Ansgar Allen

thumb|Ansgar Allen at Middleton Moor, Derbyshire, UK '''Ansgar Allen''' is a writer and novelist whose work strays between fiction, philosophy, and critical theory. He is editor-in-chief at Erratum Press which seeks to 'infiltrate literature with "calculated acts of cultural barbarism"'.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-05-20 |title=Erratum Press - New Sheffield-based press hopes to infiltrate literature with "calculated acts of cultural barbarism" |url=https://nowthenmagazine.com/articles/erratum-press-hopes-to-infiltrate-literature-with-calculated-acts-of-cultural-barbarism |access-date= |website=Now Then Sheffield |language=en}}</ref> In addition to his work as a novelist, Allen is known for his academic contributions to the field of educational philosophy and theory,<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-08-29 |title=Allen, Ansgar, Dr |url=https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/education/people/academic/edu/ansgar-allen |access-date= |website=www.sheffield.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Author Interview: Ansgar Allen and Roy Goddard |url=https://www.philosophy-of-education.org/author-interviews/author-interview-ansgar-allen-and-roy-goddard/ |access-date= |website=Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain |language=en-GB}}</ref> as well as the study of ancient and modern Cynicism.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Cynicism |url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537889/cynicism/ |access-date= |website=MIT Press |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=How to live like a Cynic {{!}} Psyche Guides |url=https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-live-like-a-cynic-and-challenge-social-norms |access-date= |website=Psyche |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Allen |first=Ansgar |date=2020-12-28 |title=What can we learn from ancient cynicism? |url=https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5735/what-can-we-learn-from-ancient-cynicism |access-date= |website=newhumanist.org.uk |language=en-GB}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Classics and class |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jfy6 |access-date= |website=BBC |language=en-GB}}</ref>

His works have been widely translated. The novel ''Wretch'' (2020) was republished in Spanish translation by the Bogotá-based press, Ediciones Vestigio as ''Ruin'' (2023, tr. Ramiro Sanchiz)''.'' His volume ''Cynicism'' (2020), part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series,<ref name=":0" /> was republished in Japanese translation by Newton Press (2021, tr. Masamichi Ueno), in Chinese translation by The Commercial Press (2023 tr. Ni Jianqing),<ref>{{Cite web |title=南方周末 |url=https://www.infzm.com/wap/#/content/249340 |access-date= |website=www.infzm.com}}</ref> and in Persian translation by Maziar Publications (2023 tr. Toraj Hori).<ref>{{Cite web |date=2018-10-26 |title=Cynicism |url=https://ansgarallen.com/cynicism/ |access-date= |website=Ansgar Allen |language=en}}</ref>

== Style and themes == Allen's literary approach is characterised by fragmented narratives, metafictional techniques, "targeted irreverence",<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-03-21 |title="It seemed necessary to take aim within the writing of fiction at some of the securities, the commonplaces, and the conceits, that lie behind literary culture": An Interview with Ansgar Allen — Unsound Methods |url=https://minorliteratures.com/2023/03/21/it-seemed-necessary-to-take-aim-within-the-writing-of-fiction-at-some-of-the-securities-the-commonplaces-and-the-conceits-that-lie-behind-literary-culture-an-interview-with-ansgar-allen/ |access-date= |website=minor literature[s] |language=en}}</ref> and a "radically intertextual" narrative style.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Press |first=Equus |date=2022-02-04 |title="Scratching at the underbelly of a voided present" – An Interview re: Ansgar Allen's Plague Theatre (forthcoming with Equus Press, 2022) |url=https://equuspress.wordpress.com/2022/02/04/scratching-at-the-underbelly-of-a-voided-present-an-interview-re-ansgar-allens-plague-theatre-forthcoming-with-equus-press-2022/ |access-date= |website=equus press |language=en}}</ref> It interrogates institutional structures, especially those of education by enacting what David Vichnar has called "a pedagogy of failure":<ref>{{cite web |last1=Vichnar |first1=David |title=Ansgar Allen’s Experimental Fiction as Meta-Critique |url=https://www.erratumpress.com/ansgar-allens-experimental-fiction-as-meta-critique |website=Erratum Reviews |publisher=Erratum Press |access-date=29 September 2025}}</ref>

<blockquote>[Allen's work] foregrounds uncertainty, digression, fragmentation, and the impossibility of closure. In so doing, Allen liberates critique from the authority it often presumes, rewiring it as lived, embodied, and self‑questioning: a critique that teaches through collapse... His texts sidestep the expectation that philosophical discourse be coherent, linear, or authoritative. Instead, they teach through artful disintegration, ambiguous gestures, and the construction of ruin. As both theorist and writer, Allen offers a pedagogy of the fragment, a critique that educates by refusing the confidence of normative knowledge.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Vichnar |first1=David |title=Ansgar Allen’s Experimental Fiction as Meta-Critique |url=https://www.erratumpress.com/ansgar-allens-experimental-fiction-as-meta-critique |website=Erratum Reviews |publisher=Erratum Press |access-date=29 September 2025}}</ref></blockquote>

