Michael Marder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Marder (born (1980-05-03)May 3, 1980) is Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz. He works in the phenomenological tradition of Continental philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of plant life .

Education and academic work

Marder studied at universities in Canada and the US. He received his PhD in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City . Marder carried out post-doctoral research in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, funded by a Canadian SSHRC grant. He taught at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan. Prior to accepting the Ikerbasque research professorship at the University of the Basque Country, he carried out research in phenomenology (philosophy) as an FCT fellow at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and held the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Marder has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal; at Sichuan University, China; and, through the Forum on Contemporary Theory, at Goa University, India.

Philosophical contributions

Marder has developed an original philosophy of plants, which he terms plant-thinking. He argues that, while contemporary philosophers tend to refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, it is necessary to put this life at the forefront of the deconstruction of Western metaphysics. Marder identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to resist the logic of totalization and to exceed the narrow confines of instrumentality. Reconstructing the life of plants “after metaphysics,” he focuses on their unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom. In his formulation, “plant-thinking” is the non-cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants , as much as the process of bringing human thought itself back to its roots and rendering it plantlike .

Marder has recently written on the ethical implications of plant-thinking. His work on plants has been discussed and debated in academic and other public forums.

The second installment of Marder's multi-volume work on plants is forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2014.

He has also made contributions to contemporary political thought, phenomenology, theory of utopia, and deconstruction, with original studies of Jacques Derrida, Carl Schmitt, critical phenomenological tradition, and pyropolitics, or "the politics of fire".

Editorial activities

Marder is an Editorial Associate of the Journal Telos (New York) and the General Editor or Co-Editor of four book series: "Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy" Series at Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly Continuum); "Critical Plant Studies" at Rodopi Publishers; "Palgrave Studies in Postmetaphysical Thought" at Palgrave Macmillan; and "Future Perfect: Images of the Time to Come in Philosophy, Politics, and Cultural Studies" at Rowman & Littlefield, Int'l.

Selected works

Books

  • Pyropolitics: When the World Is Ablaze (London: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming in 2015)
  • Dust (forthcoming in the Object Lessons series at Bloomsbury in 2015) No matter how much you fight against it, dust pervades everything. It gathers in even layers, adapting to the contours of things and marking the passage of time. In itself, it is also a gathering place, a random community of what has been and what is yet to be, a catalog of traces and a set of promises: dead skin cells and plant pollen, hair and paper fibers, not to mention dust mites who make it their home. And so, dust blurs the boundaries between the living and the dead, plant and animal matter, the inside and the outside, you and the world (“for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”). This book treats one of the most mundane and familiar phenomena, showing how it can provide a key to thinking about existence, community, and justice today.
  • The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium, with drawings by Mathilde Roussel (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming in 2014) The Philosopher’s Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium reveals the secret significance of plants in the making of the Western intellectual tradition. A history of philosophy for the postmetaphysical age, The Philosopher’s Plant combines theory and science, as well as drawing and storytelling, to walk the reader through the ideas of twelve philosophers, from Plato to Luce Irigaray.
  • Phenomena—Critique—Logos: The Project of Critical Phenomenology (London: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming in 2014) One commonplace assumption in Continental philosophy circles today is that there is an unbridgeable gap between, on the one hand, Kantian and post-Kantian critical tradition in German thought and, on the other, Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology. Phenomena-Critique-Logos challenges this assumption and endeavors to work out a systematic concept of critique, using the resources of phenomenology itself. In this innovative work, Marder argues that critique is situated at the very heart of phenomenology, traversing the Husserlian oeuvre and regulating the relation between phenomena and logos, conceived in its multiple senses as reason, logic, a mode of thinking, study and word. Having outlined the features of phenomenology as a kind of critique, Marder goes on to demonstrate how it is applicable to ontology, ethics and politics, through sustained readings of Heidegger, Levinas, Arendt and Derrida, as well as through an original elaboration of phenomenological critique pertinent to each of these fields.
  • Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013) Plant-Thinking investigates the place of plants in the history of Western thought and the potential for considering existence itself from the vegetal point of view. In contrast to Aristotle, for whom plants are little more than defective animals, Marder proposes a radical revaluation of their status and theorizes the unique modes of accessing the world from the vegetal perspective. The ensuing philosophical approach combines, in a dynamic mix, a description of the non-ideational thinking proper to plants with the human thinking about them. A book as much about plants as it is about humans, Plant-Thinking shows how the structures of our thought grow less rigid, are to some extent de-humanized, and become plant-like upon contact with their green objects. From his analysis, Marder draws a set of striking ethical implications, pertaining to dietary principles, contemporary biotechnologies, and agricultural practices, and culminating in the call for a more respectful treatment of the flora.
  • Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt (New York & London: Bloomsbury/Continuum, 2010) Groundless Existence discusses the implicit phenomenological and existential foundations of Schmitt's political philosophy. The book's unique contribution lies in its claim that Schmitt decisively breaks with the metaphysical tradition and predicates the political on the 'groundless' categories of existence, including risk, decision, and agonism. This argument is substantiated by both tacit and explicit existentialist and phenomenological underpinnings of Schmitt's work, discussed here for the first time in book form.The book provides an insight into the implications of Schmitt's thought reconceptualized in the light of contemporary political developments.
  • The Event of the Thing: Derrida’s Post-Deconstructive Realism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009) Jacques Derrida's writings often embed the key themes of deconstruction in a notion of the thing. The Event of the Thing is the most complete examination to date of Derrida's understanding of thinghood and its crucial role in psychoanalysis, ethics, literary theory, aesthetics, and Marxism. Arguing that the thing, as a figure of otherness, destabilizes the metaphysical edifice it underlies, Marder reveals the contributions it makes to critiques of humanism and idealism. Subsequently, the new realism that emerges from deconstruction holds the possibility of an event that problematizes all attempts to objectify the thing.

