Adrian Johnston, Assistant Professor

 

RESEARCH INTEREST:

Nineteenth and twentieth-century European philosophy (particularly German idealism, Marxism, and post-war French thought), contemporary Continental philosophy (especially Badiou, Žižek, and Malabou), Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, political theory, and the neurosciences.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

Monographs

1. (2005). Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive [with a foreword by Slavoj Žižek], Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
2. (2008). Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
3. (2009). Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change, Evanston: Northwestern University Press (forthcoming).
4. Alain Badiou and the Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy: From Lacan to Meillassoux (under review with Northwestern University Press).
5. A Weak Nature Alone: Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism (work-in-progress).

Co-authored Books

1. With Catherine Malabou, Auto-Affection and Emotional Life: Psychoanalysis and Neurobiology (under review with Columbia University Press).

Chapters in Books

1. (2002). “Jacques Lacan,” The Freud Encyclopedia: Theories, Therapies, and Culture [ed. Edward Erwin], New York: Routledge, pp. 315-319.
2. (2006). “Ghosts of Substance Past: Schelling, Lacan, and the Denaturalization of Nature,” Lacan: The Silent Partners [ed. Slavoj Žižek], London: Verso Books, pp. 34-55.
3. (2007). “From the Spectacular Act to the Vanishing Act: Badiou, Žižek, and the Politics of Lacanian Theory,” Did Somebody Say Ideology?: Slavoj Žižek in a Post-Ideological Universe [ed. Fabio Vighi and Heiko Feldner], Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 41-77.
4. (2008). “A Blast from the Future: Freud, Lacan, Marcuse, and Snapping the Threads of the Past,” Umbr(a): Utopia [ed. Ryan Anthony Hatch], Buffalo: Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture (State University of New York at Buffalo), pp. 67-84.
5. (2009). “Sigmund Freud,” The History of Continental Philosophy, eight volumes [ed. Alan Schrift], Volume III: The New Century [ed. Keith Ansell Pearson], Chesham: Acumen Press (forthcoming).
6. (2009). “The Weakness of Nature: Hegel, Freud, Lacan, and Negativity Materialized,” Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics and the Dialectic [ed. Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis, and Slavoj Žižek], New York: Columbia University Press (forthcoming).
7. (2009). “Sextimacy: Freud, Mortality, and a Reconsideration of the Role of Sexuality in Psychoanalysis,” Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychoanalysis and Philosophy, Leuven: Leuven University Press and Paris: Éditions Campagne Première (forthcoming).
8. (2010). ““Hume’s Revenge: À Dieu, Meillassoux?,” The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism [ed. Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, and Nick Srnicek], Melbourne: Re.press (forthcoming).
9. (2010). ““Turning the Sciences Inside Out: Revisiting Lacan’s ‘Science and Truth,’” Concept and Form: The Cahiers pour l’Analyse and Contemporary French Thought [ed. Peter Hallward, Christian Kerslake, and Knox Peden], London: Verso Books (forthcoming).
10. (2010). “Secularizing Materialism: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Godless Matters,” Lacan and Atheism [ed. Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupančič], Durham: Duke University Press (forthcoming).
11. (2010). “Slavoj Žižek,” The Blackwell Companion to Continental Philosophy, Second Edition [ed. William Schroeder], Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd. (forthcoming).
12. (2010). “There is no Nature of nature: Žižek, Damasio, and the Subject of Naturalism,” Reviving Vitalism: Contemporary Thought and the Philosophy of Life [ed. Michael Austin and Benjamin Woodard] (under review with Re.press).
13. (2010). “The Foreclosed Balance of Authority: Lacanian Reflections on Psychosis,” Madness and Subjectivity: Lacanian Theorizations of the Psychoses [ed. Adrian Johnston and Kareen Ror Malone] (work-in-progress).

