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.

Besides English, my work has also appeared in Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, Romanian, Slovak and Catalan. Since 2001, I have given 130 lectures across five continents, including venues such as Stanford University, University of Chicago, University of Toronto, Vilnius, Barcelona, Ljubljana, Rosario Argentina, Harvard University, Calarts, University College London, Berlin, EHESS in Paris, Universitade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo (USP), Yale University, CUNY, Sydney University, Columbia University, and Princeton University, among others.

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, Chinese 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 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.