Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies

Paul is Director of the Race, Representation and Cultural Identity Research Group and researches questions of cultural agency and cultural politics in global/postcolonial popular culture.

Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies: Politics, Theory and Intervention (Edinburgh University Press, 2007)

“[Post-Marxism Versus Cultural Studies is] the first sustained scholarly assessment of the scandal of post-Marxism [which] traces the struggle – both intellectual and political – of academic Marxism to keep its footing on the long march through the institution. As the “versus” that hinges his title suggests, neither post-Marxism nor cultural studies remain unscathed by Bowman’s staging of this face off. Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies rewards the serious reader concerned to come to terms with the discursive politics of the contemporary university”. John Mowitt (Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota).

“This is an ambitious book which will make a significant impact in […] an exciting field which is beginning to open up a sustained ‘thinking about’ politics from a post-structuralist perspective”. Martin McQuillan (Professor of Cultural Theory and Analysis, University of Leeds)

Deconstructing Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2008)

“Deconstructing Popular Culture … is a valuable contribution to the field of cultural studies, which explains, elaborates and transforms the ways in which the disciplinary and institutional relations of deconstruction and cultural studies could be rethought. It builds and explicitly draws on the influential works of [key] figures […], yet also does something new – it finds a way of speaking to undergraduate students in cultural studies (and in the humanities in general) about why they need to read (and not be afraid of) deconstruction. Above all, it introduces these students to the institutionalisation of knowledge and intellectual inquiry – i.e., the ‘university scene’ – in which they are all already situated: its express aim is to realise the ways in which, as the book’s mantra has it, ‘deconstruction is an institutional practice for which the institution remains a problem’. This is a book with both a passionate argument – and not everyone will agree with it, of course, which is one its key themes – and a rare skill in making the ‘fine print’ of complex theoretical arguments accessible to a non-specialist audience”. (Anonymous Reviewer for Palgrave)

Theorizing Bruce Lee (Rodopi, 2009)

Theorizing Bruce Lee engages questions of culture, politics, ideology and philosophy by way of a series of engagements with the popular cultural film and martial arts icon, Bruce Lee. The book deals with the cultural and theoretical issues, themes and problematics of Bruce Lee’s emergence and success, the relations between Bruce Lee films and cultural fantasy, the relations between these fantasies and cultural practices such as martial arts, and the wider cultural, political and philosophical issues of Bruce Lee’s intervention.

Leon Hunt writes: “Bruce Lee is a complex and contradictory figure, and it's a formidable task to take on the multiple facets of his legacy – fighter, film star, philosopher, nationalist, multiculturalist, innovator.  With an approach as multidisciplinary and iconoclastic as Lee's approach to martial arts, Bowman provides an original and exhilarating account of Lee as ‘cultural event’.  No one has done a better job of explaining why the martial arts 'legend' remains such an important and provocative figure”.

Similarly, Gina Marchetti writes: “Taking on Martin Heidegger and Slavoj Žižek as well as drawing on Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Guy Debord, Jacques Ranciere, Rey Chow, and Stuart Hall, among others, Bowman shows how Bruce Lee “speaks” to the philosophical debates that frame our understanding of global popular culture today.  Although Bowman may not be able to resolve the philosophical battles surrounding our ability to “know” Bruce Lee, he does a remarkable job of articulating why Bruce Lee remains an essential force within not only world cinema but global culture – both “high” and “low.”  Armoured with his philosophical nunchakus, Bowman goes to battle with anyone who may doubt Lee’s ongoing importance, and this book will undoubtedly become essential reading for everyone (from philosopher to kung fu practitioner) interested in popular culture and Asian cinema.”