Arka Chattopadhyay is assistant professor of literary studies and philosophy in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Gandhinagar, India. He is a B.A., M.A., MPhil in English Literature, from Presidency College and Jadavpur University, India. He has written his MPHIL thesis on Samuel Beckett and Alain Badiou and finished his PHD from Western Sydney University on Beckett and Lacanian Psychoanalysis with a Dean’s Thesis Prize. He has been published in books like Deleuze and Beckett, Knots: Post-Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film, Gerald Murnane: Another World in this One etc., and journals such as Textual Practice, Interventions, Samue
Research Interests: 20th century literature: modernism and postmodernism, Modern theatre, European avant garde fiction, Continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, Bengali vernacular literature and transnationalism, Translation theory, Modern poetry, affect studies
Education:
BA: Presidency College, 2007
MA: Jadavpur University, 2009
MPhil: Jadavpur University, 2011
PhD: Western Sydney University, 2016
Selected Publications:
2023
2022
JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Logical Space in Lacan: From Poe’s Letter to Valdemar’s Body”. S: Journal of the Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique 13 (2022), pp. 119-137.
“Materialism of Numbers in J. M. Coetzee’s The Schooldays of Jesus.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (online first, October 29, 2022).
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Tattooing terminable interminable: psychoanalysis, corporeal marking and literature”, in Tattooed bodies: theorizing body inscription across disciplines and cultures, Cham-Switzerland: Springer Nature, pp. 265-284, 2022.
“Re-Writing the Psychotic Other of Author-Function in Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake,” in Literary Theory: Contemporary Signposts and Critical Surveys. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 93-106, 2022.
2021
JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Psychoanalysis, corporeality and haptics in Covid-19 times”, European Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 16, no. 2, 2021.
“Lacan, Calvino and Logics of the One”, Jadavpur University English Studies 33 (2019), pp. 33-48, published in 2021.
“From Entanglements to Appropriations: Mathematics with Modernist Literature”, Modernism/
“Pinter in the time of Pandemic: Reflections on Medical Metaphors in A kind of Alaska”, The Harold Pinter Review, 5 (2021), pp. 4-9.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Arundhati Roy and the ministry of democratic ghosts”, in State of democracy in India: essays on life and politics in contemporary times, New Delhi: Primus Books, pp. 538-558, 2022, ISBN: 9789391144999.
2020
JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Mathematical possibilities in modernism: can literature be a system?”, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, DOI: 10.5642/jhummath.202001.13, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 295-316, Jan. 2020.
“Is there a parallax in the mind? Samuel Beckett and distance in the psychic archive”, Textual Practice, DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2020.1729850, Feb. 2020.
EDITED VOLUME
Bhattacharya, Sourit; Chattopadhyay, Arka and Sengupta, Samrat, Nabarun Bhattacharya: aesthetics and politics in a world after ethics, London: Bloomsbury, Sep. 2020, ISBN: 9789388630504.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Memory, Image and Reading Traces of the Infinite: Gerald Murnane’s A History of Books” in Gerald Murnane: Another World in This One, ed. Anthony Uhlmann, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2020.
“Unworlding world literature: or how Godot travels from a country road to the world”, in Samuel Beckett as World Literature, eds. Thirthankar Chakraborty, Juan Luis Toribio Vazquez, New York: Bloomsbury, Jul. 2020, ISBN: 9781501358814.
“Machine, bio-politics and death in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s fiction”, in Nabarun Bhattacharya: aesthetics and politics in a world after ethics, London: Bloomsbury, Sep. 2020, 9789388630504.
“Beckett, Contradiction and a Textual Politics of Change” in Beckett and Politics, eds. William Davies and Helen Bailey. London and New York: Palgrave, 2020. 9783030471101
2019
JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Harold Pinter’s aging male speakers: affect of exhaustion and metaphors of agency”, The Harold Pinter Review, DOI: 10.5325/haropintrevi.3.1.0001, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1-13, Jun. 2019.
“I am Jack the ripper, a golden eagle: ethical alterity and dangers of narrative travel in world literature”, Interventions, DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2018.1547207, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 35-53, Jan. 2019.
“Ontology of sound in Harold Pinter’s radio drama”, Sound Studies, DOI: 10.1080/20551940.2019.1652021, pp. 1-14, Sep. 2019.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“How to mourn the present: fiction, memory, and mourning in Paul Auster’s man in the dark and John Banville’s ancient light”, in Knots: Post-Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film, ed. Jean-Michel Rabate, DOI: 10.4324/9781003002727, London and New York: Routledge, Nov. 2019, ISBN: 9781003002727.
MONOGRAPH
Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019.
Work Experience:
Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, (Nov 2017 to present)
Undergraduate Tutor, Western Sydney University, Sydney, (2015 – 2016)
Guest Faculty, Lady Brabourne College, Kolkata, (2012 – 2 months)
Guest Faculty, Vidyasagar College, Kolkata, (2010 – 2012)
Guest Faculty, Presidency University, Kolkata, (2009 – 2011)