Adam Kotsko

I have a new article up at Boston Review on the idea that academics have failed to “make the case” for their value

I’m very pleased with the cover of my forthcoming monograph Agamben’s Philosophical Trajectory, which is due to be released in September. The photo depicts the group who attended Heidegger’s seminar at Le Thor in 1968, a formative experience for Agamben.

My course “Reading the Qur’an” is finished for the semester, and so is the corresponding blog series. Below is an index of blog posts; you may also want to consult the syllabus.

• Introduction to an Occasional Series
• Background Work
• Training Wheels
• Repeated Reminders
• Muhammad and Moses
• Moving to Medina
• The Seal of the Prophets

I have now begun studying the Qur’an in Arabic, so keep an eye on the tag for some further extra-curricular reflections!

At the author’s request, I have posted a translation of Agamben’s indirect response to the controversy surrounding his earlier article about the response to coronavirus in Italy.

The New Republic has published a piece of mine on Tea Party originator Rick Santelli’s latest edifying contribution to public discourse — the suggestion that we should intentionally infect the population with coronavirus and get it over with.

Assuming all goes well in terms of global pandemics, I have a couple speaking engagements scheduled in March.

The first will be in the context of a seminar I co-organized with Frances Restuccia for the American Comparative Literature Association’s national conference in Chicago (March 19-22) on Agamben’s Later Works. My paper, entitled “Agamben’s Vegetative Theology,” will use Agamben’s two most recent publications, Autoritratto nello studio (Self-Portrait in His Studio) and Il Regno e il Giardino (The Kingdom and the Garden), to ask whether Agamben maintains a “theological” position and what that might mean in the context of his work. (UPDATE: This conference has unfortunately been cancelled, but a version of my paper will eventually appear in print.)

The second will be at a conference on “The Undercommons and Destituent Power” at Indiana University-Bloomington (March 26-28), which aims to bring black studies into dialogue with Agamben and other adjecent thinkers. My paper here will also be on Agamben, providing some background on his concept of destituent power and how it fits into his project. (UPDATE: The same holds for this conference, sadly….)

The Theology and Continental Philosophy programming unit of the American Academy of Religion has put together a great call for papers this year, in my humble opinion as co-chair. You don’t have to be a member to submit proposals.

I am going to be blogging regularly on my “Reading the Qur’an” course at An und für sich. This first introductory post, which discusses the structure and rationale behind the course, is available here. You can follow the series by using this blog label (which also includes a few older posts on the Qur’an).

I have updated my sample syllabi page to include my courses for the Spring Term:

• The Western Political Tradition
• What is Matter?
• Reading the Qur’an

This semester is a milestone for me. I have long hoped to teach in all three major areas of the Shimer Great Books curriculum (humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences), and I finally get to teach a natural sciences course with “What is Matter?” — a study of the history of chemistry through important primary sources and reenactments of key experiments (a version of which I took as a student as part of my training). Not only that, but I get to teach in all three areas simultaneously! It should be exciting and challenging.

I have submitted the final manuscript for my monograph on Agamben’s development. Following my editor’s suggestion, I have changed the title to Agamben’s Philosophical Trajectory, which will hopefully make the connection with my co-edited volume Agamben’s Philosophical Lineage. Assuming all goes well, the anticipated publication date is September 2020.