Edited books

  • (with Peter Trawny and Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback), Martin Heidegger on Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The 1934-5 Seminar and Interpretative Essays (Bloomsbury, 2014, forthcoming) This is the first English translation of the seminar Martin Heidegger gave during the Winter of 1934-35, which dealt with Hegel's Philosophy of Right. This remarkable text is the only one in which Heidegger interprets Hegel's masterpiece in the tradition of Continental political philosophy while offering a glimpse into Heidegger's political thought following his engagement with Nazism. It also confronts the ideas of Carl Schmitt, allowing readers to reconstruct the relation between politics and ontology. The book also includes a collection of interpretations of the seminar, written by select European and North American political thinkers and philosophers. Their essays aim to make the seminar accessible to students of political theory and philosophy, as well as to open new directions for debating the relation between the two disciplines.
  • (with Santiago Zabala), Being Shaken: Ontology and the Event, in "Palgrave Studies in Postmetaphysical Thought" (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014) Despite the fact that over the last twenty years philosophies of the event have become more prevalent, their overall relation to the ontological paradigm remains largely unthought. This collection explores ways in which events destabilize this paradigm, producing powerful tremors that shake Being to its core.Being Shaken considers the personal, ethical, theological, aesthetic, and political dimensions of such disquietude, offering a multifaceted approach to the relation of ontology and the event.
  • (with Gianni Vattimo), Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics (London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2013) This volume in the Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series provides a political and philosophical critique of Zionism. While other nationalisms seem to have adapted to twenty-first century realities and shifting notions of state and nation, Zionism has largely remained tethered to a nineteenth century mentality, including the glorification of the state as the only means of expressing the spirit of the people. These essays, contributed by eminent international thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Gianni Vattimo, Walter Mignolo, Marc Ellis, and others, deconstruct the political-metaphysical myths that are the framework for the existence of Israel.Collectively, they offer a multifaceted critique of the metaphysical, theological, and onto-political grounds of the Zionist project and the economic, geopolitical, and cultural outcomes of these foundations.
  • (with Patricia Vieira), Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought (London & New York: Bloomsbury/Continuum, 2011) Radical political thought of the 20th century was dominated by utopia, but the failure of communism in Eastern Europe and its disavowal in China has brought on the need for a new model of utopian thought. This book thus seeks to redefine the concept of utopia and bring it to bear on today's politics. The original essays, contributed by key thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo and Jean-Luc Nancy, highlight the connection between utopian theory and practice. The book reassesses the legacy of utopia and conceptualizes alternatives to the neo-liberal, technocratic regimes prevalent in today's world. It argues that only utopia in its existential sense, grounded in the lived time and space of politics, can distance itself from mainstream ideology and not be at the service of technocratic regimes, while paying attention to the material conditions of human life.

