Daniel Lukes
I received my PhD from New York University's Department of Comparative Literature in 2012. I hold a BA from University College London in English literature, and a Master's degree from Oxford University in European literature, on Italian modernist fiction.
My research examines representations of masculinities in twentieth century and contemporary literature, theory, music, and culture. My dissertation, “Omega Males: Critical Masculinities in Fiction and Theory,” considers how works of literary and science fiction from the 1980s to the present engage with feminist thought to envisage new narratives of masculinity.
Between 1999 and 2009 I worked as a music journalist in London and New York, covering rock and metal scenes in North America and Europe for magazines such as Kerrang!, Decibel, and Terrorizer, also writing book reviews for The Times Literary Supplement. I have published four books: Conversations with William T. Vollmann (University Press of Mississippi, 2020), Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible (Repeater Books, 2017) and William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion (University of Delaware Press, 2014), and Black Metal Rainbows (PM Press, 2023).
I have taught literature, critical theory, science fiction, and popular culture at New York University, and was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington 2015-17. My most recent teaching positions have been Course Lecturer in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Culture at McGill University, and Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Languages and World Literatures at the University of British Columbia, where I taught the courses “Environmental Imaginations” and “Cross-Cultural Travel Narratives” respectively.
My research examines representations of masculinities in twentieth century and contemporary literature, theory, music, and culture. My dissertation, “Omega Males: Critical Masculinities in Fiction and Theory,” considers how works of literary and science fiction from the 1980s to the present engage with feminist thought to envisage new narratives of masculinity.
Between 1999 and 2009 I worked as a music journalist in London and New York, covering rock and metal scenes in North America and Europe for magazines such as Kerrang!, Decibel, and Terrorizer, also writing book reviews for The Times Literary Supplement. I have published four books: Conversations with William T. Vollmann (University Press of Mississippi, 2020), Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible (Repeater Books, 2017) and William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion (University of Delaware Press, 2014), and Black Metal Rainbows (PM Press, 2023).
I have taught literature, critical theory, science fiction, and popular culture at New York University, and was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington 2015-17. My most recent teaching positions have been Course Lecturer in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Culture at McGill University, and Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Languages and World Literatures at the University of British Columbia, where I taught the courses “Environmental Imaginations” and “Cross-Cultural Travel Narratives” respectively.
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Books by Daniel Lukes
Throughout these conversations, Vollmann (b. 1959) speaks with candor and wit on such subjects as grief and guilt in his work, his love of guns and his experience of war, the responsibilities of the artist as witness, the benefits of looking out into the world beyond the confines of one’s horizon, the limitations of what literature can achieve, and how we can speak to the future. Bringing to the fore several expanded, unpub¬lished, and hard-to-find interviews, this volume offers a valuable set of perspectives on a uniquely rewarding and sometimes overwhelming writer. On the road promoting his books or in a domestic setting, Vollmann comes across as reflective and humane, humble in his craft despite deep dedication to his uncompromising vision, and ever armed with a spirit of mischief and capacity to shock and unsettle the reader.
The essays in this collection make a case for regarding William T. Vollmann as the most ambitious, productive, and important living author in the US. His oeuvre includes not only outstanding work in numerous literary genres, but also global reportage, ethical treatises, paintings, photographs, and many other productions. His reputation as a daring traveler and his fascination with life on the margins have earned him an extra-literary renown unequaled in our time. Perhaps most importantly, his work is exceptional in relation to the literary moment. Vollmann is a member of a group of authors who are responding to the skeptical ironies of postmodernism with a reinvigoration of fiction’s affective possibilities and moral sensibilities, but he stands out even among this cohort for his prioritization of moral engagement, historical awareness, and geopolitical scope. Included in this book in addition to twelve scholarly critical essays are reflections on Vollmann by many of his peers, confidantes, and collaborators, including Jonathan Franzen, James Franco, and Michael Glawogger. With a preface by Larry McCaffery and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, this book offers readings of most of Vollmann’s works, includes the first critical engagements with several key titles, and introduces a range of voices from international Vollmann scholarship.
