Adrian Johnston is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
at
Albuquerque
Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...
and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
.
Philosophical work
Influenced by
Slavoj Žižek and his readings of
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...
, Johnston's work is guided by what he calls “
transcendental materialism
Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy (also known as post-Continental philosophy) that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of p ...
”: an ontology that is materialist while nevertheless refusing to reduce away the gap that is human subjectivity. Johnston argues for retooling
Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...
and
Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...
after the success of the natural sciences in recent decades, while also arguing that Freud and Lacan presaged many of these successes. Johnston is critical of the thinkers of immanence whom he believes can only give us subjectless substance.
Bibliography
Adrian Johnson has published and co-edited a number of books, listed here. He is also a co-editor of the book series ''Diaeresis'' at Northwestern University Press.
* ''Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive'' (
Northwestern University Press
Northwestern University Press is an American publishing house affiliated with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. It publishes 70 new titles each year in the areas of continental philosophy, poetry, Slavic and German literary criticism ...
, 2005)
* ''Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity'' (Northwestern University Press, 2008)
* ''Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change'' (Northwestern University Press, 2009)
* ''Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume One: The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy'' (Northwestern University Press, 2013)
* ''Self and Emotional Life: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience'' (Columbia University Press, 2013, with
Catherine Malabou
Catherine Malabou (; born 1959) is a French philosopher. She is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, at the European Graduate School, and in the departmen ...
)
* ''Adventures in Transcendental Materialism: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers'' (
Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh University Press is a scholarly publisher of academic books and journals, based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
History
Edinburgh University Press was founded in the 1940s and became a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Edinburgh ...
, 2014, with Todd McGowan and
Slavoj Žižek)
* ''Irrepressible Truth: On Lacan’s ‘The Freudian Thing’ ''(
Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains off ...
, 2017)
* ''A New German Idealism: Hegel, Žižek, and Dialectical Materialism'' (
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...
, 2018)
* ''Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume Two: A Weak Nature Alone'' (Northwestern University Press, 2019)
* ''Objective Fictions: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Marxism'' (Ed.,
Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh University Press is a scholarly publisher of academic books and journals, based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
History
Edinburgh University Press was founded in the 1940s and became a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Edinburgh ...
, 2022, with Boštjan Nedoh and Alenka Zupančič)
* ''Infinite Greed: Money, Marxism, Psychoanalysis'' (forthcoming)
* ''Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume Three: Substance Also as Subject'' (forthcoming)
* ''God is Undead: Psychoanalysis Between Agnosticism and Atheism'' (forthcoming, with Lorenzo Chiesa)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnston, Adrian
21st-century American philosophers
Critical theorists
Freudo-Marxism
Hegel scholars
Jacques Lacan
Living people
Marxist theorists
American Marxist writers
University of New Mexico faculty
Year of birth missing (living people)