Lorenzo Chiesa (born 25 April 1976) is a philosopher, critical theorist, translator, and professor whose academic research and works focus on the intersection between ontology, psychoanalysis, and political theory.

Biography

Chiesa is currently a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at

Newcastle University Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is ...

in the United Kingdom. He also teaches at the

European Graduate School The European Graduate School (EGS) is a private graduate school that operates in two locations: Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and Valletta, Malta. History It was founded in 1994 in Saas-Fee, Switzerland by the Swiss scientist, artist, and therapist, Pao ...

. Previously, he taught at the University of Kent (2006-2014), where he was a Full Professor of Modern European Thought and founded and directed the Centre for Critical Thought. He was also Visiting Professor in the MA programme in Socio-Political Philosophy of the European University at Saint Petersburg and at the Freud's Dream Museum in Saint Petersburg. Additionally, he served as Director of the Genoa School of Humanities in Italy. He held visiting positions at the Freud Museum, London, 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 ...

, the Institute of Philosophy of Ljubljana, the Italian Institute of Human Sciences of Naples, the

American University of Beirut The American University of Beirut (AUB) ( ar, الجامعة الأميركية في بيروت) is a private, non-sectarian, and independent university chartered in New York with its campus in Beirut, Lebanon. AUB is governed by a private, aut ...

, and Jnanapravaha Center for Cultural Studies of Mumbai. He is best known for his monographs on the French psychoanalyst

Jacques 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 pu ...

published by

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

, and translations into English of works by the Italian political philosophers

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( , ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitics ( ...

and

Paolo Virno Paolo Virno (; ; born 1952) is an Italian philosopher, Semiotics, semiologist and a figurehead for the Italian Marxism, Marxist movement. Implicated in belonging to illegal social movements during the 1960s and 1970s, Virno was arrested and jail ...

, published by

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It was among the presses officially ...

and

. He serves as editor of the Insubordinations series at MIT Press. He has also written widely on contemporary French and

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

philosophy,

biopolitics Biopolitics refers to the political relations between the administration or regulation of the life of species and a locality's populations, where politics and law evaluate life based on perceived constants and traits. French philosopher Michel Fo ...

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...

and

atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...

. Chiesa's philosophical treatise ''Subjectivity and Otherness'' (2007), which focuses on Lacan's theory of the subject, has been described as setting "a new benchmark of conceptual rigour within the realm of introductory texts on Lacanian thought". His treatment of the implications of

psychoanalytic theory Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psyc ...

for

and

in ''The Not-Two'' (2016) has been extensively discussed by the Slovenian philosopher and

Freudo-Marxist Freudo-Marxism is a loose designation for philosophical perspectives informed by both the Marxist philosophy of Karl Marx and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. It has a rich history within continental philosophy, beginning in the 1920s ...

theorist

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New Y ...

in his monograph ''Disparities''. According to the Italian academic and political philosopher

Roberto Esposito Roberto Esposito (Piano di Sorrento, 4 August 1950) is an Italian political philosopher, critical theorist, and professor, notable for his academic research and works on biopolitics. He currently serves as professor of theoretical philosophy at t ...

, Chiesa is "one of the rare philosophers capable of making Lacan’s psychoanalytic apparatus interact with the various languages of continental thought". He has also been referred to as "the leader of a new generation of ‘young Lacanians’, for whom Lacan is primarily a text that needs to be read". Chiesa argues that "psychoanalysis is not intrinsically political" while it is needed to "criticise classical ontology, think new ways in which to approach the question of ontology, and then, from that standpoint, think progressive politics".Chiesa, interview by Critical4group, 29 April 2016
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Selected bibliography

