Miguel Beistegui
In the last three years, I have been engaged in the following enterprises:
1. The extension into the domain of aesthetics of the systematic ontology developed in Truth and Genesis. This has led me to publish a book on Proust, in which explore the connection between difference, as an ontological concept, and metaphor, as an aesthetic notion. An English translation of the book will be coming out in 2011. I am also completing a book on the aesthetics of the 'hypersensible' as an alternative to the classical aesthetics of the sensible and the suprasensible, and on the Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida as an illustration of this other alternative way of understanding art.
2. The extension of my work on Deleuze, begun in Truth and Genesis, beyond Difference and Repetition. Whilst still a central concept, difference is now thought within the broader and more fundamental context of philosophy's commitment to immanence. This has led to the publication of Immanence and Philosophy: Deleuze (Edinburgh University Press, 2010).
3. Researching and teaching on the problem of desire in connection with 20th Century French Thought, from Kojeve to Lacan, Levinas, and Deleuze and Guattari, especially as a way into the question of ethics and politics, and a ground for the battle between immanence and transcendence. My MA seminar for 2010-11 will focus on Foucault's critique of neoliberalism, which he developed in a lecture course at the Collège de France from 1979 (The Birth of Biopolitics), and Bataille's critique of utility and utilitarianism in The Accursed Share.
In addition, and as a founding member the 'European Network in Contemporary French Philosophy', I co-organised the following workshops in 2009-10: 'Deleuze and Simondon' (Palazzo Papafavana, Warwick in Venice, 18-19 September 2009), 'Cavaillès and Canguilhem' (école normale supérieure, Paris, 22-23 January 2010) and 'Foucault' (Università degli Studi di Pisa, Italy, 15-17 April 2010). For more information:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/activities/encfp/
Finally, I am the Principal Investigator for a joint project with Dr. Claudia Stein from the Centre for the History of Medicine and Prof. Bill Fulford from the Warwick Medical School to pursue a research project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (£250,000.00), entitled 'Issues in Bioethics and Biopolitics'. Three workshops will be organised in the next three years: 'The Normal and the Pathological', 'Ageing and Dying', 'Desire and Pleasure'. Two new Research Fellows, Marjorie Gracieuse and Giuseppe Bianco, will be joining the department for the duration of the project, which is due to start in January 2011.
I welcome Ph.D. projects by students interested in the philosophy of nature, ontology, philosophy and literature, philosophy and art, perception and memory, space and time, and the anthropology, ethics and politics of desire, especially in connection with Spinoza, 20th century French Philosophy, phenomenology, and aspects of German idealism.
Selected Publications:
- Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias Routledge, 1998
- Philosophy and Tragedy (ed. with Simon Sparks), Routledge, 2000
- Thinking with Heidegger: Displacements, Indiana University Press, 2003
- Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology, Indiana University Press, 2004
- The New Heidegger, Continuum, 2005
- Jouissance de Proust: Pour une esthetique de la metaphore, encre marine, 2007
- Immanence and Philosophy: Deleuze (Edinburgh University Press, 2010)
Email:
mailto:M.J.F.Beistegui@warwick.ac.uk
2010/2011 MA Teaching:
Topics in Twentieth Century French Philosophy I: Foucault's Critique of Neoliberalism:
2010/2011 Undergraduate Teaching
Heidegger's Being and Time (1927):
