Professor Warren Montag
Louis M. Brown Family Professor in Literature in English
B.A., UC Berkeley; M.A., Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School
Appointed In
1987
Office
Swan Hall #233
Hours
On Sabbatical

Warren Montag teaches 18th-century British and European literature with particular reference to political philosophy; he also teaches 20th-century European critical theory.

Editor of Décalages: a Journal of Althusser Studies

Areas of Specialization :

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature, the Enlightenment, Literature and Philosophy 1600-1800, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Twentieth-Century French Philosophy.

Publications

Books

(with Mike Hill) The Other Adam Smith (forthcoming 2014, Stanford University Press)

Philosophy’s Perpetual War: Althusser and his Contemporaries (Durham: Duke University Press,  2013)

Louis Althusser (London: Palgrave, 2003)

Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and his Contemporaries , (London: Verso, 1999).

(Spanish translation, Ediciones Tierra de Nadie, 2005;  Korean translation forthcoming)

The Unthinkable Swift : The Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church of England Man , (London: Verso, 1994).

Edited Collections

(Co-Editor) Masses, Classes and The Public Sphere (London: Verso,  2001).

(Ed)   In a Materialist Way: Selected Essays by Pierre Macherey (London: Verso, 1998).

(Co-Editor) The New Spinoza (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).

Journal Special Issues

(Co-editor with Nancy Armstrong) differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies , Vol 20, n. 3-4, 2009 (“The Future of the Human”).                                                                                                                               

Essays

“From Clinamen to Conatus: Deleuze, Lucretius and Spinoza,” in Lucretius and Modernity, ed. Jacques Lezra. Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming.  French translation 2013. 

“Rancière’s Lost Object” Cultural Critique, vol 83, Winter 2013. 139-155.

Althusser: Law and the Threat of the Outside,” Althusser and Law , ed. Laurent du Sutter. Routledge, 2013..

“Macherey entre le quotidien et l’utopie,” La Revue des Livres (Mai-Juin 2013)

 “Between Interpellation and Immunization: Althusser, Balibar and Esposito,” Postmodern Culture  Vol 33, number 3, 2012

“Conjuncture, Conflict, War: Machiavelli Between Althusser and Foucault (1975-1976)” Encountering Althusser , ed. Peter Thomas. Continuum, 2012.

“Hegel, sive Spinoza or Hegel as his Own True Other,” Hegel after Spinoza , ed. Hasana Sharp and Jason Smith. Continuum,  2012.

“El afuera de la ley: Schmitt, Kelsen y la Resistencia legal a la ley,” Youkali 13 (2012).

“To discompose and disorder the whole machine of the world:” Adam Smith, Epicurus and Lucretius,” Rivista di storia della filosofia 67:2 (2012): 267-276.

Introduction to Louis Althusser, “Student Problems,” Radical Philosophy 170, Nov.-Dec, 2011.

“Immanence, Transcendence and the Trace: Derrida between Levinas and Spinoza,” Badmidbar: a Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy , 2, Autumn 2011.

“Lucretius Hebraizant: Spinoza’s Reading of Ecclesiastes,” European Journal of Philosophy , 20 (2012). Spanish translation, Spinoza contemporaneo . Ed. Galcerán and Espinoza. Madrid: Tierradenadie ediciones, 2009.

“Louis Althusser,” The Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy , vol. 6, ed. Alan Schrift,. London: Acumen Press, 2010.

“The Late Althusser: Materialism of the Encounter or Philosophy of the Void?” Culture, Theory and Critique, (2010); Religgere Il Capitale: La lezione di Louis Althusser . Edizione Mimesis (Italian Translation), 2010. Problemi (Slovenian trans.), (2009)..

“Interjecting Empty Spaces: Imagination and Interpretation in Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Spinoza Now , ed. Dimitris Vardoulakis, University of Minnesota Press,  forthcoming (Italian trans. 2010).

 “Spectres d’Althusser,” La revue internationale des livres et des idées , janvier-février 2010, no. 15. English version, Historical Materialism

“Imitating the Affects of Beasts: Interest and Inhumanity in Spinoza,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies  Vol 20, n. 3-4, 2009. (Spanish trans. 2009) (Italian Translation forthcoming).

“War and the Market: the Global South in the Origins of Neo-liberalism,” The Global South , April 2009, Vol. 3, no. 1.

“Locke et le concept d’inhumain,” Multitudes , no. 33, Été 2008.

“Semites, ou la fiction de l’autre,” (review essay) La revue internationale des livres et des idées , mai-juin 2008, no 5.

“Tumultuous Combinations: Transindividuality in Adam Smith and Spinoza,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal   28 (1) 2007.

“El peligroso derecho a la existencia: la necroeconomia de Von Mises y Hayek,” Youkali 2, November 2006.                       

“Jonathan Swift,”  Encyclopedia of British Literary History , Oxford University Press, 2006.

“Louis Althusser: the Intellectual and the Conjuncture” Marxism, Intellectuals and Politics , ed. David Bates, London: Palgrave, 2006. Abridged version in Il Manifesto , Nov. 9, 2006 (Italian Translation).

 “On the Function of the Concept of Origin: Althusser’s Reading of Locke”, Current Continental Theory and Early Modern Philosophy , ed. Stephen Daniels (Northwestern U P: 2006).

“Necro-Economics: Adam Smith and Death in the Life of the Universal,” Radical Philosophy November 2005, Youkali 1, April 2006 (Spanish trans.), Critica Marxista   23, 2006 (Portuguese trans.)                   

“Foucault: the Immanence of Law in Power,” Michel Foucault and Social Control , ed. Alain Beaulieu and David Gabbard, Lexington Press, 2005.

