4 RESULTS
2025OnlinePanel 18Saturday 27th September 2025Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Reluctant Gods: Divine Interveners Resisting Deification

This presentation explores the ironic tensions between the Emperor of Mankind and Lion El’Johnson’s respective aversions to deification and their eventual embodiment of divine roles within the Warhammer universe. Drawing on the events of *Son of the Forest* , as well as other texts, we examine how the Emperor performs the role of a “Divine …

2025In personPanel 10Saturday 27th September 2025Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

The Dead God, The Golden Throne, and A Hope Messianic: An Examination on the Organizing (Dead) Power of the Master Signifier and The Abandonment of Messiah 

This paper explores the figure of the Emperor of Man from Warhammer 40,000 as a Master Signifier, situating him within the psychoanalytic traditions of Freud and Lacan while drawing a sharp contrast with the messianic hope articulated in the ethical philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. In Freudian and Lacanian theory, the Father—whether as …

2025Friday 26th September 2025OnlinePanel 9Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Al-Farabi’s Attainment of Happiness and the God-Emperor of Mankind

The works of the medieval Arabic philosopher Al-Farabi (c. 872-950) reconstruct the thinking of Plato and Aristotle in a world forever changed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the Attainment of Happiness and The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, Al-Farabi quietly presents a radical political program. Al-Farabi’s ponderous opening meditation on epistemology turns out to …

2025Friday 26th September 2025OnlinePanel 6Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

The Emperor and the Chthonic: Warhammer 40,000 as Mythic Dreamwork of the Western Tradition

This paper offers a depth-psychological reading of Warhammer 40,000, in which the setting is interpreted as a modern myth that dramatises and literalises the central tension of the Western tradition, stretching back to its Grecian origins.  I use Camille Paglia’s discussion of the Apollonian and chthonic to argue that Warhammer 40,000 symbolically represents the Western …