University Level Teaching Experience
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Santiago de Chile y Viña del Mar
2012 Universidad Católica de Chile
2010, 11 Universidad Diego Portales
2011 Historia Occidental de Pensamiento Político
Confrontaciones entre el Poder y la Justicia en la esfera política
Problemas del Poder
Politica Contemporánea
Columbia College, Chicago, IL
Fall 2009: Politics, Government, Society
Northwestern University, School of Continuing Studies
Fall 2009: History of Political Thought
Fall 2008: Ancient Political Thought
Winter 2008: Introduction to International Relations
Summer 2007: Law in the Political Arena
Kansas State University
Summer 2008: History of Political Thought
Northwestern University Teaching Assistant
Courses: Methods of Political Inquiry, History of Political Thought, World Systems, Law in
the Political Arena, Introduction to Roman Civilization, Trial Advocacy, Law and Society
Education
PhD 2010 Political Science, Northwestern University
Dissertation: Mimesis in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan
Legal Studies Graduate Assistantship 2008-2009
Paris Program in Critical Theory Participant 2007, 2008
Fellow, Insitut d’Études Polítiques de Paris 2007-2008 Exchange with Sciences-Po, Paris, France
Chateaubriand Award to do dissertation research in Paris, France 2006-2007
University Scholar Award 2006-2007
French Interdisciplinary Group award to study French in Montpellier 2003
Masters in Science by Research, Politics, 2001, University of Edinburgh
Thesis: Hannah Arendt on Kant’s Critique of Judgement
BA 2000 Ohio University Honors Tutorial College, Philosophy
Study Abroad: Universidad de Navarre, Pamplona, Spain
Conference and Special Events Experience
- Ciclo de Seminarios, Debates Biopolíticas Contemporáneas, 2 Nov. 2010 “El lugar de Hobbes en la crítica Biopolítica del Neoliberalismo: ¿Quién decide lo que significa ‘salvar la propia vida’?”
- IX Congreso Chileno de Ciencia Política 11, 12, 13 Nov. 2010 “La teoría de dios en el Leviatán de Thomas Hobbes: más cerca a Roma o Jerusalem?”
- Nietzsche and the Future of Life Santiago, Chile November 2-4, 2009 “The Politics of Culture and Civilization in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan”
- Bible and Political Theory Conference, Northwestern University, March 2009 “The Sovereign’s Personation of God in Leviathan”
- Northwestern University Political Theory Colloquia, Jan. 09 Respondent Dana Villa “Genealogies of Total Domination: Adorno, Arendt, and Auschwitz”
- Queen’s University, Belfast, Quest, Perspectives on Power, March, 2007. “Hobbes’s ‘perspicuity’ clearly related to Foucault’s ‘effective truth.’”
- Western Political Science Association, Politics and Luck: Thinking about Government and the State in an Uncertain World Las Vegas, NV March, 2007
- “Hobbes’s emplotment of Leviathan according to the techniques outlined in Aristotle’s Poetics”.
- McGill University, Colloque de la Recherche Étudiante en Sciences Politique, Les Facettes du Pouvoir Montreal, Canada, May 2007.
- “Returning to Leviathan after Foucault: A genealogy of the Automaton as a symbol of constituent power”.
Teaching Statement: The first thing to say is Socratic teaching is always the guiding light. Lead people with questioning to know how to question.
There is also a preoccupation with the material context of learning the humanities. When I was coming out of graduate school in 2010, this would have been a very unprofessional move.
It is quite cringe to publish something that is undone and has mistakes. Personal and overly disperse.
Bibliography is simply preliminary. I didn’t wonder if I could get the text. I had the logins, I could go to the library, make photocopies, scan one.
First, to make up for lack of following writing norms.
For joy and discovery, I want to re read these texts I used to teach.
In the name of transparency, I want to be able to say to an institution this is what I would teach and how.
One of the key teachings I kept hearing is to have a confrontation with the text in its original. This meant a copy from the library or a photocopy. In ones hands, on the couch or a chair, in silence. Perhaps underlining or jotting notes.