Articles and Review Essays (in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent)

1. (2010). “Lacan and the Science of Psychoanalysis: On Jean-Claude Milner’s L’Œuvre claire,” S: Journal of the Jan Van Eyck Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique [ed. Joan Copjec and Sigi Jöttkandt], vol. 3 (forthcoming).
2. (2010). “What Is Transcendental Materialism?: A Defense of Žižek’s Ontology,” Continental Philosophy Review (forthcoming).
3. (2010). “Against the Eleventh Commandment: A Lacanian Critique of Žižekian Ethics,” La Revue Internationale de Philosophie (forthcoming).
4. (2010). “Sartrean Mathematics: On the Ontology of Alain Badiou,” Philosophy Compass [ed. Andrew Cutrofello] (forthcoming).
5. (2010). “Feeling Without Feeling: Freud and the Unresolved Problem of Unconscious Guilt,” Qui Parle? (forthcoming).
6. (2010). “The Right Left: Alain Badiou and the Disruption of Political Identities,” Yale French Studies: Turns to the Right? [ed. Lawrence Schehr and Michael Johnson], no. 116/117 (forthcoming).
7. (2010). “The Misfeeling of What Happens: Slavoj Žižek, Antonio Damasio, and a Materialist Account of Affects,” Subjectivity [ed. Derek W. Hook] (forthcoming).
8. (2009). “From Signifiers to Jouis-sens: Lacan’s Senti-ments and Affectuations,” Filozofski Vestnik: Life [ed. Jelica Šumič-Riha] (forthcoming).
9. (2009). “What Matter(s) in Ontology: Alain Badiou, the Hebb-Event, and Materialism Split from Within” [trans. Anders Lundberg], OEI (forthcoming).
10. (2009). “A Response to a Critic: On Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change,” International Journal of Žižek Studies (forthcoming).
11. (2009). “Free to be Brave, Free to be Stupid: On Žižek’s In Defense of Lost Causes,” International Journal of Žižek Studies (forthcoming).
12. (2009). “Slavoj Žižek between Political Theology and a Politicized Theology: A Response to Clayton Crockett,” Political Theology [ed. Creston Davis] (forthcoming).
13. (2009). “The Emergence of Speculative Realism: A Review of Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction,” Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology (forthcoming).
14. (2009). “Life Terminable and Interminable: The Undead and the Afterlife of the Afterlife—A Friendly Disagreement with Martin Hägglund,” New Centennial Review, vol. 9, no. 1, Spring, pp. 147-189.
15. (2009). “Affects Are Signifiers: The Infinite Judgment of a Lacanian Affective Neuroscience,” Nessie [ed. Fabien Tarby], no. 1, http://nessie-philo.com/Files/ /adrian_johnston___affects_are_signifiers.pdf.
16. (2009). “The World Before Worlds: Quentin Meillassoux and Alain Badiou’s Anti-Kantian Transcendentalism,” Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 33, no. 1, Winter/Spring, pp. 73-99.
17. (2008). “Konfliktna materja: Jacques Lacan in izziv sekulariziranja materializma” [trans. Nina Zaplotnik], Problemi, vol. 46, no. 7-8, pp. 79-104.
18. (2008). “Courage before the Event: Alain Badiou and the Force of Affects,” Filozofski Vestnik: Radical Philosophy? [ed. Peter Klepec], vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 101-133.
19. (2008). “Phantom of Consistency: Alain Badiou and Kantian Transcendental Idealism,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 41, no. 3, September, pp. 345-366.
20. (2008). “Slavoj Žižek’s Hegelian Reformation: Giving a Hearing to The Parallax View,” Diacritics, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 3-20.
21. (2008). “What Matter(s) in Ontology: Alain Badiou, the Hebb-Event, and Materialism Split from Within,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 13, no. 1, April, pp. 27-49.
22. (2008). “Conflicted Matter: Jacques Lacan and the Challenge of Secularizing Materialism,” Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, no. 19, Spring, pp. 166-188.
