Category Archives: Uncategorized

[manuscript for presentation at Stony Brook] To Have No Face: Introduction Like so many Foucault conference papers start with an epigraphical quotation of Deleuze, I will, in turn, start mine with a quote from Michel Foucault: do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing – withContinue reading “The Face of the Eye of Power: On Slipping Subjectivities”

We Stand Without Apology Before a Resigned Philosophy: The history of philosophy is, among many other things, a history of an articulation of a world disclosed exclusively through increasingly refined notions of capacity and ability. In an insurgent context, this would not be a controversial claim. But there is no place in insurgency among thoseContinue reading “A Preparatory Note To An Evacuation”

[Manuscript from a talk delivered at the centennial celebration of Foucault at Philosophy, Disability, and Social Change 6] Introduction: For the past two years, my focus has been investigating what my friends and I have described as “eugenic modernity.” I have examined this, first, from the position of neoliberalism and biopolitics, then from the stateContinue reading ““To Kill the Vanquished”: Rousseau at the Threshold of Biopolitics”

In Foucault’s consequential lecture series written at the height of the formative time in his development of genealogy, “Society Must Be Defended”, there is a short interlude that demands some meditation – especially in our time.There was a moment, in that constant war of political philosophy in the Early Modern period, where Homo oeconomicus was,Continue reading “The Barbarian’s Eternal Present”

These are comments from a panel at SPEP I would like to thank Shawn and John for graciously sending me this invite to participate in this roundtable on an intriguing and difficult topic – one that titans from Reiner Schurmann to Hannah Arendt and others have attempted to speak to all in different ways. Well,Continue reading “The Philosopher and the Population”

Maurice Blanchot, in his excursus on friendship, is brief, tactfully so. Blanchot is an author who can make of brevity a tool for opening expanses. Blanchot’s mastery of the aphoristic form exemplifies this, but even in his more conventional prose one finds where he restrains himself the most to be the most pensive. His essay,Continue reading “A Word on Friendship”

Introduction: A Tenuous Thread It is difficult to overstate the complexity and vastness, as well as the delicacy and modesty, of Giorgio Agamben’s twenty-year research project, Homo Sacer. What seemingly began as a book meant to examine the relation between the ontological structure of the polis and its (excluded and annihilated) components ultimately expanded toContinue reading “The Exception of Politics: On Disability in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer”

Letter to a Harsh Friend: It is said that we are simultaneously resigned, and yet the great antagonists of philosophy. We admit we are no friends of the history of philosophy, that is certainly true. We do not take the blackmail of the enlightenment to be given unities that are to be left untouched. WeContinue reading “The Indignation of Disability: Other Life, Other Philosophy, Other Thought”

I What does it mean to write philosophy in an epoch characterized by the complete domination of refinement? What does it mean to confront refinement as both the pinnacle of modernity and its primary concern? And, beyond these questions, what does it mean to even begin a discussion about the refinement of the human being?Continue reading “Preliminary Questions to an Investigation into Eugenic Modernity and its Metaphysics”