I had heard of voice to type but hadn’t tried it.
All of the growth came in the confrontations with the text in its original. Reading as philosophers made distinctions tearing through confusion. Watching the way the definition of terms crystallizes a problem. Retracing the path each thinker took to find the first beginnings.
I am here to inspire people to read the text in its original, and if that is too hard, find out which are the scholarly exegesis that help make sense of the text.
There is some reading around to do, to remember why each thinker was revolutionary in his way, asking something that hadn’t been asked in that way, seeing a new line.
The title of the blog is vague, and overly broad. What is Western as opposed to non-Western? I would not assume in advance what is included or excluded from each term, Western, Politics, Thought (philosophy or rhetoric).
I can’t even keep still with the edges between political thought and philosophy.
Since we are looking for the full text, the correct citation, and the best scholarly articles each time I’m wondering what will be available. Will I be able to get it at my library? What library privileges do I need to get the full text?
I am wondering if the scholarly commentaries that I got from university libraries are accessible online, and to what extent. I am worried that the intensity of production demanded by web content has resulted in the circulation of uninspired, if not bad summaries, together with the repetition of not the most canonical commentaries. What is left behind paywalls? What kind of credentials do I need to get access to articles in Jstor or like academic databases?
The frustration of course is that I keep getting fed summaries when I’m really looking for the full text and scholarly commentary for me to read, not read the llm summary.
Why now?: Writing a blog about something this serious did not cross my mind whatsoever.
When I was in graduate school we found power points kind of lame but we were making them lame by only putting text on them.
This was the materiality of the confrontation with the text. I enjoyed photocopied pages I could mark on. I took notes in a paper notebook in cursive on my favorite texts. I kept notebooks from lectures side by side with notes and quotes from the reading. Now I look forward, I stand I don’t sit. I look at the screen. I query and filter.
This blog is embarrassing to the extent it continues to be undone and I have zero desire to promote it due to its incompleteness and flaws. Its both an experience of how it is now to learn with a screen instead of a photocopied page. With a search not a visit to the library. With a subscription not a shelf.
I like the idea of taking word and image pairings more seriously. Since there has to be a visual aspect, because its a blog, because we like pictures, I inadvertently had to review quite a few pieces of fine art.
With everything happening it almost feels ethically wrong to say nothing at all when I want to say, hey, let’s re read these texts.
Some astounding, miraculous events, have graced an executive who then appears as annoited. Other political rhetoric also brings soteriology into the political imagination. This leads us to thinking about those times when thinkers in the tradition wrestled with mythology in modern politics.
But by the time we are taking myth seriously, we feel we have diverted from philosophy. So uneasy is this relationship between philosophy and politics.
Even if we could leave out metaphysics and epistemology, which by the way we can’t they will keep coming up, we would still be looking to philosophy for guidance on ethics.
And we want to keep posing the question with each text of the relation between the ethical and political life.
Humanities, or those subjects like poetry, anthropology, sociology … that have little ROI for the student, are now out of vogue. The word critical is going the way of the word awaken into the abyss of the derogatory, a far fall from the central place they have in Kant and the Enlightenment.
This reversal is astounding. It used to be the height of education to study the humanities at a place like Cambridge or Oxford, like Williams or Berkeley. Now its derided as not worth your time or money because it’ll just make you woke. To that I would say, wouldn’t you want to read the texts for yourself? Wouldn’t you want to trace the revolution from awake to woke? Re walk the path from when the word critical came, stopping at esteemed philosophical method and winding up in the ditch of random slurs for leftists.
There is some sort of question about the curriculums of great schools. What kind of history of political thought education would you get if you went to Northwestern, for example.
Well, I have some idea of the curriculum and some great books read in that environment.
Now, the material reality of reading is changing from a book or text in ones hands to a reading of a screen. Young people do not go to libraries for the books and artifacts and I want to inspire them to do so, by running into moments where the best articles I’m sure will be behind paywalls. To show the benefit of having access to reading the scholarship of the ages that may not be in the search results.