23. (2007). “Lacanian theory has legs: Structures Marching in the Streets,” South Atlantic Review, vol. 72, no. 2, Spring, pp. 99-105.
24. (2007). “Lightening Ontology: Slavoj Žižek and the Unbearable Lightness of Being Free,” Lacanian Ink: The Symptom, no. 8, Spring, http://www.lacan.com/symptom8_ articles/johnston8.html.
25. (2007). “The Quick and the Dead: Alain Badiou and the Split Speeds of Transformation,” International Journal of Žižek Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 58-86.
26. (2007). “‘Let a thousand flowers bloom!’: Some Brief Remarks on and Responses to Žižek’s ‘Badiou: Notes from an Ongoing Debate,’” International Journal of Žižek Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 44-57.
27. (2007). “From the Spectacular Act to the Vanishing Act: Badiou, Žižek, and the Politics of Lacanian Theory,” International Journal of Žižek Studies, vol. 1, no. 0, pp. 1-40 (reprinted from Did Somebody Say Ideology?: Slavoj Žižek in a Post-Ideological Universe [ed. Fabio Vighi and Heiko Feldner], Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp. 41-77).
28. (2007). “Against Embodiment: The Material Ground of the Immaterial Subject,” International Journal of Žižek Studies, vol. 1, no. 0, pp. 41-64 (reprinted from Journal for Lacanian Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, December 2004, pp. 230-254).
29. (2007). “The Cynic’s Fetish: Slavoj Žižek and the Dynamics of Belief,” International Journal of Žižek Studies, vol. 1, no. 0, pp. 65-111 (reprinted from Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, vol. 9, no. 3, December 2004, pp. 259-283).
30. (2007). “Revulsion is not without its subject: Kant, Lacan, Žižek and the Symptom of Subjectivity,” International Journal of Žižek Studies, vol. 1, no. 0, pp. 112-140 (reprinted from Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, no. 15, Spring 2004, pp. 199-228).
31. (2007). “There is Truth, and then there are truths—or, Slavoj Žižek as a Reader of Alain Badiou,” International Journal of Žižek Studies, vol. 1, no. 0, pp. 141-185 (reprinted from (Re)-turn: A Journal of Lacanian Studies, vol. 2, Spring 2005, 85-141).
32. (2006). “Hitri in mrtvi: Alain Badiou in razcepljene hitrosti transformacije” [trans. Ana Žerjav], Problemi, no. 7/8, pp. 145-186.
33. (2005). “Intimations of Freudian Mortality: The Enigma of Sexuality and the Constitutive Blind Spots of Freud’s Self-Analysis,” Journal for Lacanian Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 222-246.
34. (2005). “Nothing is not always no-one: (a)Voiding Love,” Filozofski Vestnik: The Nothing(ness)/Le rien/Das Nichts [ed. Alenka Zupančič], vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 67-81.
35. (2005). “There is Truth, and then there are truths—or, Slavoj Žižek as a Reader of Alain Badiou,” (Re)-turn: A Journal of Lacanian Studies, vol. 2, Spring, pp. 85-141.
36. (2005). “Substanca in duhovi njene preteklosti: Schelling, Lacan in denaturalizacija narave” [trans. Tomaž Bezjak], Problemi, no. 1/2, pp. 33-85.
37. (2005). “Unable to Enjoy: A Review of Todd McGowan’s The End of Dissatisfaction?,” South Atlantic Review, vol. 70, no. 1, Winter, pp. 165-169.
38. (2004). “Against Embodiment: The Material Ground of the Immaterial Subject,” Journal for Lacanian Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, December, pp. 230-254.
39. (2004). “The Cynic’s Fetish: Slavoj Žižek and the Dynamics of Belief,” Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, vol. 9, no. 3, December, pp. 259-283.
40. (2004). “The Concreteness of Absolute Flux: A Review of Jean-Luc Nancy’s Hegel,” Owl of Minerva, vol. 36, no. 1, Fall/Winter, pp. 68-74.
41. (2004). “Revulsion is not without its subject: Kant, Lacan, Žižek and the Symptom of Subjectivity,” Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, no. 15, Spring, pp. 199-228.
