Guest speaker Professor Timothy O'Leary from the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) will discuss the distribution of the sensible as part of a research lecture series by King's Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Both Virginia Woolf and Annie Ernaux, in their respective works titled The Years/Les Années, undertake an exploration of the shifting experience of women across two different periods of profound historical change. Reading the texts through the lens of Jacques Rancière’s concept of ‘le partage du sensible’ allows us ask to what extent works of literature such as these not only trace the shifting elements of a particular distribution of the sensible, but also provoke a change in that distribution by destabilizing and disrupting the smooth, unthought continuance of any such distribution. In doing so, Professor O'Leary suggests that we can attain a greater understanding of the complex historical determinants of individual experience and evaluate the possibility of undermining and overcoming those ingrained modes of experience through works of fiction. 

Timothy O’Leary is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Humanities & Languages at UNSW Sydney. He has studied and taught at universities in Ireland, France, Hong Kong, and Australia. He has published several monographs and edited collections on the work of Michel Foucault, including work on the ethics of fiction (Foucault and Fiction: The Experience Book, Continuum 2008) and the co-edited A Companion to Foucault (Blackwell, 2013). He recently co-edited The Ends of Critique: Methods, Institutions, Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). His current research focuses on the concept of sensibility and the possibility of critical interventions in ethical subjectivity, especially through the channel of literature. He is co-General Editor of the series New Critical Humanities at Rowman & Littlefield.

All King's staff and students are welcome to attend.