Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Faculty Member, Humanities & Arts

Other Affiliations: University of South Florida, Philosophy

Visiting Instructor of Philosophy and Religion

About

As a researcher, my area of interest and specialization is broadly Continental philosophy and more narrowly contemporary continental philosophy with a social and political bent. In particular, I am interested in developing tools for social analysis that remain committed to the view that it is possible to construct a social theory that can account for the ways in which social institutions influence and construct our ways of knowing and modes of relating both to ourselves, and the larger world, as well as the ways that this process blinds us to other possibilities. That is, I am interested in the understanding the ways in which our perspectives are always partial. We are constantly enmeshed in a variety of social practices and institutions that act as the material backdrop against which we come to consciousness of both ourselves and the world. Analyzing and understanding how these social institutions and practices come together to construct the awareness of individuals is critical for not only coming to understand who we are, but also how we make sense of our world. Further, since social factors such as these play an integral role in our existence, and given that these structures shift and change over time (that is, they are historical), the ability to transform one’s awareness and ultimately, to actively aid the transformation of society, requires that we cultivate an awareness of the ways that these factors influence and determine our modes of thinking. It is in doing this that we become able to extract ourselves from the partial perspective that first determines us. My work draws on a number of sources and insights that are developed in different theoretical traditions from Hegelian Marxism and Critical Theory, to Existentialism, structuralism, and Psychoanalysis.

My dissertation is on the contemporary brand of post-marxist materialism that is first espoused by Louis Althusser and then picked up and elaborated on by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek. The basic thrust of the project is an attempt to both explain how these thinkers understand their materialist positions and argue in favor of this conception of materialism insofar as it aids us in the construction of a properly conceived social theory.