Gabriel Rockhill

Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic and activist who publishes in French and English. His work is dedicated to a materialist analysis of the social totality, and it has thus far focused primarily on the three intertwining themes of history, politics and culture.

He holds master’s, doctoral and postdoctoral degrees in philosophy, the historical social sciences and political theory from the Université de Paris VIII and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he worked under the supervision of Luce Irigaray (M.A. Director), Jacques Derrida (M.A. Director), Jean-Louis Fabiani (M.A. Director), Alain Badiou (Ph.D. Supervisor) and Étienne Balibar (President Ph.D. Committee). He also holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Emory University, which was completed under the guidance of Thomas R. Flynn.

He is currently Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, Founder and Executive Director of the Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique, former Directeur de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie and Member of the “Laboratoire Sens et Compréhension du Monde Contemporain” (Faculté des SHS – Sorbonne). He has also been a Research Associate at the Centre de recherches sur les arts et le langage (CNRS/EHESS) in Paris and a Visiting Scholar at the Centre Franco-hongrois en Sciences Sociales at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. Prior to his appointment at Villanova, he taught French and Francophone theory, culture, film and literature in Paris at the following institutions: Institut d’Études Politiques, Institut Catholique, Collège International de Philosophie, Centre Parisien d’Études Critiques (Sorbonne Nouvelle), New York University in France, American University of Paris, Université de Paris VIII.

He is the author of Contre-histoire du temps présent: interrogations intempestives sur la mondialisation, la technologie, la démocratie (CNRS Éditions, 2017; available in English as Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy via Duke University Press, 2017), Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), Radical History & the Politics of Art (Columbia University Press, 2014) and Logique de l’histoire: Pour une analytique des pratiques philosophiques (Éditions Hermann, 2010). He co-authored and co-edited Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique: Dialogues (Columbia University Press, 2011), which was also published in French and Spanish. He also co-edited and contributed to Jacques Rancière: History, Politics, Aesthetics (Duke University Press, 2009) and Technologies de contrôle dans la mondialisation: Enjeux politiques, éthiques et esthétiques (Éditions Kimé, 2009). Along with numerous book chapters and scholarly articles–in academic journals such as Philosophy Today, Symposium, Philosophie and Rue Descartes–he edited and co-translated Cornelius Castoriadis’s Postscript on Insignificance (Continuum Books, 2011), as well as Jacques Rancière’s The Politics of Aesthetics (Continuum Books, 2004).