Жонатан Доллимор: Өмір жолы мен ғылыми еңбектері

Jonathan G Dollimore (born 1948) is a British philosopher and critic in the fields of Renaissance literature (especially drama), gender studies, queer theory (queer studies), history of ideas, death studies, decadence, and cultural theory. He is the author of four academic books, a memoir, and numerous academic articles. With Alan Sinfield he was the co editor of and key contributor to Political Shakespeare, and the co originator of the critical practice known as cultural materialism. Dollimore is credited with making major interventions in debates on sexuality and desire, Renaissance literary culture, art and censorship, and cultural theory.

Dollimore was born in 1948 in Leighton Buzzard, England. After leaving school at fifteen he took a job operating a lathe in a car factory, and spent much of his spare time riding motorbikes at high speeds. At sixteen he suffered a serious road accident that necessitated a lengthy stay in hospital; it was during this period of convalescence that Dollimore decided to become a writer. He spent four years as a reporter for a local newspaper before taking an A level in English at Luton College of Technology, followed by a BA in English and Philosophy at Keele University. Dollimore achieved first class honours, but found the teaching, particularly of philosophy, uninspiring. He later wrote: "I was discovering back then that philosophy was not only more important than the academic study of it allowed, but that as a subject it needed to be turned against the academy which diminished it. That became the basis of everything I subsequently wrote".

In 1974 Dollimore began a PhD at Bedford College, University of London (now part of Royal Holloway, University of London), but abandoned his projected thesis after little more than a year when he took up a lectureship at the University of Sussex. However, he was awarded his PhD in 1984 when the University of London allowed him to submit his first book, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries in lieu of a thesis. To meet university regulations, the book was required to be housed inside a cardboard box identical in colour and size to a conventional thesis. In 1991, now a Reader at the University of Sussex, Dollimore co founded with his then partner Alan Sinfield the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence, which, as he later recalled, was met with horror by some commentators: "One Tory MP said that the University should be shut down, disinfected AND subjected to the financial equivalent of carpet bombing. An opinion writer in The Sun newspaper agreed, but added that the carpet bombs should be real". Dollimore later became Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of York.

In "Civilization and its Darkness" (2012) Dollimore examines Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, and explores the relationship between civilisation and the forces that subvert and destroy it. Civilization, Dollimore writes, "is, at some level, profoundly and necessarily limited, focused and exclusionary, built on repressions which remain constitutive." The repressed forces, however, re emerge intensified, which means that "only the most highly civilised can become truly daemonic." Dollimore also reiterates, from Sex, Literature and Censorship, his belief that "to take art seriously is to recognise that it has the power to compromise both our morality and our humanity." Dollimore, in his extended "Foreword" to Ewan Fernie's book The Demonic (2012), discusses the modern state of literary criticism. He dislikes the "obscurantist" tendencies of some critical and cultural theory, but he also deplores the fact that "historicism in one newish form or another, has become a new orthodoxy." The most committed historicism, Dollimore claims, "tends towards a policing of the play [or whatever else] against interpretation. It doesn't just avoid questions of value, but represses them; in other words it's a contextualising which is also, and more fundamentally, a containment." A call for a new sort of spiritually intense living runs through Dollimore's recent writings. For example, in his "Foreword", he counsels that "authenticity is more often than not outside the doxa," and states: "almost everything that is done, including what we ourselves do, be it at the macro or the micro level, could and should be done more authentically, more honestly, more meaningfully, more truthfully." In an interview with David Jonathan Y. Bayot published as Jonathan Dollimore in Conversation (2013), Dollimore discusses theory, aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and considers how to mobilize them alongside desire and spirituality for a radical materialist practice. He explains the continuing relevance of cultural materialism, and defends it against what he calls "dogged misunderstanding" of some of its theoretical positions. In "Then and Now" (2014), Dollimore reflects upon cultural materialism and the publication of Political Shakespeare, and goes on to examine the question of human nature through the lens of evolutionary biology. He advises that literary scholars take science seriously, and considers the possibility that culture itself may be counter evolutionary.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dollimore shared a cottage in Shropshire with his partner, Alan Sinfield.

Dollimore, Jonathan (1983) (with Alan Sinfield). The Selected Plays of John Webster: The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, The Devil's Law Case. Cambridge University Press. Dollimore, Jonathan (1994) (with Alan Sinfield). Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism. Cornell University Press (North America); Manchester University Press (UK). (N. Am. ); 978 0719043529 (UK). Dollimore, Jonathan (1998). Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture. Routledge. Dollimore, Jonathan (2001). Sex, Literature, and Censorship. Polity Press. Dollimore, Jonathan (2010). Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Rev. 3d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Dollimore, Jonathan (2011). "On Leaving" in Crrritic! (eds. John Schad and Oliver Tearle, Sussex Academic Press). Dollimore, Jonathan (2012). "Civilization and its Darkness" in Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Contemporary Thought: Revisiting the Horror with Lacoue Labarthe (ed. Nidesh Lawtoo, Bloomsbury Academic). Dollimore, Jonathan (2012). "Foreword" to Ewan Fernie, The Demonic (Routledge). Dollimore, Jonathan (2013). Jonathan Dollimore in Conversation (with David Jonathan Y. Bayot). Manila: De La Salle University Publishing House (Philippines). Dollimore, Jonathan (2014). "Then and Now." Critical Survey 26.3: 61–82. Dollimore, Jonathan (2018). Sexual Dissidence. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dollimore, Jonathan (2021). Desire: A Memoir. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. .