Texts are listed chronologically under the following headings: Books; Articles and chapters; Public lectures/keynote addresses; PhD thesis; Shorter pieces; Photobooks; Interviews.
Most of the books (or extracts) and articles and chapters, and many of the shorter pieces, can be downloaded as PDF files. In other cases I have provided hyperlinks to relevant websites.
Books
Marx’s Method: Ideology, Science and Critique in Capital. Hassocks: Harvester Press/Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979. Complete text. PDF.
—Afterword to Second Edition, 1983. PDF.
Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer. The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1985. Complete text. PDF.
—Postscript to Second Edition, 1993. PDF.
David Frisby and Derek Sayer. Society. London and New York: Routledge, 1986. Front matter and Ch. 2, “Society as Object.” PDF.
The Violence of Abstraction: The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism. Oxford and New York. Blackwell, 1987. Complete text. PDF.
(Edited) Readings from Karl Marx. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. Preface and introduction. PDF.
Capitalism and Modernity: An Excursus on Marx and Weber. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Ch. 4, “Without Regard for Persons.” PDF.
The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Introduction (“Bearings”) and parts of Ch. 5 “Modernisms and Modernities.” PDF.
Going Down for Air: A Memoir in Search of a Subject. Boulder: Paradigm Press, 2004. “A Memoir,” and “In Search of a Subject.” Pre-publication drafts. PDF.
Derek Sayer and Yoke-Sum Wong (eds). Twenty Years of the Journal of Historical Sociology. Two volumes, Essays on the British State and Challenging the Field. Oxford and New York: Wiley, 2008. Front matter. PDF.
Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Introduction and Ch. 1, “The Starry Castle Opens.” PDF.
—Unpublished outtake,”Games of the Doll,” from Chapter 5, “Body Politic.” PDF.
Rank Hypocrisies: The Insult of the REF. London: Sage, 2015. Preface and Ch. 4, “The Abject Academy.” PDF.
—”Evaluating outputs: ‘An appropriate breadth of research expertise’?” Extract from Ch. 2, “Potemkin’s Village.” PDF.
Making Trouble: Surrealism and the Human Sciences. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2017. Preface and Introduction. PDF.
Prague: Crossroads of Europe. London: Reaktion Books (Cityscopes series), 2018. Prologue and essays “Karlín Redux” and “Little Hanoi.” PDF.
Postcards from Absurdistan: Prague at the End of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022. Preface and Introduction. PDF.
—Ch. 7, “As Time Goes By.” PDF.
Articles and chapters
Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer. Moral Relations, Political Economy and Class Struggle. Radical Philosophy, No. 12, 1975. PDF.
Method and Dogma in Historical Materialism. Sociological Review, Vol. 23, No. 4, 1975, 779-805. PDF.
Science as Critique: Marx versus Althusser. In J. Mepham and J-H. Ruben (eds), Issues in Marxist Philosophy, vol. 3. Hassocks: Harvester Press, and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1979, 27-54. PDF.
Philip Corrigan, Harvie Ramsay and Derek Sayer. The State as a Relation of Production. In Philip Corrigan (ed.), Capitalism, State Formation, and Marxist Theory. London: Quartet, 1980, 1-26. PDF.
Philip Corrigan, Harvie Ramsay and Derek Sayer. Bolshevism and the USSR. New Left Review I/125, January-February 1981. PDF.
The Critique of Politics and Political Economy: Capitalism, Communism, and the State in Marx’s Writings of the Mid-1840s. Sociological Review, Vol. 33, No. 2, 1985, 221-253. PDF.
Derek Sayer and Philip Corrigan. Revolution Against the State: The Context and Significance of Marx’s Late Writings. Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1987, 65-85. PDF.
Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer. From the “Body Politic” to the “National Interest”: English State Formation in Comparative and Historical Perspective. Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2021, 109-152. Written in 1987, previously unpublished, preprint version. PDF.
British Reaction to the Amritsar Massacre 1919-1920. Past and Present, No. 131, 1991, 130-64. PDF.
A Notable Administration: English State Formation and the Rise of Capitalism. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 97, No. 5, 1992, 1382-1415. PDF.
