PUBLICATIONS
PRESENTATIONS
I am interested in how place informs how we think about ecological justice, how myth informs our ideas of community, how the infatuation with death inspires racism and anti-semitism, and how all of these issues determine the shape of democratic political contestation today.
Book Project
My current book project develops a phenomenology of political myth. Although it is widely recognized that mythological patterns of language and thought serve to galvanize acts of political violence, it is not clear precisely how and why this works so well. In my book, I argue that the success of political myth depends on its ability to lock political actors inside closed, self-referential fields of meaning from which it can be difficult to escape. I argue that effective political myths operate by playing upon the structures of language, thought, and perception, bending and manipulating them. Using case studies drawn from 20th and 21st century social movements, I show how the infusion of myth into political conflicts can cause seemingly-fixed features of consciousness to suddenly appear suspended, augmented, or otherwise reorganized, particularly in contexts of mass direct action. In this project, I draw heavily on the political phenomenology of myth developed by Jewish philosopher Furio Jesi, whose work I am helping to introduce into the Anglophone world.
The Lectures and Papers of Reiner Schürmann
Phenomenology also informs my approach to the history of philosophy. I am part of a team of scholars that is editing and commenting upon the writings and lectures of German philosopher Reiner Schürmann, among the most brilliant interpreters of Martin Heidegger’s thought. Last year saw the appearance of Schürmann’s Modern Philosophies of the Will, to be followed in 2024 by an essay collection entitled The Place of the Symbolic (each with self-authored afterwords), alongside a special issue of Philosophy Today featuring contributions by Giorgio Agamben, Catherine Malabou, myself and others.
Research
Publications
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Abstract: In dialogue with Kristin Ross and Fred Moten, as well as recent theorizations of destituent power, this article aims to trace the practical logic that governs place-based politics in our anarchic epoch, including the construction of collective formations that defend them.
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Abstract: Drawing on Furio Jesi’s 1979 Cultura di destra [Right Wing Culture], this article sketches a preliminary genealogy of fascist accelerationism, a distinct current of white supremacist militancy responsible for a considerable number of North American mass murder events over the span of four decades. After positioning Jesi’s theory of fascist violence within the broader methodological turn of his late period work, the article proceeds to outline three key features of right-wing thought: a language of wordless ideas, a funerary religion of exemplary deaths, and a repertoire of militant yet militarily “useless” tasks. Resisting the tendency either to over- or under-politicize these deadly events, Jesi’s analysis instead allows us recognize the operation of a mythological machine that animates white supremacist mass murders over the past half century. The aim of this article is to trace the genesis and mutation of this machine, with particular emphasis on the period from 1975 to the present.
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Abstract: This article traces a logical and political thread leading from the theory of revolt in Furio Jesi’s 1969 Spartakus to his later work on festivity and the “mythological machine model.” It opens by arguing that the humanist model that frames Jesi's early efforts to disarm the allure of insurgent violence, sacrificial mythology, and Manichaean politics generates insoluble aporias that spur the development of a radically different approach to the study of myth and human nature. Next, it shows how Jesi’s studies on festivity from the 1970s redound upon and transform the theory of revolt in Spartakus, bringing this theory more in line with current epochal conditions. In doing so, they presage and lay the groundwork for the theory of destituent power developed in recent decades by Giorgio Agamben.
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Editorial introduction to a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly on the subject of “destituent power.” Co-authored with Idris Robinson
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Afterword to Reiner Schürmann’s Modern Philosophies of the Will. Co-authored with Francesco Guercio.
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(published version; Italian translation)
Abstract: This article offers an account of the basic movement of Giorgio Agamben’s ethical philosophy. The ethical gesture is stretched between two forms of messianism, a “paralysed messianism” associated with life under permanent state of exception, and the “perfected” nihilism of messianic fulfilment, which Agamben associates with the movement of revocation or “destitution”. I argue that Agamben’s concept of destitution cannot be accurately treated as a synonym for negation or destruction, as it envelops irreducibly creative elements. At the same time, the creation at issue here is of a peculiar sort, since it is modelled not on the act of production but rather on the restoration of a creative potential within sensibility. Special emphasis is here placed on Agamben’s retrieval of the work of a relatively obscure French linguist, Gustav Guillaume, whose theory of “operative time” allows his messianism to subvert the extrinsic opposition between the suspended time of revolt’s divine violence and the historical time of everyday life.
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Introduction to a special Symposium on the work of Italian philosopher and mythologist Furio Jesi in Theory & Event.
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(published version; Italian translation)
Abstract: This article evaluates Furio Jesi's conception of mythic violence, focusing in particular on his theory of revolt as a mode of collective experience qualitatively distinct from that of revolution. Jesi offers both a descriptive phenomenology of how uprisings alter the human experience of time and action, as well as a critique of the "autonomy" these moments afford their participants. In spite of their immense transformative power to interrupt historical time and generate alternate forms of collective subjectivation, the event-like structure of revolt also harbors within it a unique set of dangers. Such creative mutations risk trapping political actors within a relational logic of the exception, a "ban" structure that, although distinct from the atomization that governs normal time, ultimately works to reinforce it in the long run. The article concludes by suggesting that Jesi's late concept of the "cruel festival" offers a troubling premonition of our current era, in which revolts proliferate in the absence of any ideological horizon of revolution.
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Abstract: This article provides a thematic overview of the work of contemporary French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou. It suggests that the notion of violent capture serves as a guiding theme linking Chamayou's work, linking it to his early study of experimental medicine, his genealogy of manhunting and predatory power, as well as his recent study of contemporary predatory or "cynegetic" warfare use of drones.
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Introduction to the English edition of François Zourabichvili’s Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event.
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An article on utopia and biopolitics in Season 3 of David Simon’s celebrated television series,The Wire.
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Edited Books and Journal Topics
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(published version | roundtable discussion)
Includes articles by Kieran Aarons, Giorgio Agamben, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Philippe Blouin, Luhuna Carvalho, Rodrigo Karmy, Sam Law, Katherine Nelson, Idris Robinson, and Stephanie Wakefield. Co-edited with Idris Robinson.
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Through the lenses of Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, this edited volume traces the development of the relation between the will and the law as self-given. “Modern Philosophies of the Will” explores a variety of topics including: the ontological turn in philosophy of the will; the will’s playful character and the problem of teleology; the will as principle of morality as discussed by Kant, of lifeforms as discussed by Nietzsche, and of technology as discussed by Heidegger; the formal identity of legislation; and transgression of the law. This volume traces three strategies in the development of the philosophy of will from Kant to Heidegger, through rationality and irrationality of the will, the ontological turn, and law.
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The first edited collection in English engaging with the work of Italian critical theorist and philosopher Furio Jesi. Edited and introduced by Kieran Aarons. Includes articles by Kieran Aarons, Giorgio Agamben, Andrea Cavalletti, Enrico Manera, Ricardo Noronha, and Alberto Toscano.