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Category Archives: Dissertation

Left Behind

Sunday, May 20, 2007

With a couple exceptions, I’m not particularly close with anyone in my cohort at York or its equivalent at Carleton. Most of the people I talk to were beginning their PhD when I was beginning my M.A. or, in the case of one of them, beginning his PhD when I was in fourth year. They’re [...]

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Barbarians, Old and New

Saturday, April 28, 2007

On May 19th at 9:00 AM in a room yet to be announced, I’ll be giving the first public presentation on my work on barbarians and savages, drawing upon Hobbes and Montesquieu as examples. Apparently my session is entitled “Fundamentalisms” (I’m not sure why!) as one other person is doing a paper on Israeli fundamentalism [...]

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Concordances for Hobbes

Monday, April 16, 2007

In an effort to get a grasp on the structure of Hobbes’ works and how that structure changes through the course of his subsequent publications, I’ve adapted the table of concordances J.C.A. Gaskin provides in his introduction to The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (Oxford UP, 1994). Should energy permit, I’ll construct similar tables [...]

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Hobbes

Monday, April 16, 2007

I’ve been working through Hobbes over and over again the past few weeks – his political writings and a number of commentaries. (The imbrication of rational choice/game theoretic and analytic philosophy – i.e., Gauthier, Kavka, Hampton, etc – is especially infuriating; but that is another discussion. Suffice to say, I find it problematic how (1) [...]

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Hobbes

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Can any of my theologically inclined colleagues tell me if the last half of the Leviathan has any lasting importance and, thus, should be read? While it appears to be largely about “political theology,” I’m hesitant to read a hundred and fifty pages on the Christian commonwealth and another hundred and fifty pages on the [...]

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Reading (and some Writing)

Thursday, March 1, 2007

I have been interested in the question of reading – how to read; the politics (as it were) of reading; why some texts conjure certain sorts of readings. The texts that bring the strangest readings are the texts that produce high degrees of affect in their readers – Thomas Hobbes, Benedict de Spinoza, Karl Marx, [...]

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Dissertation

Friday, February 16, 2007

Now that my proposal has been accepted, I need to begin working on the dissertation proper. My biggest fear heading into this project – the evidence being derived from my comprehensives and the proposal itself – is that the final product will become overwrought; that I’ll refuse to let it go. Last night I was [...]

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Approved!

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Pending a footnote on savages and barbarians in the Scottish Enlightenment and a few minor editorial changes, my dissertation proposal has been approved. (That approval is, of course, subject to formal rubber-stamping at the Faculty level; I’ve never heard of the Faculty refusing a proposal, however.)

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Dissertation Proposal

Sunday, January 21, 2007

One title page, two epigraphs (Walter Benjamin and Constantine Cavafy), five sections, seventeen footnotes, fourteen pages of prose, seven pages of bibliography itself divided into three sections… pending approval by committee (hopefully by email rather than meeting), my revised proposal is complete. New title: Savages, Barbarians and Citizen-Subjects. Forthcoming in late 2008 or early 2009. [...]

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Bibliographies

Saturday, January 13, 2007

I enjoy reading bibliographies, but I hate writing them. Although I have a copy of EndNote, I’ve never really gotten into that program: I guess I didn’t like it in some way. I still make my bibliographies the old way: keeping note of what I cite or otherwise refer to. It’s time consuming; especially when [...]

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