I want to re read all these books. I am not at risk for firing, because I do not have an academic job. If I did want an academic job at an institution, they would certainly have to vet if what I would be teaching would meet their high standards.
If I had to make a list of my academic interests in the order they occurred
class distinction
Christianity
Religious traditions
punk rock
poetry
experimental theatre
Spanish baroque poetry
revolution
history of philosophy to Phenomenology
Existentialism
Nietzsche
Hannah Arendt
Kant
Linguistic Turn
So there is a history of philosophy theme running through the library. And within that history, the tension between philosophy and politics come into different formations, usually of opposition.
There are themes of fate or freedom of the will, typologies of authority, expressions of power.
There is a philosophical impulse to make distinctions: what is and is not politics.
There was an assassination of a person who was speaking about political questions in a public setting, on a university campus. University campuses are very dear to me since I enjoyed my own intellectual growth by hanging around many of them. For a campus to be a dangerous place for someone to talk about politics, this is just unacceptable.
Is this a freedom under threat? To gather for public debate? For a republic to be a republic this must be ok. To act into the public sphere. To debate issues of concern to the common good.
While I disagreed with basically everything that person was probably going to say, and didn’t enjoy anything about his style, I would still defend his ability to practice public debate.
People want to think and debate about crucial political questions. How can we zoom out to the most philosophical approach? What can we learn from the tradition that we all share? In terms of the history of political thought, what does it mean to be conservative, where are the boundaries of philosophy vs science, philosophy vs political science, and how can we aim for justice in a world of power dynamics?
I have a point of view on Leo Strauss I’m developing, I’m seeing the overall picture my dissertation chapters draw from more of a distance.
The plus must be that the blog medium demands matching word and image, or choosing images with significance for each of the texts.
As I kept choosing the texts it became clear how important the history of philosophy is.
1968 was a watershed moment in Paris. Foucault École Normale Superior vs Ricoeur. Two French powerhouses. I actually heard about Ricoeur first. Ohio University had Professor David Stewart who worked on Ricoeur. The French Phenomenological Tradition also with Algis Mikunas.
Later during my master’s degree I discovered Foucault.
I’m preparing to review some books I’m interested in, but I want to practice reading and writing around the tradition first.
One of the questions is of course how does it really come to an end. The ending is unsatisfying. That is a theme in this tradition. Who is next in the critical tradition.
I used to have a hard line in my mind between those who think revolution, and those who sit around trying to legitimate the modern state. I wanted to listen to the songs of liberation, always looking for the moment of highest tension. How to return to the beginning, have the experience of the founders.
But after the Insurrection, I was way more interested in the rule of law and the accounts of legitimation. It brought out the conservative in me. The legalist. The procedure insister. The mythology of Pence as a Judas to be hanged. The temporary rule of the mob who entered the building was terrifying.
So while I have led a very non academic life since 2013 really, I keep wanting to come back to match the art piece with the classic text. Review what I would teach. See if I can get my hands on an authoritative edition.
With the current projects I’m trying to think what I’ve been doing. Weave together the threads I have seen, of law and life intersecting. I vividly remember reading an article about a man who burned his draft card, which was illegal. And he talked about how he was going to go into Dysart Woods and he did, and he whiddled his kids all their toys out of wood. From there I thought of Dysart Woods as this other space, outside of society an Eden or an Ur.
The second was the way my interest was piqued by the story of the Caso de Bombas. Here is an opportunity in comparative legal theory. How are they going to treat the anarchists? What is this trial going to be like?
Finally, a coming to terms with the real estate industry as it was, is and will be. This is a corner of the law I worked in as an agent and property manager. I saw the likeness to other knowledge based professions like selling insurance or mortgages. I knew about the previous problems of steering during the 70’s. I heard about the crash of the 2008s. When the lawsuits started coming that would of course facilitate a smoothing out of moments of friction. In so doing, the context of the adversarial legal system with its traditional understanding of client representation is surpassed. So, in reading the tea leaves of these lawsuits of the real estate industry we can trace qui bono, and what it means for knowledge based work.
Based in Williamstown, West Virginia, USA. Presbyterian