Bruno Bosteels

Bruno Bosteels is Dean of Humanities and Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, with a joint appointment in the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Prior to returning to Columbia in 2016, he taught for many years at Harvard and Cornell University. His research covers a wide range of topics in literature, culture, and politics in modern Latin America as well as contemporary philosophy and political theory. He is the author of Badiou o el recomienzo del materialismo dialéctico (Palinodia), Alain Badiou: une trajectoire polémique (La Fabrique, translated into German as Alain Badiou: Werdegang eines Streitbaren with Laika), Badiou and Politics (Duke, translated into Spanish as Badiou y lo político with Prometeo Libros), The Actuality of Communism (Verso, translated into German with Laika as Die Aktualität des Kommunismus, into Korean with a new preface by Galmuri as 공산주의의 현실성 : 현실성의 존재론과 실행의 정치, into Serbian with Univerzitet Singidunum as Aktuelnost Komunizma, and into Spanish with Prometeo Libros as La actualidad del comunismo, forthcoming in Japanese with Koshisha), Marx and Freud in Latin America (Verso, Spanish translation as Marx y Freud en América Latina with Akal), El marxismo en América Latina: Nuevos caminos al comunismo (Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia), El pensamiento de Oscar del Barco: De Marx a Heidegger (Ariel Pennisi), La comuna mexicana (Akal-Mexico, 2021; second edition Akal-Spain, 2022; forthcoming in English as The Mexican Commune with Duke University Press); and ¿Qué es la antifilosofía? (Prometeo Libros, 2024). Between 2005 and 2011 he served as general editor of Diacritics: Review of Contemporary Thought. He is currently preparing two new books, the first a sustained polemical engagement with contemporary post-Heideggerian thought, titled Philosophies of Defeat: The Jargon of Finitude (Verso); and the second, a collection of recent and previously unpublished essays under the title The State and Insurrection: New Interventions in Latin American Marxist Theory (University of Pittsburgh Press). With Joshua Clover he co-edits the book series "Studies in Literature and Revolution" for Palgrave Macmillan; and with George Ciccariello-Maher the book series "Radical Américas" for Duke University Press. He is also the translator from French to English and/or editor of over half a dozen books by Alain Badiou, among them Theory of the Subject (Continuum/Bloomsbury), Philosophy for Militants (Verso), Rhapsody for the Theatre (Verso), Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy (Verso), The Age of the Poets and Other Writings on Twentieth-Century Poetry and Prose (Verso), The Adventures of French Philosophy (Verso), Can Politics Be Thought? (Duke), and Badiou by Badiou (Stanford). He recently translated the Argentine philosopher León Rozitchner's Freud and the Limits of Bourgeois Individualism (Brill) and is finishing the translation of Alain Badiou's Nietzsche (Columbia University Press).

"Universality and Its Discontents." Identity Trumps Socialism: The Politics of Emancipatory Universality. Ed. Marc James Léger. London-New York: Routledge, 2023. 59-78.

"Borges in French Theory." The Oxford Companion to Jorge Luis Borges. Ed. Daniel Balderston and Nora Benedict. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. 483-502.

"Crísis y crítica del leninismo en América Latina." Jornadas leninistas. Series from Jacobin Latin America (February 17, 2024). Available here.

"El Estado y la insurrección. " Memoria: Revista de crítica militante 287 (2023): 69-74.

"Transversale 2: Du freudo-marxisme au lacano-althussérisme en Amérique Latine." La Psychanalyse du reste du monde. Un atlas critique du freudisme. Ed. Livio Boni. Paris: La Découverte. 285-306.

"Populism Without Adjectives." On Seven Essays on Populism. Ed. Samuele Mazzolini. Ethics & Politics: A Review of Philosophy (2023).

"Literature and Revolution in Transition: An Aesthetics of Singularity." Latin American Literatures in Transition. Ed. Amanda Holmes and Par Kumaraswami. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 275-289.

"The Eternal Return of the Modern: Poetry, History, Philosophy." Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism. Ed. Arka Chattopadhyay and Arthur Rose. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. 50-65.

"Eine Metaphysik des Todestriebs oder der radikale Philosoph als hartgesottener Detektiv." ["A Metaphysics of the Death Drive, or, The Radical Philosopher as Hardboiled Detective"]. Slavoj Žižek und die Künste. Mit einem Beitrag von Slavoj Žižek. Ed. Erik Vogt. Vienna-Berlin: Turia + Kant, 2022. 31-60.