Book chapters

  • "Politics and Critique." In Jeff Malpas and Hans-Helmuth Gander (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophical Hermeneutics (London & New York: Routledge, forthcoming in 2014).
  • "The Question of Political Existence: Hegel, Heidegger, Schmitt." In Peter Trawny, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, and Michael Marder (eds.), Heidegger on Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The 1934-5 Seminar and Interpretative Essays (London & New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2014).
  • (with Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback), "Philosophy without Right? Some Notes on Heidegger's Notes for the 1934-5 'Hegel Seminar'." In Peter Trawny, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, and Michael Marder (eds.), Heidegger on Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The 1934-5 Seminar and Interpretative Essays (London & New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2014).
  • "Hermeneutic Communism as a (Weak) Political Phenomenology." In Silvia Mazzini (ed.), Renewing Communism through Hermeneutics? On Vattimo and Zabala's Hermeneutic Communism, forthcoming in 2014.
  • (with Luis Garagalza), "Evolución, Inadaptación y Patología Creativa," in Diego Bermejo (ed.), Cuestiones Disputadas en torno a la Teoría de la Evolución (Bilbao: The University of Deusto Press, forthcoming in 2014).
  • "The Ethical Ungrounding of Phenomenology: Levinas's Tremors." In Santiago Zabala and Michael Marder (eds.), Being Shaken: Ontology and the Event, (London & New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming in 2014).
  • "Humor and Crisis." In Idoia Mamolar Sánchez (ed.), Saber Reírse: El Humor desde la Antigüedad hasta Nuestros Días (Madrid: Liceus Edicones, 2014), pp. 251–61.
  • "A Zionist Synechdoche." In Gianni Vattimo and Michael Marder (eds.), Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics (London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 155–67.
  • "Sustainable Perspectivalism: Who Sustains Whom?" In Jack Appleton (ed.), Values in Sustainable Development (London & New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 217–225.
  • "What’s Involved in Involution? A Psycho-Poetics of Regression: Freud—Horowitz—Celan." In Peter Kulchyski & Shannon Bell (eds.), Subversive Itinerary: The Thought of Gad Horowitz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), pp. 156–173.
  • "Vegetal Democracy: The Plant that is Not One." In Artemy Magun (ed.), Politics of the One: Concepts of the One and Many in Contemporary Thought (London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), pp. 115–130.
  • (with Patricia Vieira), "Existential Utopia--Of the World, the Possible, the Finite". In Patricia Vieira & Michael Marder (eds.), Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought (London & New York: Continuum, 2011), pp. 34–48.
  • "Political Hermeneutics, or Why Schmitt is not the Enemy of Gadamer." In Jeff Malpas and Santiago Zabala (eds.), Consequences of Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2010), pp. 306–323.

