Faculty

Profile

For me, history of philosophy and a critical theory of society are two sides of the same coin: our interest for the past always reflects the standpoint of the present, but one cannot understand the present without navigating our past. I see philosophy as a critical tool in a constant dialogue with other disciplines, as well as an endeavour entangled with other practices for sense making such as history, art and psychoanalysis. I have written on the history of European philosophy (particularly early modern), critical theory, feminism, post- and decolonial studies.

For a general discussion of my work in the decades 2000-2020, see the volume Debating Imaginal Politics: Dialogues With Chiara Bottici.

Degrees Held

1999, Laurea di dottore in filosofia, University of Florence. Dissertation  title: "The Analogy between Men and States"

2004, PhD in Social And Political Science, European University Institute. Dissertation title: "A Philosophy of Political Myth"

Recent Publications

Books

• Manifiesto anarcafeminista (Ned Ediciones 2021, Italian and French translation).
• Anarchafeminism (Bloomsbury, 2021, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese translations).
• A Feminist Mythology (Bloomsbury, 2021, Italian edition Castelvecchi 2022; Spanish and Portuguese translations).
• Imaginal Politics: Images beyond the Imagination and beyond the Imaginary (Critical Theory Series, Columbia University Press, 2014, Italian translation forthcoming 2023).
• Imagining Europe: Myth, Memory, and Identity, co-authored with Benoit Challand (Cambridge University Press, 2013, italian translation forthcoming 2023)
• The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations, co-authored with Benoit Challand (Routledge, 2010; italian translation forthcoming 2023)
• A Philosophy of Political Myth (Cambridge University Press, 2007; italian translation Bollati Boringhieri 2010)
• Uomini e stati. Percorsi di un'analogia (ETS, 2004); English trans. Men and States (Palgrave, 2009)

Edited Volumes

• Feminism, Capitalism, and Critique: Essays in Honor of Nancy Fraser, co-edited with Banu Bargu (Palgrave, 2017)
• The Anarchist Turn, co-edited with Jacob Blumenfeld and Simon Critchley (Pluto Press, 2013)
• The Politics of Imagination, co-edited with Benoit Challand (Routledge, 2011)

Articles (selection)

• "Towards an interstitial global critical theory", with Benoit Challand, in Globalizations, Nov 2021
• “Navigating Mass Psychology: The Political Myth of Trumpism” in Recherches en psychanalyse /Research in Psychoanalysis, n.32 January 2022, pp. 8-33 [French, Portuguese translations]
• “Imagination, Imaginary, Imaginal: Towards a New Social Ontology?” in Social Epistemology, 33:5, (2019) 433-441
• “Anarchafeminism: Towards An Ontology of the Transindividual" Pubic Seminar, March 7 (2018) [Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Slovak translations]
• “Who is afraid of The Myth of the State? Remarks on Cassirer’s Forgotten Manuscript” Social Imaginaries, 3.2 (2017) 213-227 [German translation]
• “Bodies in plural: Towards an Anarchafeminist Manifesto.” Thesis Eleven, Vol 142, 2017, pp.99-111 [Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian translations]
• “Rethinking the biopolitical turn: from the thanatopolitical to the geneapolitical paradigm.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 35(1):175-197 (2015) [Spanish translation]
• “Democracy and the spectacle: On Rousseau’s homeopathic strategy.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 41(3):235-248 (2015)
• “Another Enlightenment: Spinoza on myth and imagination.” Constellations 19 (4):1-19 (2012) [Italian, Spanish, Turkish translations]
• “Imaginal politics.” Thesis Eleven 106:56-72 (2011) [German, Spanish translations]
• “The politics of imagination and the public role of religion.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 35(8):985-1005 (2009) [Italian translation] 
• “Philosophies of political myth. A comparative look backward: Cassirer, Sorel and Spinoza.” European Journal of Political Theory 8(3):365-382 (2009)
• “The domestic analogy and the Kantian project of perpetual peace.” Journal of Political Philosophy 11(4):392-410 (2003) [German translation]

Research Interests

Early modern philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, feminism, LGBTQI+ issues.