Email: josh.whitaker@me.com

My interdisciplinary research spans scriptwriting and philosophical analysis. I propose that the un-filmed script for ‘St Paul’ (1977) by Pier Paolo Pasolini is the conceptual hinge that links together ‘The Gospel According to Matthew’ (1964) and ‘Salò, or 120 Days of Sodom’ (1975), constituting a previously undiscovered trilogy in Pasolini’s work, thereby an original contribution to knowledge. 

I will argue they are thematically linked by notions of narrative, messianic time, kairos, apocalypse and eschatology, with the figure of St Paul philosophically and theologically central to this understanding. The recent philosophic work of Giorgio Agamben will provide the primary conceptual underpinnings to the research, further supported by readings of Walter Benjamin and Jacob Taubes who are both central to an understanding of Agamben’s work. 

A theoretical text on the radical Pauline notion of kairos and its implications for Pasolini's cinema will be partnered with an original text-based work, an adaptation of Pasolini’s script for ‘St Paul’. Written in the form of a traditional film script this new work will utilise concepts inherent to Agamben’s philosophy and current forms of art writing. 

It is within the historically defined notion of Pauline eschaton and apocalypse that this piece of writing will be developed. Working with methods of translation and adaptation inherent to Pasolini’s and Agamben’s thought, the practice-based film script of the PhD situates apocalyptical time within a contemporary context. 

The practice-based elements of the PhD will work to describe accurately and then imaginatively a contemporary situation with historical precedent. That of a society starting to consider an eschatological moment, and the necessity to move away from it.