Articles

  • "The Enlightenment, Pyropolitics, and the Problem of Evil," Political Theology, forthcoming in 2014.
  • "Por una Filosofía de las Plantas," La Maleta de Portbou, 3, January-March 2014.
  • (with Patricia Vieira), "Writing Phytophilia: Philosophers and Poets as Lovers of Plants," Frame: Journal of Literary Studies, 26(2), November 2013, pp. 39–55.
  • "Existential Phenomenology According to Clarice Lispector," Philosophy and Literature, 37(2), October 2013, pp. 374–88.
  • "Natality, Event, Revolution: The Political Phenomenology of Hannah Arendt," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 44(3), October 2013, pp. 301–19.
  • "La Política del Fuego: El Desplazamiento Contemporáneo del Paradigma Geopolítico," Isegoría, 49, July–December 2013, pp. 599–613.
  • "On the Verge of Respect: Ontological and Phenomenological Investigations into Plant Ethics," Epoché, 18(1), Fall 2013, pp. 247–65. In Portuguese: "Respeitar as plantas: Uma abordagem ontologico-fenomenologica," Revista Filosófica de Coimbra / Coimbra Philosophical Review, forthcoming in 2014.
  • "Should Plants Have Rights?" The Philosopher's Magazine, 62, 2013, pp. 46–50.
  • "Plant Intelligence and Attention," Plant Signaling & Behavior, 8(5), 2013, e23902.
  • "Is it Ethical to Eat Plants?" Parallax, 19(1), 2013, pp. 29–37. (special issue on the complexities of the alimentary)
  • "What Is Plant-Thinking?" Klēsis: Revue Philosophique, 25, 2013, pp. 124–43. (special issue on Philosophies of Nature)
  • "Of Plants, and Other Secrets," Societies, 3, 2013, pp. 16–23. (special issue on Rethinking the Vegetal)
  • "After the Fire: The Politics of Ashes," Telos, 161, Winter 2012, pp. 163–80. (special issue on Politics after Metaphysics)
  • "On the Mountains, or the Aristocracies of Space," Environment, Space, Place, 4(2), Fall 2012, pp. 63–74.
  • "Plant Intentionality and the Phenomenological Framework of Plant Intelligence," Plant Signaling & Behavior, 7(11), November 2012, pp. 1365–72.
  • "The Life of Plants and the Limits of Empathy," Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 51(2), June 2012, pp. 259–73.
  • "The Elemental Regimes of Carl Schmitt, or the ABC of Pyropolitics," Revista de Ciencias Sociales / Journal of Social Sciences, 60, Summer 2012, pp. 253–77. (special issue on Carl Schmitt)
  • "The Pulse of Phenomenology," Parrhesia, 14, 2012, pp. 16–22. (Galician): forthcoming in Anotacións sobre Literatura e Filosofía, 3, January 2014.
  • "The Phenomenology of Ontico-Ontological Difference," Bulletin d’Analyse Phénoménologique, 8(2), 2012, pp. 1–20. In Portuguese: “A Fenomenologia da Diferença Ôntico-Ontologica,” Phainomenon: Revista de Fenomenologia, 20/1, Spring & Fall 2012, pp. 243–58. (translated by Elisabete M. de Sousa)
  • "Humor, Crítica y Crisis", Claves de la Razón Práctica, 220, March 2012, 74-7. (translated into Spanish by Luis Garagalza)
  • "Resist Like a Plant! On the Vegetal Life of Political Movements," in a special issue on the Occupy movement of Peace Studies Journal, 5(1), January 2012, pp. 24–32.
  • "Vegetal Anti-Metaphysics: Learning from Plants", Continental Philosophy Review, 44(4), Fall 2011, pp. 469–89.
  • "Phenomenology of Distraction, or Attention in the Fissuring of Time and Space", Research in Phenomenology, 41(3), Fall 2011, pp. 396–419.
  • "A Levinasian Ethics of Attention", Phainomenon: Revista de Fenomenologia, 18/19, Spring & Fall 2011, pp. 27–40.
  • "Plant-Soul: The Elusive Meanings of Vegetative Life", Environmental Philosophy, 8(1), Spring 2011, pp. 83–99.
  • "Gianni Vattimo, from Z to A", Telos, 154, Spring 2011, pp. 164–9.
  • "Fugas do Bem / Fugues of the Good”, Revista Filosófica de Coimbra / Coimbra Philosophical Review, 19(38), Fall 2010, pp. 273–90. (translated into Portuguese by Henrique Miguel Carvalho)
  • (with Patricia I. Vieira), "Existential Utopia: Of the World, the Possible, the Finite", Journal of Contemporary Thought, 31, Summer 2010, pp. 37–56.
  • “From the Concept of the Political to the Event of Politics”, Telos, 147, Summer 2009, pp. 55–76.
  • “Breathing ‘to’ the Other—Levinas and Ethical Breathlessness”, Levinas Studies, Volume IV, 2009, pp. 91–110.
  • “What is Living and What is Dead in Attention?” Research in Phenomenology, 39(1), February 2009, pp. 29–51.
  • “Différance of the Real”, Parrhesia, 4, April 2008, pp. 49–61.
  • “Carl Schmitt’s ‘Cosmopolitan Restaurant’: Culture, Multiculturalism, and the Complexio Oppositorum”, Telos, 142, Spring 2008, pp. 29–47.
  • “Complexio Oppositorum: Politics and Culture in Carl Schmitt,” Proceedings of the XXII World Congress in Philosophy, Vol. 50, pp. 451–58.
  • “Terror of the Ethical: On Levinas’s Il y a”, Postmodern Culture, 18(2), January 2008.
  • “Given the Right—Of Giving (in Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts)”, Epoché, 12(1), Fall 2007, pp. 93–108.
  • “Heidegger’s ‘Phenomenology of Failure’ in Sein und Zeit”, Philosophy Today, 51(1), Spring 2007, pp. 69–78.
  • “On Lenin’s ‘Usability’, Or How to Stay on the Edge?” Rethinking Marxism, 19(1), January 2007, pp. 110-27.
  • "Deridina fenomenologija vrednosti i stvar u epohi globalizacije", Arhe, 3(7), 2007, pp. 163–73.
  • “Taming the Beast: The Other Tradition in Political Theory”, Mosaic, 39(4), December 2006, pp. 47–60.
  • “Minima Patientia: Reflections on the Subject of Suffering”, New German Critique, 33(1) Winter 2006, pp. 53–72.
  • “‘Higher than Actuality’—On the Possibility of Phenomenology in Heidegger”, Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 5(2), December 2005, pp. 1–10.
  • “Carl Schmitt and the Risk of the Political”, Telos, 132, Fall 2005, pp. 5–24.
  • “Beyond History in History: Historiographic Threads in Foucault and Levinas”, Clio, 34(4), Summer 2005, pp. 419–42.
  • “Sure Thing? On Things and Objects in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida”, Postmodern Culture, 15(3), May 2005.
  • "Failed Translations: Textuality of Capital against Walter Benjamin's 'The Task of the Translator'", European Journal of Economics and Economic Policy: Intervention, 2(1), March/April 2005, pp. 115–29.
  • “History, Memory, and Forgetting in Nietzsche and Derrida”, Epoché, 9(1), Fall 2004, pp. 137–57.
  • “Retracing Capital: Toward a Theory of Trace in Marxian Political Economy”, Rethinking Marxism, 16(3), July 2004, pp. 243–59.
  • “On Adorno’s ‘Subject and Object’”, Telos, 126, Winter 2003, pp. 41-52.

