Dr John McKeane

With a disciplinary background in French, I do research on the interactions between literature and philosophy. The figures on whose work I have published include Maurice Blanchot, Sarah Kofman, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes, Barbara Cassin, and Alexandre Kojève. I am also interested in Emmanuel Carrère.

My latest book is Sarah Kofman and Ancient Thought: Learning to Live at Last (OUP, 2026 or 2027). It explores the work of this overlooked member of the ‘philosophie en effet’ group and unpacks her post-Nietzschean readings of ancient thought, from tragedy to Plato by way of the pre-Socratics, Stoicism and more.

I am also the author of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: (Un)timely Meditations (2015), and I have co-edited two collective volumes, Blanchot romantique (2010) and Sarah Kofman and the Relief of Philosophy (2021).

Having held lectureships at four British universities, as well as fellowships in France, Italy, and the US, I am interested in educational institutions – this led to an article on pedagogy and the French baccalaureate.

I have translated four books, including Christophe Bident’s ambitious 632-page Maurice Blanchot: a Critical Biography (2018), as well as publishing on translation theory.

My next research project will be tied to my role as co-director of the university’s Samuel Beckett research centre. Beckett was a languages graduate and lecturer (briefly), made his life in France and often wrote in French, translated and self-translated. His work is exemplary of an entire thought-tradition for which foreign languages are at once an intellectual exercise and an ethical undertaking. It speaks to experiences of linguistic discombobulation, non-fluency, and exclusion in ways that are becoming ever more relevant in our fractured society. I am interested both in exploring Reading’s significant archival holdings, and in allowing his work to speak to societal challenges facing us today, for instance attention / cognition / dementia, or the political far-right and masculinity (based on his travels in 1930s Europe and life in wartime France).