42. (2003). “The Soul of Dasein: Schelling’s Doctrine of the Soul and Heidegger’s Analytic of Dasein,” Philosophy Today, vol. 47, no. 3, Fall, pp. 227-251.
43. (2003). “Psychosis and the Fundaments of a New Philosophical Anthropology: A Review of Alphonse De Waelhens’ and Wilfried Ver Eecke’s Phenomenology and Lacan on Schizophrenia, after the Decade of the Brain,” Theory and Psychology, vol. 13, no. 5, October, pp. 711-715.
44. (2003). “Unpacking the Quilting Point: A Review of Philippe Van Haute’s Against Adaptation,” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, vol. 8, no. 2, Fall, pp. 349-354.
45. (2003). “The Genesis of the Transcendent: Kant, Schelling, and the Ground of Experience,” Idealistic Studies, vol. 33, no. 1, Spring, pp. 57-81.
46. (2003). “Beneath the Sexual Façade: A Review of Paul Verhaeghe’s Beyond Gender,” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, vol. 8, no. 1, Spring, pp. 177-180.
47. (2002). “The Exception and the Rule: On Judith Butler,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 35, no. 4, December, pp. 423-432.
48. (2002). “Psychoanalysis—What is it good for?: A Review of Elisabeth Roudinesco’s Why Psychoanalysis?,” American Imago, vol. 59, no. 4, Winter, pp. 489-494.
49. (2002). “Non-Existence and Sexual Identity: Some Brief Remarks on Meinong and Lacan,” Lacanian Ink: The Symptom, no. 3, Fall/Winter, http://www.lacan.com/ nonexistf.htm.
50. (2002). “In Language More than Language Itself: Reconsidering the Significance of Structuralism in Lacanian Thought,” The Letter: Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, no. 25, Summer, pp. 39-75.
51. (2002). “Confronting the New Sophists: A Review of Jason Barker’s Alain Badiou,” Theory and Event, vol. 6, no. 2, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event /v006/6.2 johnston.html.
52. (2002). “The Suspicious Voice of Reason: The Impure Foundations of Ethical Agency,” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, vol. 7, no. 1, Spring, pp. 1-15.
53. (2002). “The Forced Choice of Enjoyment: Jouissance between Anticipation and Actualization,” Lacanian Ink: The Symptom, no. 2, Spring/Summer, http://www.lacan. com/forcedf.htm.
54. (2001). “The Vicious Circle of the Super-Ego: The Pathological Trap of Guilt and the Beginning of Ethics,” Psychoanalytic Studies, vol. 3, no. 3/4, September-December, pp. 411-424.
55. (2001). “‘I see what I cannot say’: A Review of Richard Boothby’s Freud as Philosopher,” Journal of European Psychoanalysis, no. 12-13, Winter-Fall, pp. 184-188.
56. (2000). “Rigid ‘I,’ Modal Subject: Miller, Kripke, and the Suture of Rigid Designation,” Clinical Studies: International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 51-72.
57. (2000). “Experiential Origin, Symbolic Destiny: Serge Leclaire’s Letter and the Negotiation Between Phenomenology and Structuralism,” Anamorphosis, no. 3, 35-54.
58. (2000). “Just Say ‘No’ to Cogito: Verneinung and Subjectivity,” The Letter: Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, no. 19, Summer, pp. 50-91.
59. (2000). “The Driving Force of Lack: Object a and Lacan’s Extension of the Freudian Drive,” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 51-64.
60. (1999). “A Triadic Drama Beyond the Family: Freudian Metapsychology in Light of Lacan’s Object a,” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, vol. 4, no. 2, Fall, pp. 299-306.
61. (1999). “The Object of Its Affection: Reconsidering Temporality and Object-Choice in Lacan’s Theory of Sexual Difference,” The Letter: Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, no. 16, Summer, pp. 92-126.
62. (1999). “Lacan’s Purloined Linguistics: Lalangue and Languages in Encore,” Lacanian Ink, no. 14, Spring, pp. 47-59.