GCAS: Your article, “Exhaustion Beyond Being,” was recently published in Angelaki. What central idea does it explore?
Jamie Davies: The central idea of my article ‘Exhaustion Beyond Being’ is that exhaustion offers a means of thinking being, and the being that we are, beyond the categories of essence, substance, or creation, not as an hypostasised substance, or as an instance of actualitas, but rather as an exposed being-there. Beyond being would thus mean beyond being as it remains thought in onto-theology, exhausted of its effectivity, activity, or productivity. This I tried to relate to thought of happiness which would then be precisely this exhaustion. Prometheus in Kafka’s retelling of is one such happy figure: once the work of the oceans has come to an end he can see the endless waters he has long watched over. This threshold is where the exhausted being dwells in a being beyond being.
GCAS: Your PhD examined the deconstruction of subjectivity and developed the idea of the “useless self.” How did your experience in the GCAS PhD programme shape the direction of that research and your development as a philosopher?
Jamie Davies: The incredibly stimulating cohort absolutely contributed to the developments of my ideas as well as many of the early courses I audited in my first year. I remember the Nietzsche Alps course with Rocky and Creston back in 2023, reading Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, scribbling notes on the destitution of subjectivity in the back of my already relatively worn copy, leaning against the warm rocks, the shape of this unwieldly deconstruction beginning to emerge like a figure on the horizon. This is the beautiful spirit of GCAS: practising thought and being that practising. After that, once I began working with my supervisor, Santiago Zabala, the project tightened up and assumed some much-needed focus and went from being about the subject to an actual deconstruction in the work of Heidegger, Derrida, Nancy, and Agamben.
GCAS: You made the transition from PhD researcher at GCAS to core faculty member. What made you want to remain involved in the GCAS project and community?
Jamie Davies: Sticking with GCAS was something I’d hoped to do from day one, feeling very keenly that it was and still is an event of sorts. Having worked in education in the UK and knowing full well the importance of philosophy and critical thought, I couldn’t witness its gradual erosion across universities globally and not want to be part of the effort to counteract this.
GCAS: You currently teach Baitsiléir Ealaíon students while also supervising first-year PhD researchers. How does your approach change depending on a student’s stage of study?
Jamie Davies: A PhD student is of course very different to a BA student, but I think there are more points of continuity than there are difference. I worked with 11-18 year olds at a school in Bristol and likewise the core approaches to education are largely the same across ages. Students need encouragement, they need guidance and support, and where they need to be pushed they should be, and where they need to be given some slack, they should be. I push my PhD students to really hone in on their ideas: don’t rest content with simply recapitulating what your favourite theorist wrote, but endeavour, as far as possible, to create something new. Whilst this is not a fair expectation of undergraduate students, who need to learn the basics before they can start to re-evaluate them, it’s still about not resting content with what is, and mastering a topic in order to go beyond it (if that’s possible or ideal).
GCAS: What would you say to someone considering studying at GCAS? What kind of student is likely to thrive there, and what should they understand before making the decision?
Jamie Davies: I think that if you are an independent, committed thinker prepared to both work within a tradition whilst contesting it, GCAS is a perfect place of study. Students who are able to work in relatively isolated conditions, without the accountability of an in-person cohort, generally do better, but that’s not a rule. Moreover, GCAS isn’t like traditional universities and that’s for a reason: we’re as rigorous and as demanding, but bureaucratically, institutionally etc., we’re very different, and that’s worth knowing and it is personally part of what drew me to GCAS, so a student who thrives in non-traditional environments, but who doesn’t want to thereby sacrifice the quality of their education, would do well to choose GCAS.
GCAS: Apart from your teaching responsibilities, what is next for you?
Jamie Davies: Presently, I’m finishing up an article on Walter Benjamin and trying to put together, with Filippo, a special issue on Heidegger and the Subject to mark next year’s centenary of Being and Time. This all feeds into my broad research interests on the exhausting of being and developing a reading of the ontology of activity which would bring that ontology to a standstill.
Jamie Davies is a lecturer in philosophy and literature at GCAS. His research happens at the intersections of Continental Philosophy, Critical Theory, and Analytic Philosophy. His PhD, which he is currently editing for prospective publication, was an investigation into the historical deconstruction of subjectivity in Heidegger, Derrida, Nancy, and Agamben, with a view to constructing an alternative form-of-life – the useless self – out of the ruins of the metaphysical subject. His latest article is forthcoming in April 2026 in Angelaki, on ‘Exhaustion Beyond Being,’ and will serve as a prelude to a larger research project into Ontological Idleness. He is currently working on this project after having been awarded a writing residency at Susimetsa in Estonia. He lives in Bristol, UK, and teaches on various topics in philosophy and literature.
