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, according to an interdisciplary model of critique that goes back to the Frankfurt School. I have written on the history of European philosophy (particularly modern political thought), critical theory, feminism, post- and decolonial studies.

Besides English, my work has also appeared in Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, Bulgarian, 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. 

2004, PhD in Social And Political Science, European University Institute.

Recent Publications

Books

• Anarchafeminism (Bloomsbury, 2022, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Turkish 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 2024)
• The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations, co-authored with Benoit Challand (Routledge, 2010; italian translation forthcoming 2024)
• 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
• “Imagination, Imaginary, Imaginal: Towards a New Social Ontology?” in Social Epistemology, 33:5, (2019) 433-441
• “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

Social and political philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, feminism, LGBTQI+ issues.