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Donatella Di Cesare

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Di Cesare in 2019

Donatella Ester Di Cesare (born 29 April 1956) is an Italian political philosopher, essayist, and editorialist. She currently serves as professor of theoretical philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome. Di Cesare collaborates with various Italian newspapers and magazines, including L'Espresso and il manifesto. Her books and essays have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, Finnish, Norwegian, Turkish, and Chinese.

Biography

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Di Cesare was born in Rome on 29 April 1956. In the first stage of her studies, Di Cesare studied mostly in West Germany, firstly at the University of Tübingen, then at the University of Heidelberg, where she was the last student of Hans-Georg Gadamer. At Heidelberg, she focused on the study of phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics. She offered her own perspective on these two disciplines, which is close to Jacques Derrida's deconstruction. Those studies would have been included in many of her essays that were published subsequently, and two books: Utopia of Understanding (SUNY Press, Albany, New York, 2013) and Gadamer (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2013). After the publication of Martin Heidegger's Schwarze Hefte, she wrote the book Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks (Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2018) on Heidegger's philosophical thought and his political affiliation with Nazism.

The theme of violence was developed in Torture (Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2018).[1] In the book Terror and Modernity (Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2019), the political and ethical questions in the era of globalization have pushed her to investigate the current phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, jihadism, and the attempts to establish a global caliphate, evaluated within the socio-political context of what she labelled as "phobocracy" and the "global civil war".[2]

In 2017, a political turn occurred in the development of her thought, when she resumed the topic of sovereignty, previously addressed in the essays she dedicated to the political theology of Baruch Spinoza. The momentous conflict between the state and migrants is the central theme of her book Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration (Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2020),[3] which was awarded with the prizes Pozzale prize for essays 2018 and the Sila prize for economy and society 2018.[4]

The political-philosophical questions about the strangeness and the myth of identity are instead the topics of the book Marranos: The Other of the Other (Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2020).[5] Recently, she offered a summary of her philosophical positions in the book Sulla vocazione politica della filosofia (Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 2018).[6] The book was awarded with the prize Mimesis Filosofia 2019.[7]

She is member of the Scientific Committee of the Internationale Wittgenstein-Gesellschaft and Wittgenstein-Studien. From 2011 to 2015, she was vice president of the Martin Heidegger-Gesellschaft, from which she has resigned on 3 March 2015, after the publication of Schwarze Hefte. She is also member of the Associazione Italiana Walter Benjamin. Since 2016, she is the editor of the book series Filosofia per il XXI secolo for the publishing house Mimesis. Since 2018 she is member of the Consiglio Scientifico e Strategico of the CIR Onlus (Consiglio Italiano per I Rifugiati).

She was visiting professor at several universities: Stiftung-University of Hildesheim (Germany) 2003; Albert-Ludwig Universität in Freiburg (Germany) 2005; Kulturwissenschaftliches Forschungskolleg in Cologne (Germany) 2007. During the winter semester of 2007, she was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University (US). In 2012, she was visiting professor at Department of Languages and Literatures at Brandeis University (US). On the winter semester of 2006, she was Brockington Visitor at Queen's University (Canada). In 2017, she held a teaching position for one year at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.

In an appearance on a television talk show, she criticised the Italian agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida for invoking "ethnic replacement" in a talk in 2023 about migration. She described this as a "conspiracist myth", and stated of Lollobrigida: "I believe that the minister’s words cannot be taken as a gaffe, because he spoke like a Gauleiter, like a neo-Hitlerite governor". Following this, she has been criminally indicted for defamation.[8]

Bibliography

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In English

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  • Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration, Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2020.[9]
  • Terror and Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2019.[10]
  • Torture, Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2018.[11]
  • Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks, Polity Press, Cambridge and Boston, 2018.[12]
  • Gadamer, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2013.[13][14]
  • Utopia of Understanding. Between Babel and Auschwitz, SUNY Press, Albany, 2012.