"Marx con Morgan: La vía mexicana hacia la comuna." Antrópica: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades 16 (2022).

"Marx's Theory of the Subject." Accumulation and Subjectivity: Rethinking Marx in Latin America. Ed. Karen Benezra. Albany: SUNY Press, 2022. 255-274.

"From Marx to Heidegger: Oscar del Barco and the Crisis of Marxism." Revolution and Counterrevolution in Latin America: An Aleatory Dialectic. Ed. Nicolas Allen and Óscar Ariel Cabezas. Special issue of Radical Americas (2020-2021). Available here.

"O destino do genérico: Marx com Badiou." Zero à esquerda. Trans. Pedro Naccarato and Moisés Rech.  Online publication. Available here.

"Para una crítica de la violencia originaria: Freud, Heidegger, Derrida." Psicoanálisis, deconstrucción y crítica de lo psicopolítico. Ed. Rosaura Martínez Ruiz. Mexico City: Akal, 2021. 23-55. Available here.

"From Zapata to the Zapatistas: Mexico’s "other" Commune." The Commune at 150, a special series of Roar Magazine (May 18-28, 2021). Available here. Greek translation as "Από τον Ζαπάτα έως τους Ζαπατίστας: Η «άλλη» Κομμούνα του Μεξικού." Translated by Β. Αντωνίου. Available here.

"The Subject’s Turn: Elements of a Materialist History." The Subject of Politics: People, Populism and Democracy. Ed. José Luis Villacañas, Cristina Basili, Anxo Garrido. Special issue of Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age 17 (2021): 91-105.

“Marxism and Subalternity.” Urgencias del latinoamericanismo en tiempos de globalización conflictiva: Tributo a John Beverley. Ed. Elizabeth Monasterios Pérez. Raleigh: Editorial A Contracorriente, 2020. 283-292.

"Rancières Mallarmé." Trans. Erik Vogt. Jacques Ranciere und die Literatur. Ed. Erik Vogt and Michael Manfé. Vienna - Berlin: Turia + Kant, 2020. 176-200.

“La comuna americana.” Horacio González, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Michael Löwy, Daniel Alvaro, Bruno Bosteels, Santiago M. Roggerone, Gisela Catanzaro, and Agustín Lucas Prestifilippo. Lecciones de la comuna. Vicente López: Mariano Ariel Pennisi, 2019. 63-74.

 “What Are Philosophers For in the Age of the Poets: Badiou with and against Heidegger.” Philosophy and Poetry: Continental Perspectives. Ed. Ranjan Ghosh. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. 248-270.

“Three Paradoxes of Communist Art.” The Idea of the Avant-Garde and What it Means Today, vol. 2, ed. Marc James Léger. Bristol: Intellect, 2019. 423-427.

"Political Theory," The Bloomsbury Companion to Marx. Ed. Jeff Diamanti, Andrew Pendakis, Imre Szeman. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.

"Lo que queda de Marx hoy: una teoría del sujeto." Slavoj Žižek, et al. Disparen contra Marx. Ed. Santiago Roggerone and Ariel Pennisi. Vicente López: Mariano Ariel Pennisi, 2018. 87-98.

"From Ayotzinapa to Tlatelolco: A Memorial of Grievances against the State." Nel segno del "sessantotto." Ed. Sandro Mezzadra and Mauricio Ricciardi. Special issue of Scienza & Politica: Per una storia dell doctrine 30.59 (2018): 41-60.

"La situación es catastrófica pero no es seria: Ironía, violencia y militancia en América Latina." Ironía y violencia en la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea. Ed. Brigitte Adriaensen and Carlos Van Tongeren. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2018. 41-57.

"Critique of Originary Violence: Freud, Heidegger, Derrida." The Undecidable Unconscious: A Journal of Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis 4 (2018): 27-66.

"Sobre la teoría de la disolución del Estado: Una política de la finitud." Perspectivas sobre marxismos latinoamericanos. Special issue of Escrituras americanas 2.2 (2018): 147-171. Reprinted in Del monólogo europeo al diálogo inter-filosófico. Ensayos sobre Enrique Dussel y la filosofía de la liberación. Ed. José Gandarilla and Mabel Moraña. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades, 2018. 387-403.

"Reading Rulfo with Benjamin and Derrida: End of Story." Mexican Literature in Theory. Ed. Ignacio Sánchez-Prado. London: Bloomsbury, 2018 (paperback edition 2019). 111-138.