Contributors
Georg Bauer, Carla Bolte, Aaron Chandler, Christopher K. Coffman, Heather Corcoran, John K. Cox, Okla Elliott, James Franco, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Glawogger, Mariya Gusev, Joshua Jensen, Priscilla Juvelis, Miles Liebtag, Daniel Lukes, Larry McCaffery, Françoise Palleau-Papin, Melissa Petro, Jordan A. Rothacker, Bryan Santin, Geoffrey D. Smith, Mary Austin Speaker, Michael K. Walonen, Buell Wisner.
http://www.amazon.com/William-T-Vollmann-Critical-Companion/dp/1611495105
Edited Volumes by Daniel Lukes
From blackened grind to epic black metal, blackgaze to dungeon synth, noise to avantgarde, this massive compilation of queer, trans, leftist, anarchist and antifascist bands from the global underground will raise money for charities helping LGBTQ youth.
https://blackmetalrainbows.bandcamp.com/album/black-metal-rainbows
Black Metal Rainbows is a radical new vision of black metal – a book like no other: a unique collection of stunning artworks and thought-provoking writings by a wide range of 80+ writers, artists, activists and visionaries, including Drew Daniel of Matmos/The Soft Pink Truth, Kim Kelly, Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix of Liturgy, Margaret Killjoy of Feminazgul, Laina Dawes of What Are You Doing Here? A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal, Espi Kvlt, Charles Forsman of The End of the Fucking World, Eugene S. Robinson of Oxbow, Svein Egil Hatlevik of Fleurety and Zweizz, an oral history of Dødheimsgard's album 666 International, a Tridroid Records label profile, and much more.
Across essays and interviews, artworks and comics, this gorgeously-designed full-color book foregrounds black metal’s evolution and celebrates its long-term anti-authoritarian spirit. Black metal Rainbows is a necessary conversation-starter, a destroyer of gates and gatekeepers. Because beyond the clichés of grimness and hate, lies a musical genre rich in creativity, humor, and all the colors of the rainbow. We see black metal as open, inclusive, and unlimited: a musical genre whose vital spirit of total antagonism rebels against the forces of political conservatism. All hail the golden age of pluralistic black metal!
From the crypt to the cloud, Black Metal Rainbows unearths black metal’s sparkling core and illuminates its prismatic spectrum: deep within the black, far beyond grimness, and over a darkly glittering rainbow. Nothing is trve, and everyone is permitted. Long live black metal’s trve rainbow!
Papers by Daniel Lukes
come devoto alla sincerità, al racconto della verità, e a un’apertura perfino patologica al mondo. Ma così come ci sono artificio e creatività nelle sue opere letterarie, anche le sue interviste lasciano intravedere affascinanti strategie di autocostruzione e occultamento, e un’oscillazione tra il rivelare e il celare, fornendo utili spunti per
analizzare le sue opere letterarie sia narrative che saggistiche. Vollmann fa dell’onestà e dell’apertura una virtù, ma si trincera e si costruisce, divertendosi a volte a giocare maliziosamente con la sua identità di autore in uno spazio testuale a metà strada tra realtà e finzione, nascondendo se stesso in bella vista tra le proprie creazioni.
Vollmann's literary reputation rests on an image of him as an author committed to sincerity, truth-telling, and an even pathological openness to the world. But as there is artifice and creativity within his literary works, his interviews also give a glimpse into fascinating strategies of self-construction and concealment, and an interplay between revealing and hiding, which provide useful avenues for parsing his literary works, fiction and non-fiction alike. As Vollmann makes a virtue of honesty and openness, he also self-protects, self-constructs, and at times plays mischievously with an authorial identity in the space between fact and fiction, hiding within the plain sight that he creates.
American neomedievalist feminist dystopia. I focus on two framed tales: Doris Lessing’s
The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five and Margaret Atwood’s The
Handmaid’s Tale. I observe how these two novels, written in the context of feminist
responses to patriarchal and anti-feminist backlash discourses of the late 1970s and
1980s, construct stylized Middle Ages, to caution against recidivist and revanchist
patriarchy and to also deconstruct the myth of romantic love.
