In Memory of Couze Venn
Mike Featherstone
It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of our friend and colleague Couze Venn. Couze spent his final days at Rowcroft Hospice, Torquay and died on March 13, 2019.
Image: Professor Couze Venn
Couze played a central role in Theory, Culture & Society over the last twenty-five years. He joined the editorial board in 1996 and became managing editor just over a decade later. He has published over a dozen articles in the journal and made a number of significant translations of material from Irigaray, Latour, Lyotard, Stiegler, Foucault, Lazzarato and others. He also edited and co-edited a number of special issues and sections.
Couze published three significant books in the Theory, Culture & Society Book Series: Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity(2000); The Postcolonial Challenge: Towards Alternative Worlds (2005), and After Capital(2018).
In addition, he became reviews editor of Body & Society and played an increasingly important editorial role in the running of the journal, in particular co-editing the special issue on Affect.
In the 1970s, Couze was involved in the formation of the path-breaking journal Ideology & Consciousness which developed Foucault’s work and introduced Deleuze, Irigaray, Canguilhem. This provided the impetus for his co-authored book Changing the Subject (1984). In 1998 he moved from the University of East London in to become deputy director at the Theory, Culture & Society Centre, Nottingham Trent University, where we worked together on a series of projects, including the New Encyclopaedia Project which led to a number of symposia in different parts of the world and the publication of the TCS special issue Problematizing Global Knowledge (2006). In 2013 he became a professor at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Couze Venn was an outstanding academic who published on a number of fields. One who had the temerity to think outside the frame, as After Capital, the title of his last book suggests. At the same time, he was also a person of great understanding and humility who always had time to positively encourage others. He was a wonderful friend, colleague and mentor to many. The spirit of his encounters and words will live on.
Mike Featherstone
March 2019
The family have requested no flowers. Donations to Rowcroft Hospice are welcome.
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