Claire Blencowe is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. She specialises in social theory and the politics of knowledge and culture in the context of (racial) capitalism. Her first book Biopolitical Experience: Foucault Power & Positive Critique sets out a critical account of the role of values associated with evolution, health and vitality to the constitution of European political authority and racism (biopolitics). In a series of collaborative projects and publications with members of the Authority Research Network she is researching contemporary emergent forms of authority – both to understand the changing formations of political power in their relation to material and cultural life, and to explore the potential of participatory cultural and research practices as means of resisting or surviving contemporary forms of oppression, denigration and dehumanisation. Their publications include a series of accessible creative essay collections that are available to download for free here – Problems of Participation, Listening with Non-Human Others, Problems of Hope, and Problems of Debt. She is currently involved in a collaborative project working with community organisers in Rio called Transforming Atmospheric Authority: Experimental Embodiments in the Maré, Rio de Janerio – further details of this project below. With Anna Harpin in Theatre Studies. she holds an IATL academic fellowship to develop a community action project and interdisciplinary MA module that uses social theory, applied theatre and creative practice to explore the social, collaborative and politico-economic basis of mental illness and healing under neoliberalism (this project has been on hold since 2017 but they look forward to reviving the project as soon as circumstances allow).