His work is marked, too, by an attempt to push at the limits of academic writing. As Allen has described his approach:<blockquote>Most writing about philosophy and theory seems to me overly restrained by the desire not to come across as an idiot, not to have forgotten this relevant text, misread this passage, or neglected a salient point. By breaking with the position of the author as authority and the scholarly habit to identify the mind of the scholar with the content of their writing, a hybrid theoretical/fictional form allows problems to manifest and unfold, often by intuition, with an element of chance...<ref>{{Cite web |last=ΘΡΑΥΣΜΑ |date=2025-06-19 |title=ANSGAR ALLEN interview |url=https://thrausma.com/ansgar-allen-interview/ |access-date=2025-06-24 |website=ΘΡΑΥΣΜΑ |language=en-GB}}</ref> </blockquote>Allen has engaged a number of key figures in literature and philosophy in his writings, including Thomas Bernhard,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Ansgar Allen |url=https://globalbernhard.univie.ac.at/autorinnen/grossbritannien/ansgar-allen/ |access-date= |website=globalbernhard.univie.ac.at |language=de}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-02-18 |title="Something Can Die and Yet Persist Interminably": A Conversation Around the Future of the Book with Ansgar Allen by S. D. Stewart |url=https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2025/02/18/ansgar-allen/ |access-date= |website=Heavy Feather Review |language=en}}</ref> Antonin Artaud,<ref>{{Cite web |last=manchestereviewofbooks |date=2022-06-05 |title=The Gesamtkunstwerk of fragments |url=https://manchestereviewofbooks.wordpress.com/2022/06/05/the-gesamtkunstwerk-of-fragments/ |access-date= |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Press |first=Equus |date=2022-02-04 |title="Scratching at the underbelly of a voided present" – An Interview re: Ansgar Allen's Plague Theatre (forthcoming with Equus Press, 2022) |url=https://equuspress.wordpress.com/2022/02/04/scratching-at-the-underbelly-of-a-voided-present-an-interview-re-ansgar-allens-plague-theatre-forthcoming-with-equus-press-2022/ |access-date= |website=equus press |language=en}}</ref> Georges Bataille,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Decapitation theory and university management: Some notes towards the derangement of academic life {{!}} Ephemeral Journal |url=https://ephemerajournal.org/contribution/decapitation-theory-and-university-management-some-notes-towards-derangement-academic |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240914023318/https://ephemerajournal.org/contribution/decapitation-theory-and-university-management-some-notes-towards-derangement-academic |archive-date=2024-09-14 |access-date= |website=ephemerajournal.org |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Allen |first=Ansgar |date=2024-08-01 |title=The death of thought: Reading Bataille in the ruins of a university |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00345237231223902 |journal=Research in Education |language=en |volume=119 |issue=1 |pages=65–78 |doi=10.1177/00345237231223902 |issn=0034-5237|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Allen |first=Ansgar |date=2024-04-01 |title=Bataille and the Poverty of Academic Form |url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11217-023-09908-1 |journal=Studies in Philosophy and Education |language=en |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=127–140 |doi=10.1007/s11217-023-09908-1 |issn=1573-191X|doi-access=free }}</ref> and Friedrich Nietzsche.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Allen |first=Ansgar |date=2018-05-31 |title=The End of Education? Nietzsche, Foucault, Genealogy |url=https://journals.sfu.ca/pie/index.php/pie/article/view/1029 |journal=Philosophical Inquiry in Education |language=en |volume=25 |issue=1 |issn=2369-8659 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201101135816/https://journals.sfu.ca/pie/index.php/pie/article/view/1029 |archive-date=2020-11-01}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Allen |first=Ansgar |date=2017-06-14 |title=Awaiting Education: Friedrich Nietzsche On the Future of Our Educational Institutions |url=https://journals.sfu.ca/pie/index.php/pie/article/view/913 |journal=Philosophical Inquiry in Education |language=en |volume=24 |issue=3 |issn=2369-8659 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220823180221/https://journals.sfu.ca/pie/index.php/pie/article/view/913 |archive-date=2022-08-23}}</ref>