New York Times Op-Eds

  • (with Patricia Vieira), "What Do We Owe the Future?"
  • "Is Plant Liberation on the Menu?"
  • "If Peas Can Talk, Should We Eat Them?"
  • "Jokes and Their Relation to Crisis"

Interviews

  • Plant-Thinking on New Books in Philosophy
  • Plant-Thinking on ABC Radio's The Philosopher's Zone
  • Interview with Powell's Books
  • Michael Marder and Gary Francione Debate Plant Ethics
  • Carl Schmitt and the Political Sphere: An Interview with Telos

The Philosopher's Plant Blog

Since 2012, Marder has maintained a blog titled "The Philosopher's Plant", which discusses the relation of key figures in the history of philosophy to the vegetal world. As of 2014, the blog will be hosted by the LA Review of Books.

"The Philosopher's Plant 10.0: Heidegger's Apple Tree"

"The Philosopher's Plant 9.0: Hegel's Grapes"

"The Philosopher's Plant 8.0: Kant's Tulip"

"The Philosopher's Plant 7.0: Leibniz's Blades of Grass"

"The Philosopher's Plant 6.0: Avicenna's Celery"

"The Philosopher's Plant 5.0: Maimonides's Palm Tree"

"The Philosopher's Plant 4.0: St. Augustine's Pear"

"The Philosopher's Plant 3.0: Plotinus' Anonymous 'Great Plant'"

"The Philosopher's Plant 2.0: Aristotle's Wheat"

"The Philosopher's Plant 1.0: Plato's Plane Tree"

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.