In Italian

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  • Virus sovrano? L’asfissia capitalistica, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2020.
  • Sulla vocazione politica della filosofia, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2018.[15][16]
  • Marrani, Einaudi, Torino 2018.
  • Terrore e modernità, Einaudi, Torino 2017.[17]
  • Stranieri residenti. Una filosofia della migrazione, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2017.[18]
  • Tortura, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2016.
  • Heidegger & Sons. Eredità e futuro di un filosofo, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2015.
  • Heidegger e gli ebrei. I "Quaderni neri", Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2014.
  • Se Auschwitz è nulla. Contro il negazionismo, Il melangolo, Genova 2012.[19]
  • Grammatica dei tempi messianici, [1ª ed. Albo Versorio, Milano 2008] Giuntina, Firenze 2011.[20]
  • Gadamer, Il Mulino, Bologna 2007.
  • Ermeneutica della finitezza, Guerini & Associati, Milano 2004.
  • Utopia del comprendere, il nuovo melangolo, Genova 2003.[21]
  • Il complotto al potere, Giulio Einaudi editore, Turin 2021

References

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  1. ^ "Torture, by Donatella Di Cesare". Times Higher Education (THE). 20 September 2018.
  2. ^ Donatella Di Cesare (7 October 2019). Donatella Di Cesare – Terrorismo e Fobocrazia [Donatella Di Cesare – Terrorism and Phobocracy] (Videotape) (in Italian and Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 27 February 2022 – via YouTube.
  3. ^ "Review: Give Me Your Migrants". Vision.org.
  4. ^ "The Future of EU? Immigration and the Rise of Populism". Cornell.
  5. ^ "La filòsofa Donatella Di Cesare parla aquest dijous a Manresa d'educació en la memòria per evitar els totalitarismes". Regió7. 27 November 2019.
  6. ^ CANFORA, LUCIANO (21 October 2018). "Donatella Di Cesare, il nuovo libro. La sfida di una filosofia militante". Corriere della Sera (in Italian).
  7. ^ ""Virus sovrano?": Donatella Di Cesare e l'asfissia capitalistica ai tempi della pandemia". Il Libraio (in Italian). 8 May 2020.
  8. ^ Dixon, Emily (2024-04-23). "Academic prosecuted for calling minister's speech 'neo-Hitlerite'". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 2024-04-29.
  9. ^ "Sociology 2019". Exacteditions.com.
  10. ^ Sinai, Joshua; Di Cesare, Donatella (2019). "Review of Terror and Modernity, Di CesareDonatella". Perspectives on Terrorism. 13 (4): 68. ISSN 2334-3745. JSTOR 26756709.
  11. ^ "In Cold Blood". Dublin Review of Books.
  12. ^ Vaughan, William (26 November 2019). "Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks by Donatella Di Cesare (review)". South Central Review. 36 (3): 110–112. doi:10.1353/scr.2019.0029. S2CID 214041805.
  13. ^ Mootz, Francis (8 December 2013). "Book Review of Donatella Di Cesare, Gadamer: A Philosophical Portrait". McGeorge School of Law Other Faculty Works.
  14. ^ III, Francis J. Mootz (5 December 2013). "Review of Gadamer: A Philosophical Portrait". Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. ISSN 1538-1617.
  15. ^ "Donatella Di Cesare, sulla vocazione politica della filosofia". Il Foglio (in Italian).
  16. ^ "A che punto è la notte della filosofia. Intorno a "Sulla vocazione politica della filosofia" di Donatella Di Cesare » Il rasoio di Occam". la Repubblica.
  17. ^ "Sintesi di Terrore e modernità, Donatella Di Cesare". Docsity.com (in Italian).
  18. ^ D’Agostino, Gabriella (31 December 2018). "Donatella Di Cesare, Stranieri residenti. Una filosofia della migrazione. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2017". Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo (in Italian). 20 (Anno XXI, n. 20 (2)). doi:10.4000/aam.749. S2CID 194639730.
  19. ^ Vantaggiato, Shulamit Iaia (2011). "Review of Se Auschwitz è nulla. Contro il negazionismo". La Rassegna Mensile di Israel. 77 (3): 222–225. ISSN 0033-9792. JSTOR 43497725.
  20. ^ Volli, Ugo (2007). "Review of Grammatica dei tempi messianici". La Rassegna Mensile di Israel. 73 (3): 156–158. ISSN 0033-9792. JSTOR 41619526.
  21. ^ Trincia, Francesco Saverio (2004). "Review of Utopia del comprendere". La Rassegna Mensile di Israel. 70 (1): 171–176. ISSN 0033-9792. JSTOR 41287614.
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