In a 2025 interview Allen stated that when he incorporates such authors in his fictions, it is with the aim of creating a space where their "more disturbing ideas are allowed to persist and interanimate".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-02-18 |title="Something Can Die and Yet Persist Interminably": A Conversation Around the Future of the Book with Ansgar Allen by S. D. Stewart |url=https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2025/02/18/ansgar-allen/ |access-date= |website=Heavy Feather Review |language=en}}</ref> This is to "allow the ideas themselves...to run amok to some extent...and keep them, as far as is possible, in an unresolved state".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-03-21 |title="It seemed necessary to take aim within the writing of fiction at some of the securities, the commonplaces, and the conceits, that lie behind literary culture": An Interview with Ansgar Allen — Unsound Methods |url=https://minorliteratures.com/2023/03/21/it-seemed-necessary-to-take-aim-within-the-writing-of-fiction-at-some-of-the-securities-the-commonplaces-and-the-conceits-that-lie-behind-literary-culture-an-interview-with-ansgar-allen/ |access-date= |website=minor literature[s] |language=en}}</ref>

== Reception == Allen's work is considered to be an example of necromodernist writing.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Vichnar |first1=David |title=Necromodernist Architectures in Contemporary Writing |url=https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/necromodernist-architectures-in-contemporary-writing/ |website=3:am |publisher=3:am |access-date=22 November 2025}}</ref> His work has been compared to that of Samuel Beckett,<ref>{{Cite web |last=manchestereviewofbooks |date=2020-10-13 |title=Hell is ordinary |url=https://manchestereviewofbooks.wordpress.com/2020/10/13/hell-is-ordinary/ |access-date= |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Vichnar |first1=David |title=Ansgar Allen’s Experimental Fiction as Meta-Critique |url=https://www.erratumpress.com/ansgar-allens-experimental-fiction-as-meta-critique |website=Erratum Reviews |publisher=Erratum Press |access-date=28 September 2025}}</ref> Italo Calvino,<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-02-04 |title=plague theatre |url=https://equuspress.wordpress.com/plague-theatre/ |access-date= |website=equus press |language=en}}</ref> and Jorge Luis Borges,<ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-04-15 |title=Wretch |url=https://ansgarallen.com/wretch/ |access-date= |website=Ansgar Allen |language=en}}</ref> as well as a range of other figures:

{{Blockquote |text=Allen re-ignites Beckett, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Orwell, Kafka, Burroughs, Conrad and Nietzsche. At the same time, Allen is none of those writers. There seems to be far more interest in losing the ego in order to make a piece of effective work. It’s quite art school, actually. In terms of critical theory, what is happening can trigger a multitude of thinkers: Freud, Derrida, Marx, Lyotard, Foucault, Agamben. Simultaneously, it feels unaligned. It is philosophy or critical theory as strategic art.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hanson |first1=Steve |title=Burning Belief |url=https://manchestereviewofbooks.wordpress.com/2025/09/17/burning-belief/ |website=Manchester Review of Books |access-date=29 September 2025}}</ref>}}

Allen's novels have been considered "reminiscent of the work of Lars Iyer, although while Iyer's novels take the form of quasi-Platonic dialogues in which the characters talk about philosophical ideas, Allen's seem more like parables or fables".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Green |first=Daniel |title=Issue Five |url=https://www.unbeatenpaths.net/p/issue-five |access-date= |website=www.unbeatenpaths.net |language=en}}</ref>

His more experimental writing has been described by Simon Palfrey as "like listening to the insomnia of Hamlet",<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-01-09 |title=Burton's Anatomy |url=https://ansgarallen.com/burtons-anatomy/ |access-date= |website=Ansgar Allen |language=en}}</ref> and by Eugen Bacon as "exquisitely weird".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Aurealis — Science Fiction & Fantasy |url=https://aurealis.com.au/ |access-date= |website=aurealis.com.au}}</ref>

== Bibliography == * ''The Unteachable'' (2026) * ''The Tongue Machine'' (2026) * ''Midden Hill'' (2025) * ''Jonathan Martin'' (2025) * ''The Faces of Pluto'' (2024) * ''Black Vellum'' (2023) * ''The Wake and the Manuscript'' (2022) * ''Plague Theatre'' (2022) * ''Burton's Anatomy'' (2022) * ''The Reading Room'' (2021) * ''The Reaches'' (2021) * ''The Sick List'' (2021) * ''Wretch'' (2020) * ''Cynicism'' (2020) * ''The Cynical Educator'' (2017) * ''Education and Philosophy: An Introduction'' (2017) with Roy Goddard * ''Benign Violence: Education in and beyond the Age of Reason'' (2014)

== References == <references />

== External links == * [https://ansgarallen.com/ Author website] * [https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/education/people/academic/edu/ansgar-allen A.Allen, University of Sheffield] * [https://www.erratumpress.com/ Erratum Press]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Allen, Ansgar}} Category:British writers Category:British male novelists Category:British academics Category:21st-century British novelists Category:21st-century British writers Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people