•  50
    Miguel Abensour, Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Moment (review)
    Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 16 (1): 242-246. 2012.
  •  50
    Bernard Stiegler, For a New Critique of Political Economy (review)
    Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 16 (1): 282-286. 2012.
  •  36
    The Nothingness of Equality: The 'Sartrean Existentialism' of Jacques Rancière
    Sartre Studies International 18 (1): 29-48. 2012.
    In this essay, I propose a mutually constructive reading of the work of Jacques Rancière and Jean-Paul Sartre. On the one hand, I argue that Rancière's egalitarian political thought owes several important conceptual debts to Sartre's Being and Nothingness , especially in his use of the concepts of freedom, contingency and facticity. These concepts play a dual role in Rancière's thought. First, he appropriates them to show how the formation of subjectivity through freedom is a dynamic that introd…Read more
  •  34
    In this essay, I attempt to show that the “war on terror” intensifies the use of biopolitical techniques. One such example, which I take as a point of departure, is Guantánamo Bay. We must place this camp in its proper genealogy with the many camps of the twentieth century. However, this genealogy is not a genealogy of the extremes of political space during and after the twentieth century; it is a genealogy of the transformation of political space itself. I will attempt to show this in three ste…Read more
  •  27
    The Vitalist Senghor: On Diagne’s African Art as Philosophy (review)
    Comparative and Continental Philosophy 5 (1): 92-98. 2013.
    In this essay, I examine Diagne’s claim that the fundamental intuition of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s thought is this: African art is philosophy. Diagne argues that it is from an experience of African art and an encounter with Bergson’s philosophy that Senghor comes to formulate his philosophical thought, which is better understood as vitalist rather than essentialist. I conclude by arguing that Senghor’s vitalism is a philosophy of becoming which nevertheless lacks an account of radical political c…Read more
  •  21
    This essay presents an overview of what I call “Cartesian egalitarianism,” a current of political thought that runs from François Poullain de la Barre, through Simone de Beauvoir, to Jacques Rancière. The impetus for this egalitarianism, I argue, is derived from Descartes’ supposition that “good sense” or “reason” is equally distributed among all people. Although Descartes himself limits the egalitarian import of this supposition, I claim that we can nevertheless identify three features of this …Read more
  •  19
    Democracy Against the State (review)
    Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 16 (1): 242-246. 2012.
  •  18
    In this essay I attempt to defend Badiou's conception of inaesthetics, drawn from the Handbook of Inaesthetics, from the pertinent criticisms of Rancière. In doing so, it is possible to delimit the intra-philosophical effects (truth effects) of artistic events (this combination being the domain of inaesthetics). Badiou can be defended from all of Rancière's objections, save the objection that inaesthetics asserts a 'propriety of art.' However, in granting this objection, it is possible to open a…Read more
  •  16
    Schelling is often thought to be a protean thinker whose work is difficult to approach or interpret. Devin Zane Shaw shows that the philosophy of art is the guiding thread to understanding Schelling's philosophical development from his early works in 1795-1796 through his theological turn in 1809-1810. Schelling's philosophy of art is the 'keystone' of the system; it unifies his idea of freedom and his philosophy of nature. Schelling's idea of freedom is developed through a critique of the forma…Read more
  •  14
    The Century (review)
    Radical Philosophy Review 11 (1): 81-85. 2008.
  •  10
    Drawing a line of intellectual heritage between French philosophy and antifascist practice, this book provides new, incisive interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialism to make the case for a broader militant movement against fascism.
  •  10
    Jacques Rancière's work has challenged many of the assumptions of contemporary continental philosophy by placing equality at the forefront of emancipatory political thought and aesthetics. Drawing on the claim that egalitarian politics persistently appropriates elements from political philosophy to engage new forms of dissensus, Devin Zane Shaw argues that Rancière's work also provides an opportunity to reconsider modern philosophy and aesthetics in light of the question of equality. In Part I, …Read more
  •  7
    In this essay, I propose a mutually constructive reading of the work of Jacques Rancière and Jean-Paul Sartre. On the one hand, I argue that Rancière's egalitarian political thought owes several important conceptual debts to Sartre's Being and Nothingness, especially in his use of the concepts of freedom, contingency and facticity. These concepts play a dual role in Rancière's thought. First, he appropriates them to show how the formation of subjectivity through freedom is a dynamic that introdu…Read more