Goldsmiths - University of London

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Alberto Toscano BA MA PhD

Position held:
Senior Lecturer

Phone:
+44 (0)20 7919 7081

Email:
a.toscano (@gold.ac.uk)

Social theory and philosophy; contemporary French thought (Deleuze and Badiou); political subjectivity; the politics and sociology of religion (fanaticism, messianism, political theology); Marxism, communism, Italian workerism (operaismo) and autonomism;  cognitive capitalism, immaterial labour and theories of ‘real abstraction’ in capitalism; imperialism and empire; economic sociology; biopolitics (in Agamben, Foucault, Negri); theories of collective and technological individuation (Simondon); aesthetics.

Selected publications

Authored books

Edited books

  • Edinburgh Critical History of Philosophy, vol. 6: Contemporary Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming
  • Alain Badiou, Political Writings (with N. Power), New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming
  • Alain Badiou, Theoretical Writings (with R. Brassier), London: Continuum, 2004.
  • Alain Badiou, On Beckett (with N. Power), Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2003.

Journal articles

  • 'Partisan Thought', Historical Materialism 17, 2 (2009).
  • 'Chronicles of Insurrection: Tronti, Negri and the Subject of Antagonism', Cosmos & History special issue, 'The Italian Difference' (2009).
  • 'Liberation Technology: Marcuse's Communist Individualism', Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination 3, 1 (2009).
  • 'The War Against Preterrorism: The Tarnac 9 and The Coming Insurrection', Radical Philosophy 154 (2009)
  • 'Carl Schmitt in Beijing: partisanship, geopolitics and the demolition of the Eurocentric world', Postcolonial Studies 11, 4 (2008): 417-33.
  • 'Ad Hominem: The Antinomies of Radical Philosophy', Filosofski Vestnik 2 (2008): 137-153.
  • 'Emblems and Cuts: Philosophy in and against History', Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, special issue on Alain Badiou, 12, 2 (2008): 18-35.
  • 'Beginnings and Ends: For, Against and Beyond '68', New Formations 65 (2008): 94-104.
  • 'The Culture of Abstraction', Theory, Culture & Society25, 4 (2008): 57-75.
  • 'The Open Secret of Real Abstraction',Rethinking Marxism 20, 1 (2008): 273-87.
  • 'Powers of Pacification: State and Empire in Gabriel Tarde', Economy and Society 36, 4 (2007): 597-613.
  • (w L Chiesa) 'Agape and the Anonymous Religion of Atheism', Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 12, 1 (2007): 113-126.
  • ‘Vital Strategies: Maurizio Lazzarato and the Metaphysics of Contemporary Capitalism’, Theory, Culture & Society 24, 6 (2007): 71–91.
  • ‘Marxism Expatriated’, Prelom 8 (2007), www.prelomkolektiv.org/eng/08.htm.
  • ‘Religion and Revolt’, /seconds 4 (2007)
  • ‘Fanaticism: A Brief History of the Concept’, originally published in Italian in Reset (2006), now translated in Eurozine
  • ‘Can Violence Be Thought? Reflections on Badiou and the Possibility of (Marxist) Politics’ (bilingual, in English and Macedonian), Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, 10 (2006). Spanish translation in the Colombian journal Nomádas, 25 (2006)
  • ‘Merleau-Ponty, Whitehead y la politica de la naturaleza’ (in Spanish), Eidos, 4 (2006).
  • (w L Chiesa) ‘Ethics and Capital, Ex Nihilo’, Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious, 1, 2005
  • ‘La Disparation: Politique et sujet chez Simondon’, multitudes, 18, 2004: 73-82, ISBN 0292010718048
  • ‘From the State to the World?: Badiou and Anti-capitalism’, Communication and Cognition, 37, 3-4 (2004): 199-224.
  • ‘Factory, Territory, Metropolis, Empire', Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 9, 2 (2004): 197-216.
  • ‘Art Against Empire (On Negri and Alliez's ‘Peace and War')', Theory, Culture & Society, 20, 2 (2003): 103-108, 2003.
  • ‘L'essere interattivo: appunti ‘simondoniani' su informazione e intelligenza sociale', DeriveApprodi, 21 (2002): 88-91.
  • ‘The Method of Nature, The Crisis of Critique: The Problem of Individuation in Nietzsche's 1867-1869 Notebooks’, Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 11 (2001): 36-61.
  • ‘Fanaticism and Production: Schelling’s Philosophy of Indifference’, Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 8 (1999): 46-70, ISBN 1 897646 04 6

