•  423
    This article argues against the dominant Anglophone and Francophone interpretation of Fichte, which reads him as advancing either a form of ethnic or cultural nationalism. It claims that what is missing from the current reception of Fichte is the essentially philosophical and cosmopolitan character of his nationalism – the fact that the Addresses to the German Nation uses non‐empirical and cosmopolitical concepts to develop and articulate its nationalistic viewpoint. It therefore claims that the…Read more
  •  13
    The Disrobing of Aphrodite: Brigitte Bardot in Le Mépris
    Film-Philosophy 26 (2): 171-195. 2022.
    This article examines a number of philosophical concepts that are at stake in the visual culture of the nude. It particularly focuses on Aphrodite’s appearance, or rather, what I call her exposed concealment, in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 Le Mépris. A film, I argue, which is not only concerned with Aphrodite and the figure of the female nude via Brigitte Bardot, but which also explores the very idea of the sex goddess in cinema. In the first section I introduce arguments from T.J. Clark about the ch…Read more
  • This paper gives an account of how the king’s two bodies have been translated in the era of linguistic nationalism. My thesis is that the model Kantorowicz provides for understanding the king’s two bodies can be used to elucidate the model of language that lies at the heart, or the core, of linguistic nationalism – namely, that a 'national' language has two bodies, the first being tangible and touchable (which I will call the corps), and the second, intangible and untouchable (which I will call …Read more
  • This paper examines how Derrida, in The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II, examines the notion of Walten in Heidegger. I argue that while Derrida has provided us in his seminar with invaluable insights into Heidegger’s early work – dating from the late 1920s to the early 1930s – he has missed something essential in Heidegger’s thought towards the end of the 1930s, namely, Heidegger’s turn towards das Machtlose, the ‘unpower’ which is beyond power and lack of power, as described in his 1938 Mind…Read more
  • This piece examines the 'American philosophical method' as outlined by Tocqueville in the second volume of his 'Democracy in America', and compares it to Emerson's essays via Adorno's 'Essay as Form'. In particular, it looks at how the American way of life, as described by Tocqueville, follows the Cartesian path laid out in Descartes' 'Discourse on Method', and how this relates to Cavell's reading of Emerson as both an inheritor and objector to Cartesianism.
  •  26
    Cosmo-nationalism interrogates the rise of national philosophies and their impact on cosmopolitanism and nationalism. The idea of national philosophy carries in it a strange contradiction. We talk about 'German philosophy' or 'American philosophy'. But philosophy has always pictured itself to be the project of universality. It presents itself as something that takes place outside or beyond the national – detachable from language, culture and history. So why do we assign nationalities to philoso…Read more
  •  9
    Bodin on Sovereignty: Taking Exception to Translation?
    Paragraph 38 (2): 245-260. 2015.
    This article analyses the definition of sovereignty that Bodin provides in his 1576 Six livres de la république, which outlines sovereignty using French, Greek, Latin, Italian and Hebrew terms. It argues that, despite this attention to more than one language, Bodin wishes to present sovereignty as an unbound ideality beyond any and every language. Nevertheless, it is argued that Bodin in fact privileges the French souveraineté as that which sets up the analogical continuity between Greek, Latin,…Read more
  •  55
    My paper examines Derrida's attempts to resist, on the one hand, what he thought of as the increasing international hegemony of American English as the technolanguage of communication, and, on the other hand, forms of linguistic nationalism, when using the resources of the French language to deploy the syntagma: démocratie à venir. It does this by investigating what happens when claims about democracy are made in such a way as to be singularly idiomatic – made from a cosmopolitan point of view t…Read more
  •  6
    Philosophy and the Globalisation of English
    The Philosophers' Magazine 75 38-44. 2016.