Jason Allen-Paisant

The Scholar

As a scholar and essayist, my interdisciplinary work explores embodied experience in the context of Afro-diasporic politics and worldbuilding. My most recent works reflect on how we make sense out of time, particularly in relation to the body, in the light of African/diasporic history.

Books

Allen-Paisant J. 2024. Engagements with Aimé Césaire:Thinking with Spirits. Oxford University Press, 2024).

Allen-Paisant J. and Finburgh Delijani, Clare (eds.). 2022. Face à l'histoire coloniale. Théâtre/Public no. 246.

Allen-Paisant J. (ed.) 2021. Performing Black Futures (special issue of parallax ), Vol. 27.4.

Allen-Paisant J. 2017. Théâtre dialectique postcolonial Aimé Césaire et Derek Walcott. Paris: Editions Classiques Garnier

Peer-reviewed articles (selected)

Allen-Paisant J. 2022. Theater of Ancestral Mediation: Vodou in the Performance Aesthetics of Miracson Saint-Val. The New Centennial Review. 22(3), pp. 79-101.

Allen-Paisant J. 2022. Thinking with Spirits; or Dwelling and Knowing in the Work of Aimé Césaire. French Studies. 76(4), pp. 576-590.

Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Animist Time and the White Anthropocene. New Formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics Durrant S; Dickinson P (eds.). 104/105, pp. 30-49
Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Pour sauver le monde, il nous faut l’invisible: Entretien avec Frankétienne. Africultures.

Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Body and Gesture in Derek Walcott’s Theatre. New Theatre Quarterly. 37(1), pp. 42-57
Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Reclaiming Time: On Blackness and Landscape. PN Review. 47(3), pp. 31-34
Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Silence, Sound, Ceremony: The Poetry of NourbeSe Philip. The Poetry Review. 111(1), pp. 78-87
Allen-Paisant J. 2020. Vers un théâtre du corps habité : Actualisation scénique du corps et de la guerre dans Chemin de der de Julien Mabiala Bissila. Nouvelles Études Francophones. 35(1), pp. 138-152
Allen-Paisant J. 2020. Aimé Césaire: Possession as paradigm of consciousness. Cultural Critique.
Allen-Paisant J. 2020. Unthinking philosophy: Aimé Césaire, poetry, and the politics of Western knowledge. Atlantic Studies.
Allen-Paisant J. 2020. Corps, voix, mémoire : Entretien avec Guy Régis Jr.. Critical Stages/Scènes critiques.
Allen-Paisant J. 2020. Reading Wilson Harris with Gilles Deleuze: Carnival, or the novel as theatrical space. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 55(2), pp. 294-308
Allen-Paisant J. 2019. Penser et jouer l'absurde dans le théâtre haïtien: Corps, mémoire, possession [Thinking and playing the absurd in the Haitian theater: Body, memory, possession]. International Journal of Francophone Studies. 22(3-4), pp. 251-269
Allen-Paisant J. 2019. Raising the ghosts of justice: Staging time and the memory of Empire in The Trial of Governor Eyre. Cultural Dynamics. 31(3), pp. 245-259
Allen-Paisant J. 2018. Obituary: Wilson Harris (1921−2018). The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 53(2), pp. 332-335
Allen J. 2017. Contraindre le chaos à devenir forme: le motif de la descente aux enfers dans Et les chiens se taisaient d’Aimé Césaire. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 54(2-3), pp. 185-201
Allen J. 2017. Aimé Césaire and The Divine Comedy: Self-enlightenment and the dialectic of relation in And the Dogs Were Silent. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 53(4), pp. 482-494
Allen-Paisant J. 2014. Le corps créole, fonction de la relation dans Drums and Colours de Derek Walcott. Etudes Anglaises Vol. 67.2.
Jason A. Allen. 2010. Daniel Boukman: Un regard caribéen sur le théâtre. Nouvelles Études Francophones. 25(1), pp. 1-18

Essays (selected)

G159 Allen-Paisant 17pp (1)-2_page-0001 (1).jpg

'Joy and Insecurity in Port-au-Prince', Granta 259 (Spring 2022).
'Reclaiming Time: On Blackness and Landscape', Prospections Journal (originally published in PN Review 257.

Book Chapters

2021. Dante in Caribbean Poetics: Power, Language, Race. In: Lombardi E; Gragnolati M; Southerden F (eds.) Oxford Handbook on Dante. Oxford University Press, pp. 668-685.
2021. Towards a National Theatre. In: Dalleo R; Forbes C (eds.) Caribbean Literature in Translation, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 68-81

Invited Talks
(List in progress)

Kinship and cultivation: On the intersection of land, temporality, and ecological justice. Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH). April, 2023.
(De)Colonial Ecology - On the Possibilities of 'Thinking With'. '99 Fragen', Humboldt Forum, Berlin. 21 March, 2022.