;Authored books and edited volumes *''The Not-Two. Logic and God in Lacan'' (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2016) urkish translation, Istanbul: Sola Unitas (2019)*''The Virtual Point of Freedom. Essays on Politics, Aesthetics, and Religion'' (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 2016) talian translation, Salerno: Orthotes, 2019*''Biopolitical Theory and Beyond: Genealogy, Psychoanalysis, Biology'', special issue of Paragraph, Volume 39, Issue 1 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016) dited with Bostjan Nedoh and Marco Piasentier*''Italian Thought Today: Bio-economy, Human Nature, Christianity'' (London and New York: Routledge, 2014) dited*''Lacan and Philosophy: The New Generation'' (Melbourne: Re.press, 2014) dited*''The Italian Difference: Between Nihilism and Biopolitics'' (Melbourne: Re.press, 2009) dited with Alberto Toscano*''Subjectivity and Otherness. A Philosophical Reading of Lacan'' (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2007) orean translation, Seoul: Nanjang Publishing (2012), with a new preface ussian translation, Saint Petersburg: Skifia Print (2021) urkish translation, Istanbul: Axis (2022) erman translation, Frankfurt: Neue Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher (2022), with a new preface*''Antonin Artaud. Verso un corpo senza organi'' (Verona: Ombre Corte, 2001) ;Translated books *P. Virno, ''The Idea of World'' (Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2022) *P. Virno, ''Convention and Materialism'' (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2021) *A. Kuliscioff, ''The Monopoly of Man'' (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2021) *Elvio Fachinelli, ''The Still Arrow'' (Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2021) *Giorgio Agamben, ''What Is Real?'' (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2018) *Giorgio Agamben, ''The Adventure'' (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2018) *Giorgio Agamben, ''What Is Philosophy?'' (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2017) *Paolo Virno, ''An Essay on Negation. For a Linguistic Anthropology'' (London: Seagull Books, 2017) *Giorgio Agamben, ''The Fire and the Tale'' (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2017) *Giorgio Agamben, ''The Kingdom and The Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government'' (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2011) ith Matteo Mandarini*Slavoj Žižek, ''America Oggi: Abu Ghraib e altre oscenità del potere'' (Verona: Ombre Corte, 2005) *Slavoj Žižek, ''Dello sguardo e altri oggetti. Saggi su cinema e psicoanalisi'' (Udine: Campanotto, 2004) ith Damiano Cantone*Slavoj Žižek, ''Il soggetto scabroso – Trattato di ontologia politica'' (Milan: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2003) ith Damiano Cantone

References

External links

Chiesa’s Faculty Homepage
at Newcastle University
Chiesa's profile
at The MIT Press
Chiesa's Faculty Homepage
at the European Graduate School *Lorenzo Chiesa, keynote lecture
“Why Italian Theory? A Critical Introduction”
at “Italian Biopolitical Theory: Life, Power and Theology” conference (UWE, Bristol / Royal Institute of Philosophy), 13–14 March 2015 *Lorenzo Chiesa, lectur
“Psychoanalysis, Religion, Love”
at “Psychoanalysis and Political Theory” international conference (University of Salerno), 6 June 2013
Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture
at “Lacan contra Foucault Subjectivity, Universalism, Politics” international conference (American University of Beirut), 31 January 2015
Lorenzo Chiesa, Introduction
“The Human Animal in Politics, Science, and Psychoanalysis” international conference (KW Gallery Berlin), 16 December 2011 *Lorenzo Chiesa, lectur
“About Contemporary Materialist Dialectic”
(European University at Saint Petersburg), 15 April 2012 *Lorenzo Chiesa, lectur
“Pasolini from the Failed Revolution of 1968 to Anthropological Genocide”
(The American University of Beirut’s Center for Arts and Humanities – CAH), 9 May 2016 *Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture �
Jouissance, Inherent Transgression, and Revolution
�� (Jnanapravaha Mumbai), 6 January 2019 *Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture �
The Future of an Illusion?
�� (Newcastle Festival of Philosophy), 22 May 2021 *Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture �
Freud’s Alibi and Lacan’s New Triumph of Religion
�� (Lacan in Scotland), 22 April 2021 {{DEFAULTSORT:Chiesa, Lorenzo 1976 births 20th-century Italian educators 20th-century Italian essayists 20th-century Italian male writers 20th-century Italian philosophers 20th-century Italian translators 21st-century Italian educators 21st-century Italian male writers 21st-century Italian philosophers 21st-century Italian translators Academics of Newcastle University Academics of the University of Kent American University of Beirut faculty Biopolitics Critical theorists European University at Saint Petersburg Italian expatriates in England Italian expatriates in India Italian expatriates in Lebanon Italian expatriates in Russia Italian expatriates in Slovenia Italian expatriates in the United States Italian political philosophers Italian political writers Italian–English translators Jacques Lacan Living people Ontologists Philosophy academics Philosophy teachers Philosophers of nihilism Philosophers of psychology Translators of Jacques Lacan University of Genoa faculty University of New Mexico faculty Writers about communism