“Foucault and the Problematic of Origins: Althusser’s Reading of Folie et déraisonBorderlands 4.2, 2005; Actuel Marx (French trans. 2004); Theseis (Greek trans. 2004).

“Who’s Afraid of the Multitude: Between the Individual and the State,” South Atlantic Quarterly (Fall 2005);  Slagmark n.39 2004 (Danish trans.); Quaderni Materialisti n.2 2004 (Italian trans.);  Theseis (Greek trans. 2004) (Polish translation 2010).                                                                                                      

“Materiality, Singularity, Subject: Response to Callari, Hardt, Parker and Smith,” Symposium on Louis Althusser , Rethinking Marxism (17:2, April 2005).

“Politics: Transcendent or Immanent? A response to Miguel Vatter,” Theory and Event (7:4, 2004).

“Der neue Spinoza” Immaterielle Arbeit und imperiale Souveräinität ed. Thomas Atzert and Jost Müller (Munster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2004).     

“La dialectique à la cantonade: Althusser devant l’art” Sartre, Althusser, Lukacs ed. Eustache Kouvelakis (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004).                   

“Towards a Conception of Racism without Race: Foucault and Contemporary Bio-politics,” Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy (2002).

“Spinoza and the Concept of the Shekhinah” Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy ,ed.

Lenn Goodman and Heidi Ravven (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002).

“From the Standpoint of the Masses: Antonio Negri’s Insurgencies ” (review essay) Historical Materialism 9 2002).

“Descartes and Spinoza” and “Althusser” The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Literary Criticism and Theory 1945-2000 , ed. Julian Wolfreys (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P, 2002).

“Vers une conception du racisme sans race: Foucault et la biopolitique contemporaine,” Foucault et la médecine ed. Philippe Artières et Emmanuel da Silva (Paris: Kimé, 2001).

“Gulliver’s Solitude: the Paradoxes of Swift’s Anti-Individualism,” Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation 42:1 2001.

“The Pressure of the Street: Habermas’s Fear of the Masses”, Masses, Classes, Counterpublics , ed. Mike Hill and Warren Montag (London: Verso, 2001)

“Spirits Armed and Unarmed: Derrida’s Specters ”, Ghostly Demarcations ed. Michael Sprinker (London: Verso, 1999). (Spanish translation, 2002, Turkish translation 2004, Portuguese translation 2008, Italian translation 2009)

“Modernité de Spinoza” Magazine Littéraire 370, Novembre 1998 (Portuguese translation, 2006).

Preface to Etienne Balibar, Spinoza and Politics (London: Verso,  1998).

“Althusser’s Nominalism: Structure and Singularity 1962-1966". Rethinking Marxism 10:3 Fall 1998.

“Can the Subaltern Speak and Other Transcendental Questions,” Cultural Logic   1.2 1998. (French translation, Multitudes , 2006).       

 “Second Response to Carole Fabricant” (on Swift), Eighteenth-Century Fiction ,  9:3, 1997.

“The Universalization of Whiteness: Racism and Enlightenment”, Whiteness: A Critical Reader , ed. Mike Hill (New York: New York University Press, 1997).

“Response to Carole Fabricant” (on Swift), Eighteenth-Century Fiction , 9:1, 1996.

“The Soul is the Prison of the Body: Althusser and Foucault 1970-1975", Yale French Studies , Fall 1995. Spanish translation, Youkali , 2010, Polish translation 2010.

"Beyond Force and Consent: Hobbes, Spinoza, Althusser" in Marxism and Postmodernism: Essays in the Althusserian Tradition , eds. Antonio Callari and David Ruccio (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1995). (Korean translation 1998, Norwegian translation forthcoming).

"A Process without a Subject or Goal(s): How to Read Althusser's Autobiography", Marxism in the New World Order: Crises and Possibilities , ed. Antonio Callari (New York: Guilford Press,1995) (Korean translation 1996; Greek translation 1998).

"Althusser and Spinoza Against Hermeneutics: Interpretation or Intervention?", in The Althusserian Legacy , eds. E. Ann Kaplan and Michael Sprinker (London: Verso, 1993) (Turkish translation, forthcoming.        

"The Workshop of Filthy Creation: A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism , eds. Ross C. Murfin and  Johanna Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991, Second Edition, 2000).

"The Emptiness of a Distance Taken: Freud, Lacan, Althusser" Rethinking Marxism ,         Spring, 1991 (Korean Translation, 1994).

"Spinoza: Politics in a World Without Transcendence", Rethinking Marxism , Fall 1989.

(Swedish translation, 2004).                    

"What is at Stake in the Debate on Postmodernism", Postmodernism and Its Discontents , (London: Verso, 1988).

(Korean translation 1990, Portuguese translation 1993)

"Macherey and Literary Analysis", Minnesota Review , Spring 1986.

"Lacan and Feminine Sexuality", Quarterly Review of Film Studies , Fall 1985.

"Marxism and Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Encounter", Minnesota Review , Fall 1984 (Korean Translation 1992).

Translations

Etienne Balibar, Identity and Difference: Locke’s Invention of Consciousness , (Verso, 2013)

(with Willi Goetschel) Jacques Derrida, “Language and the Discourse of Method,” Badmidbar: a Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy , 2, Autumn 2011.

Louis Althusser, "On Marx and Freud." Rethinking Marxism , Spring, 1991.

Louis Althusser, The Spontaneous Philosophy of Scientists and Other Essays , (London: Verso, 1990).

Michel Pécheux, "Discourse: Structure or Event?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture .  (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1988).  Revised version in Ian Parker, ed. Lacanian Discourse Analysis (forthcoming)

Pierre Macherey, "History and Novel in Balzac's The Peasants ."  Minnesota Review , Spring 1986.