Articles in edited collections and books

  • 'Marxism Expatriated: Alain Badiou's "Turn"', Critical Companion toContemporary Marxism, eds S. Budgen and S. Kouvelakis (Leiden: Brill,2008).
  • 'In Praise of Negativism', in S. O'Sullivan and S. Zepke (eds.), Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, London: Continuum, 2008.
  • ‘Technical Culture and the Limits of Interaction: A Note on Simondon’, in J. Brouwer and A. Mulder (eds.), Interact or Die!, Rotterdam: NAi, 2007.
  • ‘Translating the Century’ and ‘“European Nihilism” and Beyond’, in A. Badiou, The Century, London: Polity, 2007.
  • ‘Always Already Only Now: Negri and the Biopolitical’, in The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, Vol. 2: Lessons on Constitutive Power, ed. T Murphy and A-K Mustapha, London: Pluto, 2007.
  • ‘Antonio Negri and the Antinomies of Bourgeois Reason’ (w M Mandarini) in Antonio Negri, Political Descartes: Reason, Ideology and the Bourgeois Project, London: Verso, 2007.
  • ‘Imperialism’, ‘Neo-Marxism’, ‘Situationists’, entries for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. G. Ritzer, 11 vols, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
  • ‘The Bourgeois and the Islamist, or, The Other Subjects of Politics’, Cosmos and History, 2, 1-2 (2006): 15-38. (reprinted in The Praxis of Alain Badiou, P. Ashton et al. (eds), Melbourne: re.press, 2007)
  • ‘Destructive Creation, or, The Communism of the Senses’, in Make Everything New: A Project on Communism, ed. G Watson, London: Bookworks, 2006.
  • ‘Mao und Manicheismus’ (in German) in M. de Kesel and D. Hoens (eds) Wieder Religion ? Christentum im zeitgenössischen kritischen Denken - Lacan, Zizek, Badiou u.a., Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2005.
  • ‘Preface: The Coloured Thickness of a Problem’ in E. Alliez, The Signature of the World, Or, What is Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy?, London: Continuum Books, 2004.
  • ‘Axiomatic’, ‘Capture’, ‘Chaos’, ‘Cinema + Werner Herzog)’, ‘Marxism + Antonio Negri’, ‘Phenomenology + Edmund Husserl’, ‘Post-Structuralism + Political Theory)’, in A. Parr (ed) The Deleuze Dictionary, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2005.
  • ‘Autopoiesis’, ‘Body Without Organs’, ‘Complexity’, ‘Enaction’, ‘Philosophy of Biology’, ‘Varela, Francisco’ in J. Protevi (ed), Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2005.
  • (with R. Brassier) ‘Aleatory Rationalism’, in Alain Badiou, Theoretical Writings, London: Continuum, 2004.
  • ‘Communism as Separation’ in P. Hallward (ed) Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, London: Continuum, 2004.
  • ‘Philosophy and the Experience of Construction’ in J Norman and A Welchman (eds), The New Schelling, London: Continuum, 2004.

Edited issues of journals

  • (with L. Chiesa) 'The Italian Difference: Contemporary Italian Thought', Cosmos & History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy (2009)
  • (with L. Chiesa and J. Rubin) ‘Foucault: Madness/Sexuality/Biopolitics’, Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 13 (2002).
  • (with R Brassier) ‘What is Materialism?’, Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 12 (2001).

Reviews

  • Review of Michael Scott Christofferson, French Intellectuals Against the Left: The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s, Radical Philosophy, 138 (2006); 52-54.
  • ‘Dossier for the Prosecution’, review of Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, Radical Philosophy, 136 (2006): 54-57.
  • ‘Gilles or Noam’, review of Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s Deleuze and Language, Radical Philosophy, 122 (2003): 54-56.
  • ‘Blind Spot’, review of Gary Gutting’s French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century and Jason Barker’s Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction, Radical Philosophy 113 (2002): 46-48.
  • ‘To Have Done with the End of Philosophy’, review article of Alain Badiou’s Manifesto for Philosophy and Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 9 (2000): 220-238
  • ‘Nota sobre Rancière y Le Partage du sensible’, Eidos: Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad del Norte (Colombia) 3 (2005): 171-173.

Translated Books

Alberto Toscano is a member of the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory

Unpublished electronic texts are also available.