Miguel Beistegui
Contact
Room S 2.56, Department of Philosophy, The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL
+44 (0) 2476 524960
Research Profile
I was educated in France (BA, MA in Philosophy at the Sorbonne), the US (Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago), and Germany (Postdoc, Hegel-Archiv, Bochum). I also spent three years doing research and teaching at the Università degli Studi di Milano. I specialise in 20th century German and French philosophy, and have published books and articles in the following areas: ontology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics and politics. Initially specialising in the thought of Martin Heidegger, and in phenomenology in general, I have become convinced that philosophy needs to resist extreme specialisation and develop the conceptual tools to engage with our time. This means that it needs to bring together the various branches of philosophy, but also establish a critical dialogue between philosophy and the other disciplines, in the social as well as the natural sciences. My research and activities of the last ten years reflect such a commitment.
My most recent book, The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject (2018), is a philosophical history of both desire and liberalism. Its claim, largely inspired by Foucault, is that if we want to understand what liberalism is, how it works, and the various strands that constitute it, we need to look at how, beginning in the eighteenth century, desire was used as a mechanism of government, whether in economic matters and in relation to the market, in matters of sexuality, or in processes of social and political recognition.
I am also launching (with Dr. Amedeo Policante) a research project entitled 'Philosophy in a Time of Crisis', and devoting the first couple of years of the project to Europe. "Margins of Europe" aims to question the present and future of Europe from the point of view of its margins (borders and boundaries) and its processes of social and economic marginalisation. You can find out more about the project here:
In the last ten years, I have also been engaged in the following projects:
1. The extension of my work on Deleuze, begun in Truth and Genesis, and beyond Difference and Repetition. This research project led to the publication of Immanence and Philosophy: Deleuze (2010). I also publish articles on Deleuze on a regular basis.
2. 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 I explore the connection between difference, as an ontological concept, and metaphor, as an aesthetic notion. An English translation of the book is available (Proust as Philosopher: the Art of Metaphor, 2012). My work on metaphor also led to a broader manuscript, Aesthetics After Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor (2012). The monograph deconstructs the classical aesthetic paradigm of mimesis, essentially linked to the metaphysical opposition between the sensible and the supersensible, and suggests that we think metaphor in place of mimesis, as indicative of another domain of experience, sense, and truth, which I call the hypersensible.
3. I was also the Principal Investigator for a joint research project with Dr. Claudia Stein from the Centre for the History of Medicine and Prof. Bill Fulford from the Warwick Medical School, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (£250,000.00), entitled 'Issues in Bioethics and Biopolitics'. The three-year research project led to the publication of The Care of Life: Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Bioethics and Biopolitics, 2014 (with G. Bianco and M. Gracieuse).
I welcome Ph.D. projects by students interested in the philosophy of nature, ontology, philosophy and literature (especially metaphor), philosophy and art, 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. I also welcome research proposals on Heidegger, Deleuze, and Foucault.
Media/Audio conferences:
An interview with the BBC on Heidegger, July 1999.
'From Neoliberal governmentality to the government of self and others': Kingtson University, London, 2011.
An interview on the theme of Foucault and Resistance, 05/05/2011
"Foucault and the Courage of Truth": January 2012 | Goldsmiths College, London.
Le sujet du désir: Lecture and seminars at the Institute of Philosophy, The Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, March 2012.
An Interview with Carrie Figdor from New Books in Philosophy on my Aesthetics After Metaphysics (2012), 13 November 2012.
"Heidegger, le temps d'une pensée": Université Laval, Canada, 21 September 2017.
An interview with Richard Marshall for 3ammagazine, February 2018
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 esthétique de la métaphore, encre marine, 2007. Translated in English as Proust as Philosopher: The Art of Metaphor, Routledge, 2012
- Immanence and Philosophy: Deleuze, Edinburgh University Press, 2010
- Éloge de Chillida/In Praise of Chillida, Gourcuff/Gradenigo, 2011
- Aesthetics After Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor, Routledge, 2012
- The Care of Life: Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Bioethics and Biopolitics (ed. with G. Bianco and M. Gracieuse), Rowman and Littlefield, 2014
- The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject, Chicago University Press, 2018
Selected Reviews:
The New Heidegger by Iain Thomson
Truth and Genesis by D. Morris
Truth and Genesis by J. Protevi
Proust as Philosopher by Katherine Elkins. Also reviewed by Clare Carlisle in the TLS, 24 May 2013
Articles:
"Qui craint Heidegger?", Les Temps Modernes, volume 529-530, August-September 1990, pp. 198-213.
"Heidegger's Mythocentrism," Research in Phenomenology, volume XXI, 1991, pp. 21-35.
"Of the Gift that Comes to Thinking," Research in Phenomenogy, volume XXIV, 1994, pp. 98-112.
"Sacrifice Revisited," in On the Work of Jean-Luc Nancy: the Sense of Philosophy (D. Sheppard, S. Sparks and C. Thomas, eds.). London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 157-173.
“The Time of Repetition,” in Philosophy Today, volume 43:3, Fall 1999, pp. 283-91.
“L’ennui – A la charnière de l’existence et de l’histoire. A propos de Les Concepts fondamentaux de la métaphysique d’Heidegger,” in Alter (Revue de Phénoménologie), volume 7, 1999, pp. 67-89
“Hegel’s Tragic Thought,” Philosophy and Tragedy (M. de Beistegui and S. Sparks, eds.). London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 11-37.
