Nation Parable” BBC Arts“Visually stunning, and deeply moving” The Stage

In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association published the 5th edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

Sometimes we don’t live, we cope. I have coped, not lived, for a long time. So have you I think.A passionate love story set between London and Cyprus. Alexandra, a refugee from the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, has made a home in London and cocooned herself from ghosts of the past. There, she meets Jonathan, an English classical scholar, who falls deeply in love with her. Against a backdrop of war and the partition of countries, can love overcome the grief of the past?

You remember when we started to hunt whales again?We fought monsters and we killed them and wrestled the oil from their dead bodies and we sold it.In the future we hunt whales for the oil in their bodies. Just like they did in centuries past. The oil of a single whale can run an army for a week. This is new science. This is our future. So we send gangs of men out onto the dark, cold sea to bring back the things we need.The crew of the Pequod are going to sea because it’s their job. But Ahab, captain of the Pequod, is not going to sea for the oil or for the money. Ahab is going for revenge. Revenge on the vast whale that took him down into the black depths of the ocean. Revenge on the greatest whale in all the oceans: a perfectly white whale. And Ishmael, a young man new to whaling, is going to sea seeking a hunter’s violence, trying to stop the thoughts of violence in his heart.And we are all going with them.The White Whale premiered on 4 September 2014, at Leeds Dock, UK in a production by Slung Low theatre company.

What happens when someone tells you that you’re the answer to the riddle of life?What happens when a stranger in Starbucks gives you something that will change your world forever?What happens if the world starts to fall asleep, hour by hour?City Stories is a new type of cabaret drama, a sequence of interwoven love stories, and a love-letter to London. Composed up of five discrete yet interwoven stories, each taking the form of a monologue or duologue, and performed with specifically composed songs, City Stories looks at a variety of experiences of love and loss via a range of people living in the UK’s capital.Elegantly written and beautifully constructed, these pieces look at the varieties of love and how it might save us, showing James Phillips’s writing at his very best. City Stories received its world premiere at St James’s Theatre, London, in 2013 and has since gone on to establish a year-long residency at the theatre.

You look otherworldly. Like all my girls. This will make you a queen. Like years ago and people wore clothes like weapons, like weapons against poor people, because even is you were hungry how could you raise your fist against what looked like a god? But I can make things that are weapons against day to day stuff.A girl has watched McQueen’s Mayfair house for eleven consecutive days. Tonight, she climbs down from her watching tree and breaks into his house, to steal a dress, to become someone special. He catches her, but, instead of calling the police, they embark together on a journey through London and into his heart. The play captures the fairy-story landscape of McQueen’s mind - the landscape seen in his immortal shows - where, with a dress, an urchin can become an Amazon and where beauty might just help us survive the night. McQueen is a journey into the visionary imagination and dark dream world of Alexander McQueen, fashion’s greatest contemporary artist.James Phillips's play received its world premiere at St James Theatre, London, on 12 May 2015.

Camelot: The Shining City is a modern re-telling of the myth of King Arthur, by award-winning playwright James Phillips.Developed in collaboration with Slung Low, specialists in spectacular theatrical experiences, and Sheffield People's Theatre, Camelot: The Shining City is written for a company of over 150 actors, bringing the medieval story to breathtaking life. An epic story told in three parts, this edition was published to coincide with the world premiere, staged on 9 July 2015.

Specialists in theatre studies, opera studies, musical theatre studies, aesthetics, and arts administration offer in-depth accounts of Kosky’s unusually wide-ranging engagements with the performing arts – as a director of spoken theatre, operas, musicals, operettas, as an adaptor, a performer, a writer, and an arts manager.

Busby Berkeley’s big-production numbers are emblematic of the Hollywood dream factory.Exploring the tensions between escapism and ideological over-coding in the Warner Bros. musical, this book tracks the ways in which Berkeley created spectacles that are both critical and complacent in relation to the society that produced and received them. Berkeley carried into his images of utopia the assembly plant, the misogyny, the fascism and racism of his day, but his collaboration with the filmmakers (Enright, Bacon and LeRoy) into whose narratives his numbers were spliced likewise involved taking care to draw a line between spectacle and the everyday. The book makes the case that the Warner Bros. musical, with its attention to the specificity and containment of the aesthetic dimension, has corrective lessons to impart for the aestheticized politics not only of the 1930s, but also of the current age.