Selected Publications:

Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity
(University of California Press: 2002)

Reviews can be found at:
Politics and Culture 2002, #3
Science Fiction Studies 30, no.  (2003)
Utopian Studies 13, no. 2 (2002)
American Literature 76, no. 1 (2004)
Comparative Literature 57, no. 2 (2005)

"Postmodernism."  In The Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy,ed. John Protevi  (Edinburgh University Press: 2005).

"Utopian Fiction," & "Science Fiction." In Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics, ed. M. Keith Booker (Greenwood Press: 2005).

"Utopia."  In A Companion to Science Fiction, ed. David Seed. (London: Blackwells, 2005).

"October 3, 1951 to September 11, 2001: Periodizing the Cold War in DeLillo's Underworld." In "Neorealism: Between Innovation and Continuation," eds. Thomas Claviez and Maria Moss.Amerikastudien/American Studies 49, no. 1 (2004).

"Where the Prospective Horizon is Omitted: Naturalism and Dystopia in Fight Cluband Ghost Dog."In Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination,eds. Tom Moylan and Raffaella Baccolini (London: Routledge, 2003).

"Soldierboys for Peace: Cognitive Mapping, Space, and Science Fiction as World Bank Literature." In World Bank Literature, ed. Amitava Kumar (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 2003).

 "Spatial Criticism:  Critical Geography, Space, Place, and Textuality." In Introducing Criticism at the Twenty-First Century, ed. Julian Wolfreys. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 2002).

"'A Nightmare on the Brain of the Living': Messianic Historicity, Alienations, and Independence Day." Rethinking Marxism 12. no 1 (2000).

"The Last Bomb: Historicizing History in Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain and Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine."  The Comparatist 23 (1999).

"Horizons, Figures, and Machines: The Dialectic of Utopia in the Work of Fredric Jameson."  Utopian Studies 9, no. 2 (1998).
Battisti Award winner for best essay in volume.

The Summer Institute

Like the freed convict in Kafka's Penal Colony,who has survived the destruction of the machine that was to have executed him, these beings have left the world of guilt and justice behind them: The light that rains down on them is that irreparable light of the dawn following the novissima diesof judgment. But the life that begins on earth after the last day is simply human life.  . . . . Tricksters or fakes, assistants or 'toons, they are the exemplars of the coming community.  Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community   My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill; I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight, hearing a harper who sung to the harp; & his theme was: 'The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind."  William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven & Hell    As long as man concentrates his interest contemplatively upon the past orfuture, both ossify into an alien existence.  And between the subject and the object lies the unbridgeable  "pernicious chasm" of the present.  Man must be able to comprehend the present as becoming.  He can do this by seeing in it the tendencies out of whose dialectical opposition he can make the future.  Only when he does this will the present be a process of becoming,that belongs to him. Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness One could say that what identifies philosophy is not the rules of a discourse, but the singularity of an act. It is this act that the enemies of Socrates called: "the corruption of young people ". And because of that, as you know, Socrates was sentenced to death. "To corrupt young people" is after all not a bad name for the philosophical act. If you properly understand "to corrupt". Here "to corrupt" means to teach the possibility of refusing any blind submission to established opinions. To corrupt is to give to young people some means of changing their minds about all social norms; to corrupt is to substitute discussion and rational criticism for imitation, and even, if the question is a question of principles, to substitute revolt for obedience. But this revolt is neither spontaneous nor agressive inasmuch as it is a consequence of principles and rational critics. In the poems of the great trench poet Arthur Rimbaud we find the strange expression: "Logical Revolts". That is probably a good definition of the philosophical act. Alain Badiou

                                                                                             

Last revised: March 11, 2008