My research concerns the relationship between metaphysics and modern politics, specifically modern political violence and ideology. In the broader discipline of philosophy, the division between “theoretical” metaphysical philosophy and “practical” sociohistorical philosophy is taken for granted. As opposed to this, my work identifies the ways that a given society’s specific understanding of the structure of reality affects the possible forms of collective self-organization that are acceptable in or implemented by that society. By drawing from dialectical and non-dualist philosophies that recognize the inherent connection between metaphysics, history, and politics, my research identifies the ways that philosophy and politics are intertwined and underscores philosophy’s relevance to modern life-worlds. In my Ph.D. dissertation, Bloody Rationality: The Dialectic of Modern Reason and Sacrifice in Hegel, Adorno, and Horkheimer, I argued that Hegel, Adorno, and Horkheimer developed theories of modern political sacrifice as a real-world manifestation of the abstract bivalent logic of modern reason. They argue that Enlightenment philosophy’s focus on the logical subordination of empirical particulars in pursuit of universal conceptual truth—characteristic of Kantian-ethical and Baconian-natural-scientific thought, for instance—enabled modern subjects to reduce living people to mere representatives of abstract categories. In the Holocaust and Reign of Terror, respectively, these thinkers identified this abstraction of individuality as the psychological means through which diverse groups of individuals were ‘irrationally’ recast as necessary casualties and sacrificed in pursuit of supposedly ‘rational’ universal ideals like progress and freedom. In 2024, I transformed two dissertation chapters into standalone journal articles; the first, on Hegel and Adorno’s analyses of the Reign of Terror and the Holocaust, was published in Chiasma: A Site For Thought in January 2025; and the second, a philosophical encyclopedia article on the concept of “cunning,” is under review at Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon.

My current work concerns the relationship between metaphysics and ideology more broadly: I am finishing a chapter for a volume I am co-editing with my interdisciplinary research group, the California Ideology Project, (under review at UC Press) in which I Hegel’s critique and Adorno’s mobilization of pseudo-scientific “physiognomics” to Los Angeles architecture. I am developing two articles on Buddhist and Feminist philosophy, including an article on Nagarjuna and Adorno’s contradictory metaphysics as critiques of reification, and a critique of the contemporary gendered tropes of “Girlbosses” and “Tradwives” using indigenous-feminist philosophies of nature. I am also developing two chapters for edited volumes: the first is an accepted chapter on modern sacrifice in Beauvoir and Hegel for a volume on Beauvoir’s phenomenology (with Palgrave), and the second is an invited chapter on the crossover between Spinozist and Quaker metaphysics and politics for a volume on the metaphor of slavery in philosophy of emotion (under review). In the next two years, I will develop a book on the influence of Hegel on Fanon, Beauvoir, and Adorno’s decolonial-psychoanalytic, feminist, and critical-theoretical research methods and major works written between the 1930s-1960s, informed by their experiences in Algeria, France, and California respectively. You can find my published research on PhilPeople and Academia.edu, and drafts and extended abstracts of the above projects are available upon request. TLDR below:

publications

Journal Articles

Chapters in Edited Volumes

Book Reviews

  • “Ulrike Kistner and Philippe Van Haute: Violence, Slavery and Freedom between Hegel and Fanon, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2020, 168 pp., ISBN 978-1-77,614-623-9, ISBN 978-1-77,614-627-7.” Continental Philosophy Review 55, 133–136 (2022). https://doi-org.libproxy.unm.edu/10.1007/s11007-021-09560-x

current research

Journal Articles

  • “Cunning.” Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon (under review)

  • “Taking Nagarjuna at His Word: Nihilism, Ineffability, and Negative Dialectics.” (draft version available)

  • “Girlbosses, Tradwives, and the Reification of Nature.”

Chapters in Edited Volumes

  • “Anything But Simple: Immanent Freedom & Domination in Quaker and Spinozist Philosophy.” (invited)

  • “Beauvoir’s Phenomenology of Rational Sacrifice.” (accepted) 

  • “Los Angeles Physiognomics: Hegel, Adorno, and Storybook Architecture” (accepted, draft version available)

Future Research

  • “The Scythe of Equality: Echoes of Hegel in Adorno, Beauvoir, and Fanon.” (book manuscript)

Art criticism (from a former life)

  • “No Wave or Not, ESG's Legacy is Alive and Well,” Thrdcoast. Sept 2nd 2016. Thrdcoast.com

  • “TEEN: Love Yes,” Caesura Magazine. August 10th 2016. Caesuramag.org

  • “Review: Anri Sala at the New Museum,” Neon Signs . March 10th 2016. Neonsignsmag.com