International Relations (IR) school that stems from the 1970s work of Hedley
Bull. It centers around the idea that nation-states are weakening in the face of
non-state actors (NGOs, multinationals, supra-national entities such as the
European Union, global networks, private armies, terrorist organizations and so
on), and that the global order is entering a medieval-type scenario of layered
political allegiances: one in which the nation-state ceases to hold privileged
sovereign power. The second type derives from the work of Umberto Eco, who
(also in the 1970s) put forward the notion that we are living in cultural and
political new Middle Ages, citing the end of the ‘Pax Americana’ (Eco, 1986, 76)
as an analog to the fall of the Roman empire. Neomedievalism for Eco is a
postmodern predicament by which the contemporary can be understood as a reenactment of the medieval, spanning a spectrum from the historically accurate
and philologically responsible to pop kitsch fantasy medievalism. Over the last
decade, neomedievalist studies have found fortune in the realm of pop culture, in
particular examining online videogames set in pseudo-medieval fantasy worlds,
often by way of Baudrillardian theories of the simulacrum.
Book Reviews by Daniel Lukes
Interviews by Daniel Lukes
Throughout these conversations, Vollmann (b. 1959) speaks with candor and wit on such subjects as grief and guilt in his work, his love of guns and his experience of war, the responsibilities of the artist as witness, the benefits of looking out into the world beyond the confines of one’s horizon, the limitations of what literature can achieve, and how we can speak to the future. Bringing to the fore several expanded, unpub¬lished, and hard-to-find interviews, this volume offers a valuable set of perspectives on a uniquely rewarding and sometimes overwhelming writer. On the road promoting his books or in a domestic setting, Vollmann comes across as reflective and humane, humble in his craft despite deep dedication to his uncompromising vision, and ever armed with a spirit of mischief and capacity to shock and unsettle the reader.
The essays in this collection make a case for regarding William T. Vollmann as the most ambitious, productive, and important living author in the US. His oeuvre includes not only outstanding work in numerous literary genres, but also global reportage, ethical treatises, paintings, photographs, and many other productions. His reputation as a daring traveler and his fascination with life on the margins have earned him an extra-literary renown unequaled in our time. Perhaps most importantly, his work is exceptional in relation to the literary moment. Vollmann is a member of a group of authors who are responding to the skeptical ironies of postmodernism with a reinvigoration of fiction’s affective possibilities and moral sensibilities, but he stands out even among this cohort for his prioritization of moral engagement, historical awareness, and geopolitical scope. Included in this book in addition to twelve scholarly critical essays are reflections on Vollmann by many of his peers, confidantes, and collaborators, including Jonathan Franzen, James Franco, and Michael Glawogger. With a preface by Larry McCaffery and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, this book offers readings of most of Vollmann’s works, includes the first critical engagements with several key titles, and introduces a range of voices from international Vollmann scholarship.
Contributors
Georg Bauer, Carla Bolte, Aaron Chandler, Christopher K. Coffman, Heather Corcoran, John K. Cox, Okla Elliott, James Franco, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Glawogger, Mariya Gusev, Joshua Jensen, Priscilla Juvelis, Miles Liebtag, Daniel Lukes, Larry McCaffery, Françoise Palleau-Papin, Melissa Petro, Jordan A. Rothacker, Bryan Santin, Geoffrey D. Smith, Mary Austin Speaker, Michael K. Walonen, Buell Wisner.
http://www.amazon.com/William-T-Vollmann-Critical-Companion/dp/1611495105
From blackened grind to epic black metal, blackgaze to dungeon synth, noise to avantgarde, this massive compilation of queer, trans, leftist, anarchist and antifascist bands from the global underground will raise money for charities helping LGBTQ youth.
https://blackmetalrainbows.bandcamp.com/album/black-metal-rainbows
Black Metal Rainbows is a radical new vision of black metal – a book like no other: a unique collection of stunning artworks and thought-provoking writings by a wide range of 80+ writers, artists, activists and visionaries, including Drew Daniel of Matmos/The Soft Pink Truth, Kim Kelly, Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix of Liturgy, Margaret Killjoy of Feminazgul, Laina Dawes of What Are You Doing Here? A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal, Espi Kvlt, Charles Forsman of The End of the Fucking World, Eugene S. Robinson of Oxbow, Svein Egil Hatlevik of Fleurety and Zweizz, an oral history of Dødheimsgard's album 666 International, a Tridroid Records label profile, and much more.
