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Category Archives: Research Notes

Recent Papers of Interest

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Both from the current (35(4) August 2007) issue of Political Theory. Machiavelli’s Political Trials and “The Free Way of Life” John P. McCormick University of Chicago, Illinois This essay examines the political trials through which, according to Machiavelli’s Discourses, republics should punish magistrates and prominent citizens who threaten or violate popular liberty. Unlike modern constitutions, [...]

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Schmitt and Kierkegaard

Friday, June 22, 2007

Has anyone written on Schmitt and Kierkegaard? There are subtle references to Kierkegaard throughout Schmitt’s body of work, but especially in Political Theology. In his book on Hobbes, Schmitt speaks of “the sickness unto death” of Hobbes’ mortal god.

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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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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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The Politics of Idiocy

Monday, February 12, 2007

Some from Mark Featherstone’s “The End of History: Utopian Realism and the Politics of Idiocy” (best title on an article so far this year) in the current issue (March 2007, 7(1)) of the Journal of Classical Sociology. Admittedly, it isn’t entirely clear why Featherstone published the article here, but the journal has published solid work, [...]

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Derrida Help

Sunday, January 14, 2007

I’ve asked Matt and Adam and neither can confirm or dis-confirm my belief that Derrida said somewhere, “a culture has no origin.” Can anyone confirm or dis-confirm? If they can confirm, can they say where it is? Outside possibility that what I’m remembering is something like, “Derrida said ‘a culture has no origin.’” That wouldn’t [...]

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Wolin on the Reformation

Sunday, December 3, 2006

The first I read of Sheldon Wolin was his paper on Foucault. When and why I can’t remember, but, even as an undergrad, I knew this was a rather poor – and rather Anglo-American – reading of Foucault. I therefore never read any more of his work and was consequently confused when people would speak [...]

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Arendt on Hobbes

Thursday, November 23, 2006

An extended discussion on Hobbes in Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, from the second part on imperialism.

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Cylons and Little Green Men

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Due to a passing comment made two weeks ago, I’ve been invited to present at a graduate student conference at Carleton about Battlestar Galactica. Fortunately, the conference is thematized as “Works in Progress” and this work is certainly in progress – a few off-hand remarks and little else. So, in addition to a dissertation proposal [...]

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Hunter’s “The History of Theory”

Sunday, November 5, 2006

(Cross-posted to Long Sunday) Ian Hunter’s article, “The History of Theory” (Critical Inquiry 33, 78-112), has come up in recent discussions as an alternative to the rather stagnant “‘Theory’ Wars” that seem to creep up every so often.

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