Donatella Di Cesare edit
Donatella Di Cesare is an Italian philosopher, essayer and editorialist. She teaches theoretical philosophy at theSapienza University of Rome.
She is counted among the most significant voices of the Italian contemporary thought, and she is very present in the public debate. She works with different newspapers and journals, including “L’Espresso” and “Il Manifesto”. Her books and essays are translated in English, French, German, Spanish, Danish, Croatian, Polish, Finnish, Norwegian, Turkish and Chinese.
Biography edit
In the first stage of her studies, she studied most of all in Germany, at first at the University of Tübingen, then at Heidelberg, where she was the last student of Gadamer. She worked on phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics. She offered an original perspective of them, closer to Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. Those studies have resulted in many essays and two books: Utopia of Understanding, Suny Press, Albany 2013. Gadamer, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2013.
After the publication of Martin Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte, she has wondered about philosophy’s responsibility towards the extermination with the book Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks, Polity Press, Cambridge – Boston 2018.
The question about the violence and the human condition victim of extreme violence was an ulterior step in her research. Hence the volume Torture, Polity Press, Cambridge – Boston 2018. The political and ethical questions in the era of globalisation have pushed her to investigate the current phenomenon of terror, the dark side of the global civil war. She published Terror and Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge – Boston 2019.
In 2017 the political breakthrough of her thought particularly showed itself, when she resumed the sovereignty’s theme, already addressed in the essays about Spinoza’s political theology. The momentous conflict between the State and migrants is the topic of Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration, Polity Press, Cambridge Boston 2020. This book won the Pozzale prize for essays 2018 and the Sila prize for economy and society 2018.
The political-philosophical questions about the strangeness and the myth of identity are the topic of Marranos: The Other of the Other, Polity Press, Cambridge Boston 2020 forthcoming.
Recently, she offered a summary of her philosophical positions in the book Sulla vocazione politica della filosofia, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2018. The book was awarded with the price Mimesis Filosofia 2019.
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 3rd March 2015, after the Schwarze Hefte’s publication. She is member of the Associazione Italiana Walter Benjamin. Since 2016 she directs 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. In the 2007 winter semester, she was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University (USA). In 2012 she was Visiting Professor at Department of Languages and Literatures at Brandeis University (USA). For 2016 winter semester she was Brockington Visitor at Queen’s University (Canada). In 2017 she was called to teach for one year at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Italy).
Bibliography edit
In English edit
- Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration, Polity Press, Cambridge Boston 2020.
- Terror and Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge – Boston 2019.
- Torture, Polity Press, Cambridge – Boston 2018.
- Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks, Polity Press, Cambridge – Boston 2018.
- Gadamer, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2013.
- Utopia of Understanding. Between Babel and Auschwitz, Suny Press, Albany 2012.
In Italian edit
- Sulla vocazione politica della filosofia, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2018.
- Marrani, Einaudi, Torino 2018.
- Terrore e modernità, Einaudi, Torino 2017.
- Stranieri residenti. Una filosofia della migrazione, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2017.
- 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.
- Grammatica dei tempi messianici, [1ª ed. Albo Versorio, Milano 2008] Giuntina, Firenze 2011.
- Gadamer, Il Mulino, Bologna 2007.
- Ermeneutica della finitezza, Guerini & Associati, Milano 2004.
- Utopia del comprendere, il nuovo melangolo, Genova 2003.