Everyday Forms of State Formation: Dissident Remarks on Hegemony. In Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (eds), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994, pp. 367-378. PDF.
Prague as a Vantage Point on Modern European History. METU Studies in Development, vol. 22, no. 3, 1995, 259-289. PDF.
The Language of Nationality and the Nationality of Language: Prague, 1780-1920. Past and Present, No. 153, 1998, 164-210. PDF.
A Quintessential Czechness. Common Knowledge, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1998, 136-164. PDF.
Gerald Aylmer and DGOS: In Memoriam. Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol. 15 No. 1, 2002, 60-63. PDF,
Surrealities. In Timothy O. Benson (ed.), Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation 1910-1930, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art/MIT Press, 2002, pp. 90-107. PDF.
Whereof We Cannot Speak: Notes on the Difficulty of Writing about 9–11. 2003. First, unpublished longer draft of Wittgenstein at Ground Zero (2008). PDF.
The Unbearable Lightness of Building: A Cautionary Tale. Grey Room, No. 16, 2004, 6-35. PDF.
Incognito Ergo Sum: Language, Memory and the Subject. Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 21, No. 5, 2004, 67-89. PDF.
Doll Parts, or, the Subject Reconfigured from the Point of View of the Mannequin. Paper given at Public Proofs: Science, Technology, Democracy conference, European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, Paris, August 2004. Previously unpublished in full, parts were utilized in other publications. PDF.
Ceci n’est-pas un con: Duchamp, Lacan, and L’Origine du monde. In Marc Décimo (ed.), Marcel Duchamp and Eroticism, London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007, 160-172. PDF.
Wittgenstein at Ground Zero. Space and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2008, 12-19. PDF.
The Photograph: The Still Image. In S. Barber and C. Peniston-Bird (eds), History Beyond the Text, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 48-70. PDF.
Hypermodernism in the Boondocks: Photo/Montage and the Czech Book. Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2010, 243-9. PDF.
André Breton and the Magic Capital: An Agony in Six Fits. Bohemia, Vol. 52, No. 1, 2012, 55-75. PDF.
Crossed Wires: On the Prague-Paris Surrealist Telephone. Common Knowledge, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2012, 193-207. PDF.
Pod Stalinem: Field Notes from Another Modernity. Journal of Classical Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2013, 87-103. PDF.
American Surreal: The Day the Wall Came Down. In Dariusz Gafijczuk and Derek Sayer (eds), The Inhabited Ruins of Central Europe: Re-imagining Space, History and Memory. New York: Palgrave, 2013, pp. 1-7. PDF.
What We Remember and How We Forget: Art History and the Czech Avant-garde. In Dariusz Gafijczuk and Derek Sayer (eds), Inhabited Ruins of Central Europe: Re-imagining Space, History and Memory. New York: Palgrave, 2013, pp. 148-177. PDF.
Modernism, Seen from Prague, March 1937. Artl@s Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2014, 18-28. PDF.
Great Arches Viewed from the Coasts of Bohemia: Reflections Inspired by Tables of Kings. New Perspectives, Issue 2, 2016, 73-92. Note: I have revised this text for a forthcoming new edition of The Great Arch (Brill/Haymarket, in press), substantially expanding the final section, and it is the revised version I have uploaded here. PDF.
L’il Wallet Picture. Introduction to Kyler Zeleny (ed.), Materialities. London: Velvet Cell Pocketbooks, 2016, 9-17. PDF.
White Riot—Brexit, Trump, and Post-Factual Politics. Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2017, 92-106. PDF.
Between Karel Čapek and a Hard Brexit. CEE New Perspectives blog, 16 June, 2017. PDF.
Machines that Can Substitute for Humans—Notes on the Boundaries of Humanity. Nrivijnana Patrika/Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 22, 2018 (Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh). PDF. Revised version of Between Karel Čapek and a Hard Brexit.
Surrealist Prague (this little mother has claws). New Perspectives, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2018, 65-75. PDF.
10 x 10 (elegy for an America that is only partly imagined). coastsofbohemia blog, June 13, 2018. Reposted on Substack. PDF.
