University of Oregon
Department of Philosophy
PhD
Denver, Colorado, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Continental Philosophy
  •  685
    The Figure of the Migrant
    Stanford University Press. 2015.
    This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exc…Read more
  •  195
    What is an Assemblage?
    Substance 46 (1): 21-37. 2017.
    The concept of assemblage plays a crucial role in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In a 1980 interview with Catherine Clément, Deleuze describes their invention of the concept of the assemblage as the “general logic” at work in A Thousand Plateaus. However, despite its thirty years of influence on political theory, this “general logic of the assemblage” still remains obscured by the fact that Deleuze and Guattari never formalized it as a theory per se, but largely used it ad …Read more
  •  111
    Expression, Immanence and Constructivism: 'Spinozism' and Gilles Deleuze
    Deleuze and Guatarri Studies 2 (2): 201-219. 2008.
    This paper is an attempt to explicate the relationship between Spinozist expressionism and philosophical constructivism in Deleuze's work through the concept of immanent causality. Deleuze finds in Spinoza a philosophy of immanent causality used to solve the problem of the relation between substance, attribute and mode as an expression of substance. But, when he proceeds to take up this notion of immanent causality found in Spinoza in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze instead inverts it into a …Read more
  •  95
    What is new materialism?
    with Christopher N. Gamble and Joshua S. Hanan
    Angelaki 24 (6): 111-134. 2019.
    New materialism is one of the most important emerging trends in the humanities and social sciences, but it is also one of the least understood. This is because, as a term of ongoing contest...
  •  75
    This paper draws on the work of Michel Foucault in order to analyze the constellation of political strategies and power at the US/Mexico border wall. These strategies, however, are incredibly diverse and often directly antagonistic of one another. Thus, this paper argues that in order to make sense of the seemingly multiple and contradictory political strategies deployed in the operation of the US/Mexico border wall, we have to understand the coexistence and intertwinement of at least three dist…Read more
  •  43
    Violence at the Borders
    Radical Philosophy Review 15 (1): 241-257. 2012.
    This paper argues that borders and violence against migrants no longer takes place exclusively at the geographical space between two sovereign territories. Instead border violence today has become much more normalized and diffused into society itself. An entire privatized industry now capitalizes on the cycle of transporting, incarcerating, hiring, and releasing non-status migrants. Similarly, however, resistance to this violence is also shifting from the older confrontation with sovereignty and…Read more
  •  32
    Introduction We have to try and think a little about the meaning of revolution. This term is now so broken and worn out, and has been dragged through so many places, that it's necessary to go back to a basic, albeit elementary, definition.
  •  30
    Alain Badiou and the Sans-Papiers
    Angelaki 20 (4): 109-130. 2015.
    The rising number of non-status migrants is one of the central political issues of our time. This essay argues that if we want to understand the political and philosophical importance of this phenomenon, the contributions of Alain Badiou, his militant group L'Organisation politique, and the struggle of the sans-papiers movement in France are absolutely crucial. This is the case because, I will argue, Badiou, the OP, and the sans-papiers created a new kind of migrant justice struggle in the mid-1…Read more
  •  29
    Gilles Deleuze and Metaphysics
    with Arnauld Villani, Alberto Anelli, Rocco Gangle, Sjoerd van Tuinen, Joshua Ramey, Daniel Whistler, Adrian Switzer, Gregory Kalyniuk, and Mary Beth Mader
    Lexington Books. 2014.
    This collection examines an aspect of Gilles Deleuze’s thought that has largely been neglected; whether or not Deleuze was a metaphysician. Answering this question may reveal the problematic nature of so-called postmodernism and the critique it leveled at the first philosophy, and it may help readers to better understand philosophy’s fate
  •  25
    Black Hole Materialism
    with Christopher Neil Gamble
    Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 36. 2020.
  •  20
    We Have Always Been Planetary
    Environmental Philosophy 19 (2): 191-202. 2022.
    This essay shows how a new materialist theory of the Earth side-steps the distinction between the global and the planetary that structures Chakrabarty’s historiography. It advocates for a non-binary-generating approach to our planetary situation grounded in the philosophy of motion.
  •  17
    Philosophy in the Time of COVID
    Philosophy Today 64 (4): 889-893. 2020.
    The COVID world is just like it was before, only more so. Every problem that already existed is worse. What can philosophy do in such a world? I think there are at least two opportunities for philosophy today. The first is that philosophers can seize this historical moment to intervene in almost every sector of social, political, and ethical life. The second unique opportunity I think philosophers have is to create new concepts in response to new phenomena. New events call for new ways of thinki…Read more
  •  12
    The Nomadic Proletariat
    Philosophy Today 62 (4): 1207-1211. 2018.
    Thomas Nail’s interview with Alain Badiou focuses on the concept of the migrant, or the sans-papiers. Badiou discusses the importance of this concept in his previous work and for contemporary politics. Nail also inquires into Badiou’s involvement with a migrant-focused political organization, L’Organisation politique, as well as his eventual break with the organization.
  •  10
    Chapter 2 The Movement of Time
    In Robert W. Luzecky & Daniel W. Smith (eds.), Deleuze and Time, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 27-44. 2023.
  •  9
    The Figure of the Migrant
    Stanford University PRess. 2015.
    This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the e…Read more
  •  9
    Chapter 2 No Gods! No Masters!: From Ontological to Political Anarchism
    In Chantelle Gray Van Heerden & Aragorn Eloff (eds.), Deleuze and Anarchism, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 31-46. 2019.
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  •  8
    In a world of rising income inequality, right-wing nationalisms, and global climate change, people are again looking to Karl Marx for answers. This book offers readers a new perspective on several major ideas in Marx's work. It argues that Marx, contrary to convention, did not think history was deterministic or that reality could be reduced to classical materialism. Marx was not an anthropocentric humanist nor did he have a labor theory of value. This book is written to help those returning to M…Read more
  •  8
    Being and Motion
    Oup Usa. 2018.
    More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility; and yet, we lack a single contemporary ontology which takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. Being and Motion sets out to remedy this lacuna in contemporary thought by providing a historical ontology of our present: an ontology of movement.