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Education

BA Manitoba, MA Western, PhD Toronto

Teaching Fields

History of Political Thought (Antiquity, Modernity, Postmodernity), Critical Theories (Structuralism and Post-structuralism), Utopia, Nietzsche's Political Thought

Recent Activities

2012-1013 Sabbatical Year

Book Review
Dr. Nandita Biswas Mellamphy’s 2011 Palgrave-Macmillan publication The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche has been reviewed in this month’s edition of The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics & Culture, by Dr. Joseph Nechvatal, interdisciplinary theorist, professor and post-conceptual artist (former student of the philosopher Arthur C. Danto and protégé of the American avant-garde icon Lamonte Thornton Young). In his review, professor Nechvatal describes the book as a “mesmerizing book of contemporary interdisciplinary theory” and a work of “immense merit” which “follows Bernard Stiegler on the question of the ‘political’ as the ‘viral’,” arguing “that the political ‘must necessarily proceed via a pharmacological perspective: we must look for the signs of health in the very illnesses of the human condition, as well as be able to recognize signs of illness in what may be considered by the majority as signs of ‘health’.” Originally published on his own blog (at http://post.thing.net/node/3835), Nechvatal’s review can be found in the Books subsection of this month’s Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics & Culture (http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/10).

Appointment
Professor Nandita Biswas Mellamphy has been appointed as one of the two inaugural Visiting Research Fellows (with Dr. Dan Mellamphy) at The Center for Transformative Media” (CTM) at Parsons: The New School for Design, NYC. She will be working with the Center to develop conferences and symposia and to think-tank CTM's new vision and collaborative network. During her stay, Professor Biswas Mellamphy will also present her new book project Neuro Nietzsche: Nietzsche, Neural Networks and Noncoding DNA (Coding the Post-Human), a follow-up to her 2011 Palgrave-Macmillan publication, The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (cf. Joseph Nechvatal’s recent review, forthcoming in October’s Brooklyn Rail. See here for more information. She will also be participating as a respondent and session-chair for the upcoming conference, The Future of Security: Ethical Hacking, Big Data and The Crowd hosted by the New School's Parson's Institute for Information Mapping. See here for more information.

2011-2012 Organizer of the CSTC International Speaker Series. Has arranged UWO speaking engagements by such luminaries as:

 Bernard Stiegler, (click here for more information)

Debra Bergoffen

Thomas Keenan

Thierry Bardini

Jussi Parikka

McKenzie Wark

Claire Colebrook

N. Katherine Hayles

2009-2011 Organizer of the Nietzsche Workshop at Western which hosted the following speakers:

R. Scott Bakker

Ed Keller

Arthur Kroker

Horst Hutter

These events are all free and open to the public. Professor Biswas Mellamphy encourages the participation of colleagues and students alike. For more information, please consult the CSTC Speaker Series by clicking here.

Research Interests

Dr. Nandita Biswas Mellamphy’s research interests are situated at the intersection of political theory, post-humanism, and continental philosophy within the context of contemporary complexifying international societies. She is author of The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) as well as essays published in journals such as Foucault Studies; Deleuze Studies; Contre Attaques (France); Symposium: International Journal of Continental Philosophy; Paideusis: International Journal in the Philosophy of Education; Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development; Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts; and in anthologies such as Herman Siemens' and Vasti Roodt’s Nietzsche, Power and Politics (2008), Horst Hutter’s Becoming Loyal to the Earth: Ecology and Life-Affirmation in Nietzsche’s Vision -- Nietzsche’s Teaching as a Therapy for Political Culture (forthcoming 2011), and Keith Ansell Pearson’s Nietzsche and Political Thought (forthcoming 2013).

Her research interests include Nietzschean political thought, zoontotechnics and post-humanism (especially in the work of Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, and Réné Schwaller). Her current research focuses on the post-humanism of what she calls ‘larval terrorism’: the militarization of the contemporary political subject and the changing nature of war under the regime of the ‘war on terror’. In the past four years she has been invited to present her work at international institutions such as Diego Portales University (Santiago, Chile), Cardiff University (Wales, UK), The American University of Paris (France), Villanova University (Pennsylvania), University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and Leiden University (Netherlands).