Karel Teige. In Michael Richardson (ed), The International Encyclopedia of Surrealism, Vol. 3, Surrealists M-Z. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, pp. 316-324. PDF.
Hundreds and Hundreds. Anthropology and Humanism, 48(2), 2023. PDF.
Eyeless in Gaza. Paratexts, Contexts, and the Weaponization of October 7. Canadian Dimension, February 9, 2024. PDF.
Lifting the curtain on the 20th century: the metamorphoses of Richard Strauss. An entertainment in four acts. Substack, August 9, 2024. PDF.
The Tyranny of the Abstract. Sociology Lens, January 14, 2025. Preprint. PDF.
Public lectures/keynote addresses
Anamneses. Keynote, Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, Congress 2000, University of Alberta, 2000. (Multimedia presentation with visual images and music.) PDF.
Love, War, and the Songs of Exile: Prague-on-Seine 1938-1940. Tomáš Masaryk Annual Memorial Lecture, Czech Embassy, London, November 2011. PDF.
The Chance Encounter of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella on a Statistical Table: Notes on Surrealism and Sociology. Annual Methods Lab Lecture, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 6 March 2015. PDF.
Prague at the End of History (The Prague Address). Keynote, European International Studies Association (EISA) 12th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, Prague, September 12, 2018. PDF.
PhD thesis
Some Issues in Historical Materialism. Durham University, 1975. PDF.
Shorter pieces
2004
In Search of Bohemia. BBC Music Magazine supplement, A Companion to the 2004 BBC Proms, pp. 12-15. PDF.
2013
Albert Einstein’s Miraculous Year, the British Government, and Open Access. coastsofbohemia blog, January 31, reposted on Substack.
More on Open Access: HEFCE brings out the big REF stick. coastsofbohemia blog, March 4, reposted on Substack.
April Fool’s Day: RCUK adds fuel to the Open Access fire. coastsofbohemia blog, March 7, reposted on Substack.
A scandal in Bohemia, New York Times, Op-Ed, July 10, page A-23, and International Herald Tribune, July 11. PDF.
2014
Why I love the Prague coffee-house Kafka didn’t frequent. Zócalo Public Square, May 13. PDF.
Austin in available light. The End of Austin, Issue 5, May 22. PDF.
Time to abandon the gold standard? Peer review for the REF falls far short of internationally accepted standards. LSE Impact blog, November 19.
Problems with peer review for the REF. CDBU blog, November 21.
One scholar’s crusade against the REF. Times Higher Education, December 11.
2015
A whole lotta cheatin’ going on? REF stats revisited. CDBU blog, February 1.
The REF: why did it cost so much? Times Higher Education, July 30.
Why did REF 2014 cost three times as much as the RAE? Hint: It’s not just because of the added impact element. LSE Impact blog, August 3.
2016
Prejudice, hysteria, and a want of political leadership: of refugees and November 17 in Prague. CEE New Perspectives blog, January 8. PDF.
2017
Derek Sayer and Benjamin Tallis, Iron Curtains of the mind. Open Democracy, November 6. PDF.
Talkin’ ’bout My Generation. coastsofbohemia blog, December 31. Reposted on Substack. PDF.
2018
Sudeten ghosts. CEE New Perspectives blog, January 29. PDF.
Response to questionnaire “Schizophrenie, est-il une solution?” Alienist II (Prague), pp. 76-8. PDF.
Athens aesthetics. In Craig Campbell and Yoke-Sum Wong (eds), Ex Situ: (Un)making space out of place, exh. cat., reposted on coastsofbohemia blog, 11 May 2019. PDF.
2022
The density of unexpected encounters. Britské listy, November 1, 2022. PDF.
Prague’s infinite shades of gray. Princeton University Press Ideas blog, November 10, 2022. PDF.
2023
Prayers for the Dead. Substack, October 17, 2023. PDF.
2024
From 2024 onward many of my Substack posts on the Gaza War or US politics were reworked and republished as articles for Canadian Dimension (CD), most of which were simultaneously translated into Czech in Britské listy (BL).
A Massacre of Thoughts: The weaponization of October 7, “antisemitism,” and the ousting of Claudine Gay. Substack, January 8. PDF.