Across essays and interviews, artworks and comics, this gorgeously-designed full-color book foregrounds black metal’s evolution and celebrates its long-term anti-authoritarian spirit. Black metal Rainbows is a necessary conversation-starter, a destroyer of gates and gatekeepers. Because beyond the clichés of grimness and hate, lies a musical genre rich in creativity, humor, and all the colors of the rainbow. We see black metal as open, inclusive, and unlimited: a musical genre whose vital spirit of total antagonism rebels against the forces of political conservatism. All hail the golden age of pluralistic black metal!
From the crypt to the cloud, Black Metal Rainbows unearths black metal’s sparkling core and illuminates its prismatic spectrum: deep within the black, far beyond grimness, and over a darkly glittering rainbow. Nothing is trve, and everyone is permitted. Long live black metal’s trve rainbow!
come devoto alla sincerità, al racconto della verità, e a un’apertura perfino patologica al mondo. Ma così come ci sono artificio e creatività nelle sue opere letterarie, anche le sue interviste lasciano intravedere affascinanti strategie di autocostruzione e occultamento, e un’oscillazione tra il rivelare e il celare, fornendo utili spunti per
analizzare le sue opere letterarie sia narrative che saggistiche. Vollmann fa dell’onestà e dell’apertura una virtù, ma si trincera e si costruisce, divertendosi a volte a giocare maliziosamente con la sua identità di autore in uno spazio testuale a metà strada tra realtà e finzione, nascondendo se stesso in bella vista tra le proprie creazioni.
Vollmann's literary reputation rests on an image of him as an author committed to sincerity, truth-telling, and an even pathological openness to the world. But as there is artifice and creativity within his literary works, his interviews also give a glimpse into fascinating strategies of self-construction and concealment, and an interplay between revealing and hiding, which provide useful avenues for parsing his literary works, fiction and non-fiction alike. As Vollmann makes a virtue of honesty and openness, he also self-protects, self-constructs, and at times plays mischievously with an authorial identity in the space between fact and fiction, hiding within the plain sight that he creates.
American neomedievalist feminist dystopia. I focus on two framed tales: Doris Lessing’s
The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five and Margaret Atwood’s The
Handmaid’s Tale. I observe how these two novels, written in the context of feminist
responses to patriarchal and anti-feminist backlash discourses of the late 1970s and
1980s, construct stylized Middle Ages, to caution against recidivist and revanchist
patriarchy and to also deconstruct the myth of romantic love.
International Relations (IR) school that stems from the 1970s work of Hedley
Bull. It centers around the idea that nation-states are weakening in the face of
non-state actors (NGOs, multinationals, supra-national entities such as the
European Union, global networks, private armies, terrorist organizations and so
on), and that the global order is entering a medieval-type scenario of layered
political allegiances: one in which the nation-state ceases to hold privileged
sovereign power. The second type derives from the work of Umberto Eco, who
(also in the 1970s) put forward the notion that we are living in cultural and
political new Middle Ages, citing the end of the ‘Pax Americana’ (Eco, 1986, 76)
as an analog to the fall of the Roman empire. Neomedievalism for Eco is a
postmodern predicament by which the contemporary can be understood as a reenactment of the medieval, spanning a spectrum from the historically accurate
and philologically responsible to pop kitsch fantasy medievalism. Over the last
decade, neomedievalist studies have found fortune in the realm of pop culture, in
particular examining online videogames set in pseudo-medieval fantasy worlds,
often by way of Baudrillardian theories of the simulacrum.
The work is divided into three parts. The first part (sections 1 and 2) consists of a chronological narrative of the historical trajectory of the left. The second part (sections 3 to 8) addresses six key issues in order to provide a general picture of its current situation. These are: electoral dynamics and the reconfiguration of the party map, attempts to democratise political organisations and their ambivalent results, the emergence and retreat of various social mobilisations, the role played by the world of labour, the experience of the governments of change in the main cities, and the complex Catalan conflict. In the third and last part, we offer a brief reflection on some of the main current debates and we indicate how the Spanish experience can offer some lessons for the renewal of the left in other places.