She is the co-founder with Dan Mellamphy of the annual international Nietzsche Workshop @ Western, and has organized two international interdisciplinary conferences devoted to the study of war and the politics of globalization -- Cultural Diplomacy: Bridging Theory and Practice in the Age of Globalization (UWO 2008) and Rethinking War in the 21st Century (UWO 2010). She has also served on the editorial review boards of The Intergenerational Justice Review (Germany), The Canadian Journal of Political Science, The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, and PhaenEx: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, and is both co-founder and co-ordinator of The Critical Politics Group, a collaborative research group established in 2009 at The University of Western Ontario.

Selected Publications:

Monographs:

The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (forthcoming 2010, Palgrave Macmillan).

Articles

‘Negation, Affirmation and the Overcoming of Nihilism in Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Future’ in Phaenex: The Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (forthcoming 2011).

‘Le Nihilisme Nietzschéen comme Problème de la ‘Grande Politique’: Un entretien avec Bernard Stiegler’, Contre-Attaques (forthcoming 2010).

With Dan Mellamphy, ‘What’s the “Matter” with Materialism? Walter Benjamin and the New Janitocracy’ in Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts, 2009, 11(1), pp.162-182.

With Dan Mellamphy, ‘PAULITICS’ in Symposium: International Journal of Continental Philosophy (special issue on Alain Badiou), 2009, volume 12.2, pp. 127-47.

With Dan Mellamphy, ‘The Play’s the Thing: Mathematization as Dramatization’ in Paideusis: International Journal of the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society, 2008, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 35-44.

With Dan Mellamphy, ‘In "Descent" Proposal: Pathologies of Embodiment in Nietzsche, Kafka, and Foucault’, in Foucault Studies, Issue 3, November 2005, 27-48.

With Dan Mellamphy, ‘Ec(h)ologies of the Désêtre’ (forthcoming in Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development, Urbanomic Press, 2011).

Book Chapters

‘Corporealizing Thought: Retranslating the Eternal Return Back Into Politics’ in Nietzsche, Power, Politics, ed. Herman Siemens and Vasti Roodt (Germany: Walter de Gruyter Press, 2008), 701-24.

‘Nietzsche’s Pharaonic Thought’ in Becoming Loyal to the Earth: Ecology and Life-Affirmation in Nietzsche’s Vision -- Nietzsche’s Teaching as a Therapy for Political Culture, ed. Horst Hutter (forthcoming Continuum Press, 2012).

‘Que faire Si mon don est dans La ruelle?: Friedrich Nietzsche, François Laruelle, Gilbert Simondon and the Engine of Politics’, in  Nietzsche and Political Thought, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson (forthcoming Continuum Press, 2013).

Translations

Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, trans. Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Dan André Mellamphy and Edward Ninian Mellamphy, Semiotexte (forthcoming MIT Press, 2012).

Gilbert Simondon, The Genesis of Technicity, trans. Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Dan Mellamphy, Ninian Mellamphy, Deleuze Studies (forthcoming 2012).

François Laruelle, Nietzsche contra Heidegger: Theses for a Nietzschean Politics (in process).

Selected Conference Papers

With Dan Mellamphy, ‘Hiero-Zoontotechnics: Individuation and Techno-Religion’ Zoontotechnics: Animality/Technicity, Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, Wales, May 12-14, 2010.

‘Political, Anti-Political, Over-Political: The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche’, The Symptom in Theory, Deleuze Studies, Cardiff University, Wales, September 8, 2009.

‘Nietzsche’s Experimental Ontology: A Political Physiology of Individuation’, Nietzsche and the Becoming of Life, Institute for Humanities, Diego Portales University, Santiago, Chile, November 2-4, 2009.

‘The Subject as Trans-Individual’, Panel on Trans-Individuation, Technology and Politics, Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, King’s University College, The University of Western Ontario, October 15-17, 2009.

‘The Displaced Origin of Political Life: Retranslating the Eternal Return Back into Politics’, 16th International Conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, University of Leiden, M

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