A clarifying moment. Canada and the ICJ ruling on genocide in Gaza. CD January 30. PDF.
Is the tide turning on Israel? CD, February 21. French translation, Presse-toi à gauche, February 6. PDF.
An extreme act of protest. Aaron Bushnell, Jan Palach, and resisting the normalization of the unthinkable. CD March 3/BL March 5. PDF.
A moral crossroads for the West. Is Benjamin Netanyahu about to cross his Rubicon? CD March 14. PDF.
The threshold of intent. Closing in on a ‘final solution’ in Gaza. CD March 26. PDF.
Powerful stories. Facts, fictions, and fabrications regarding Israel’s ‘Black Sabbath.’ CD April 2/BL April 3. PDF.
All the perfumes of Arabia. Israel’s human targeting software and the banality of evil. CD April 18. PDF.
First we take Manhattan. The student protests and the Gaza genocide. CD May 1/BL May 2. PDF.
The measure of our evil. Observations on the deadliest attack on the Palestinian people since the Nakba. CD August 5/BL August 7. PDF.
States of exception. Is it ‘antisemitic’ to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza? CD August 28/BL August 30. PDF.
Our dead don’t seem to count the same way. ‘Unwavering support’ versus ‘ironclad commitment’—a tale of two strategies. CD October 1/BL October 3. PDF.
Is the West finally seeing sense on Gaza? The Blinken-Austin letter could be a game-changer, or just another electoral gimmick. CD October 15/BL October 16. PDF.
Not even the main event. As America votes, the genocide in Gaza goes on—and on and on. CD November 4/BL November 5. PDF.
I’m speaking! (and you’re not). Nowhere was the suppression of Palestinian voices and erasure of the Gaza genocide more evident than in Harris’s campaign. CD November 21/BL November 22. PDF.
One law for the West and another for the rest? A presidential pardon and the killing fields of Gaza. CD December 10/BL December 30. PDF.
2025
Trump’s second coming. The first six weeks. CD March 10. PDF.
Living in the Upside-Down. US in meltdown, Palestine genocide back on, West very concerned. CD March 21/BL March 25. PDF.
Democracy dies in daylight. The great institutions of liberal America are falling to Trump like dominoes, one by one. CD April 7/BL April 8. Republished in Monthly Review Online, April 9, 2025. PDF.
One day, everyone will have always been against this. Is the near-unanimity of support for Israel’s assault on Gaza beginning to fade? CD, June 7/BL June 9. Republished in Monthly Review Online, June 9. Spanish translation, Un día, todo el mundo estará en contra de esto, in Gaceta Crítica, June 11. PDF.
Gaslighting the way to World War III: Israel’s right to self-defense and other tall tales for big children in high office. CD, June 17/BL, June 18. Republished in Monthly Review Online, June 18. Spanish translation, El «gaslighting» (manipulación psicológica de las personas durante un período prolongado) como camino a la Tercera Guerra Mundial, Gaceta Crítica, June 19. PDF.
Things fall apart: the centre will not hold. Where is the West headed after Israel and America’s ‘12-Day War’ on Iran? CD, July 9/BL July 8. PDF.
Endgames in Gaza? This is not a ‘humanitarian crisis.’ It’s a genocide. Our genocide. CD, July 29/BL, July 29. PDF.
A graveyard of liberal illusions. Some unpalatable takeouts from the killing fields of Gaza. CD, August 13/BL, August 13. Republished in Monthly Review Online, August 15. PDF.
Oh Canada, where art thou? It’s elbows down as Mark Carney and Anita Anand throw Canadian ICC judge Kimberly Prost under the American bus. CD, August 31/BL, September 1. PDF.
The rewards of terror: erasing a genocide with the ‘Art of the Deal.’ CD/BL, October 2. PDF.
Photobooks
Modern(ist) Encounters. Unpublished, 2025. To view, it is best to download the file and open in Adobe Acrobat, with the View menu set to Two-page view. PDF.
Interviews
Lisette Allen, “Talking Czech surrealism, chlebíčky with the author of Prague: Capital of the Twentieth Century.” Expats.cz interview, 14 January 2014. PDF.
coasts of bohemia 