“Boredom: Between Existence and History. On Heidegger’s Pivotal The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics,” The Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology, May 2000, pp. 145-158
“Towards a Phenomenology of Difference?”, in Research in Phenomenology (a special “Millenium” issue on “The Future of Phenomenology”), volume XXX, 2000, pp. 54-70.
“Heidegger in Kraj Arhitekture”, in Phainomena, The Journal of the Phenomenological Society of Ljubljana, volume 11, 2002, pp. 189-224.
“Homo Heideggerians”, in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy (D. Pettigrew and F. Raffoul, eds.). Albany: SUNY Press, 2002.
“The transformation of the Sense of Dasein in Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy”, Research in Phenomenology, volume XXXIII, 2003.
“The Vertigo of Immanence: Deleuze’s Spinozism”, Research in Phenomenology, volume XXXV, 2005. “The Ontological Dispute: Badiou, Heidegger, Deleuze”, in Badiou: Philosophy under Conditions (G. Riera, ed). Albany: SUNY, 2005.
“Réduction et transduction: de Merleau-Ponty à Simondon”, Chiasmi International, volume 7, 2005.
“Science and Ontology: From Merleau-Ponty’s Reduction to Simondon’s Transduction”, in Angelaki, Special Issue “Continental Philosophy and the Sciences: the French Tradition” (Damian Veal, ed.), volume 10, number 2, August 2005.
“Heidegger” and “Difference” entries for the Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy, edited byJohn Protevi, 2005.
“La science ‘au service’ de la philosophie? Science et philosophie à l’époque du ‘tournant’” and “Philosophie et biologie dans un esprit de ‘coopération’” in Heidegger et les sciences, a special issue of Noesis, edited by Miguel de Beistegui and Françoise Dastur, 2005.
“Le dispositif et le secret: Janicaud aux prises avec Heidegger,” in Dominique Janicaud. L’intelligence du partage. Edited by Françoise Dastur. Paris: Belin, 2006. Pp. 87-105.
“Questioning Politics”, in European Journal of Political Theory, 2006, 6 (I), pp. 87-103.
“Visions of Excess: Structure and Unity of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time”, in theory@buffalo, volume 12, 2008.
“Expression and Immanence,” in P. Wolfendale (ed.), Pli, The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Volume 19, 2008, 30-54.
“Another Step, Another Direction: A Response to Zizek’s ‘Why Heidegger Made the Right Step in 1933,’” in International Journal of Zizek Studies, Vol. 1.4, 2008.
“Assemblages: In Praise of Eduardo Chillida”, in Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik, volume VII, 2008, 171-191.
“Robe ou patchwork? Plan et unité de À la recherche du temps perdu,” in M. Carbone and E. Sparvoli (eds), Proust et la philosophie aujourd’hui (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2008), 33-45.
“Per un’estetica della metafora,” in Dario Ferrari and Paolo Godani (editors), La sartoria di Proust (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2010), 17-46.
“The Early Heidegger,” in The History of Continental Philosophy (Alan D. Schrift, General Editor), Volume 3, The New Century (Keith Ansell-Pearson, Editor), 2010.
“From Plato to Deleuze: Towards an Aesthetics of the Hypersensible,” in Parrhesia: a journal of critical philosophy (2011). Special issue of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy.
“The Deleuzian Reversal of Platonism,” in Henry Somers-Hall and Dan Smith (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Gilles Deleuze (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
“Philosophy” entry for The Foucault Lexicon, edited by Len Lawlor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
“The Deleuzian Reversal of Platonism,” in Henry Somers-Hall and Dan Smith (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Gilles Deleuze (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
“Philosophy” entry for The Foucault Lexicon, edited by Len Lawlor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
“Desire Within and Beyond Biopolitics,” in M. de Beistegui, G. Bianco, and M. Gracieuse (eds), The Care of Life: Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Bioethics and Biopolitics (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
“The Subject of Truth: on Foucault’s Lectures on the Will to Know,” in Rossano Pecoraro (ed.), Detti, Scritti & Corsi : la Filosofia di Michel Foucault (1984-2014) Quadranti – Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia Contemporanea,” Vol. II, No 1, 2014: www.rivistaquadranti.eu
“Nel sifone del desiderio: Spinoza e la disciplina idraulica degli affetti” (with Chiara Bottici), in Iride. Filosofia e discussione pubblica”, vol. 29, issue 78, May-August 2016: 243-266.
“The Government of Desire,” in Laura Cremonesi, Orazio Irrera, Daniele Lorenzini, and Martina Tazzioli (eds), Foucault and the Making of Subjects (London: Rowman&Littlefield, 2016).
“Spinoza and the Hydraulic Discipline of Affects: From the Theologico-Political to the Neoliberal Regime of Desire” (with Chiara Bottici), in Dimitris Vardoulakis, ed., Spinoza's Authority, Volume II: Resistance and Power in the Political Treatises (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
“A Book? What Book? Deleuze and Guattari on The Rhizome,” in Jeffrey Bell, Henry Somers-Hall and James Williams (eds), A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
"The work and the idea", Parrhesia, number 11, 2011.
"Heidegger's Topology", Jeff Malpas, MIT Press, 2006 (review)