Lorenzo Chiesa

{{Short description|Italian political philosopher, critical theorist, and professor (born 1976)}}

{{Infobox philosopher|region=Western philosophy|era=Contemporary philosophy|image=|caption=|name=|birth_date={{birth year and age|1976}}|birth_place=|death_date=|death_place=|school_tradition=Continental, Lacanianism|institutions=University of Kent|main_interests=Psychoanalytic theory|thesis_title=|thesis_url=|thesis_year=|doctoral_advisor=|academic_advisors=|doctoral_students=|notable_ideas=|spouse=|education=University of Warwick (PhD)|awards=|website=https://www.lorenzochiesa.com/}}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 received his Laurea in filosofia (Bachelor of Philosophy) in 2000 from the University of Trieste in Italy, and their PhD in philosophy and literature from University of Warwick in 2006.{{Cite web |title=Career |url=https://www.lorenzochiesa.com/career/ |access-date=2025-04-25 |website=Lorenzo Chiesa |language=en-US}}

Chiesa is currently a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom.[https://www.ncl.ac.uk/school-x/staff/profile/lorenzochiesa.html Chiesa’s homepage at NU] He also teaches at the European Graduate School.{{Cite web |last=admin |title=Lorenzo Chiesa |url=https://egs.edu/biography/lorenzo-chiesa/ |access-date=2022-10-13 |website=The European Graduate School |language=en-US}} 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.{{Cite web |title=Lorenzo Chiesa ENG |url=http://www.gsh-education.com/faculty/lorenzo-chiesa/lorenzo-chiesa-eng/ |access-date=2022-10-13 |website=Genoa School of Humanities |language=en-US}}

Chiesa held visiting positions at the Freud Museum, London, the University of New Mexico, the Institute of Philosophy of Ljubljana, the Italian Institute of Human Sciences of Naples, the American University of Beirut, and Jnanapravaha Center for Cultural Studies of Mumbai. He is best known for his monographs on the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan published by MIT Press,[https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/lorenzo-chiesa Lorenzo Chiesa's homepage at the MIT Press] and translations into English of works by the Italian political philosophers Giorgio Agamben and Paolo Virno, published by Stanford University Press and MIT Press.[http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=16145 The Kingdom and the Glory][http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=28175 What Is Philosophy?][http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=27080 The Fire and the Tale]{{Cite web |title=Convention and Materialism |url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045803/convention-and-materialism/ |access-date=2022-10-13 |website=MIT Press |language=en-US}}{{Cite book |url=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/E/bo26274393.html |title=Essay on Negation |series=The Italian List |publisher=Seagull Books |language=en}} Chiesa serves as editor of the Insubordinations series at MIT Press.{{Cite web |title=Series |url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/ |access-date=2022-10-13 |website=MIT Press |language=en-US}} He has also written widely on contemporary French and Italian philosophy, biopolitics, Marxism, materialism and atheism.[https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-no2005039934/ WorldCat Identities][https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=%22lorenzo+chiesa%22&acc=off&wc=on&fc=off&group=none Jstor: Lorenzo Chiesa][https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Lorenzo+Chiesa%22 ScholarGoogle]

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".[https://discourseunit.com/annual-review/7-2009/ Derek Hook, “Annual Review of Critical Psychology”, issue 7 (2009)] His treatment of the implications of psychoanalytic theory for materialism and atheism in The Not-Two (2016) has been extensively discussed by the Slovenian philosopher and Freudo-Marxist theorist Slavoj Žižek in his monograph Disparities.[https://books.google.com/books?id=H8DcDAAAQBAJ&q=disparities+zizek Slavoj Žižek, Disparities. London – New York: Bloomsbury][https://books.google.com/books?id=je702bo2Pl8C&q=%22lorenzo+chiesa%22 Žižek also discusses Chiesa’s work also in The Parallax View. Cambridge MA: MIT Press] According to the Italian academic and political philosopher Roberto Esposito, Chiesa is "one of the rare philosophers capable of making Lacan’s psychoanalytic apparatus interact with the various languages of continental thought".[https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810133730/the-virtual-point-of-freedom/ Esposito, endorsement for “The Virtual Point of Freedom”] 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".[https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262532945/subjectivity-and-otherness/ Nobus, endorsement for “Subjectivity and Otherness”] 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".[http://critical4group.com/chiesa/ Chiesa, interview by Critical4group, 29 April 2016]

Selected bibliography

;Authored books and edited volumes

The Not-Two. Logic and God in Lacan (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2016) [Turkish translation, Istanbul: Sola Unitas (2019)]
The Virtual Point of Freedom. Essays on Politics, Aesthetics, and Religion (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 2016) [Italian translation, Salerno: Orthotes, 2019]
Biopolitical Theory and Beyond: Genealogy, Psychoanalysis, Biology, special issue of Paragraph, Volume 39, Issue 1 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016) [edited with Bostjan Nedoh and Marco Piasentier]
Italian Thought Today: Bio-economy, Human Nature, Christianity (London and New York: Routledge, 2014) [edited]
Lacan and Philosophy: The New Generation (Melbourne: Re.press, 2014) [edited]
The Italian Difference: Between Nihilism and Biopolitics (Melbourne: Re.press, 2009) [edited with Alberto Toscano]
Subjectivity and Otherness. A Philosophical Reading of Lacan (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2007) [Korean translation, Seoul: Nanjang Publishing (2012), with a new preface] [Russian translation, Saint Petersburg: Skifia Print (2021)] [Turkish translation, Istanbul: Axis (2022)] [German 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) [with 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) [with Damiano Cantone]
Slavoj Žižek, Il soggetto scabroso – Trattato di ontologia politica (Milan: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2003) [with Damiano Cantone]

References

External links

Chiesa's lecture, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-_WgPsPRes “The Unconscious Is a Concept”] at "To Be Continued? Philosophy & Psychoanalysis Part II" conference (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana), April 2024
Chiesa's lecture, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8wkxwrM5uY "Badiou/Lacan-Badiou: Beyond Antiphilosophy"] at "To Be Continued? Philosophy & Psychoanalysis" conference (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana), November 2023
Chiesa's interview with The Vanishing Mediators, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oKvK812e6w "A Materialist Theory of Libido"], October 2023
Chiesa's interview with The Machinic Unconscious, [https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/lorenzo-chiesa-the-god-hypothesis "The God Hypothesis"], 2022
[https://www.ncl.ac.uk/school-x/staff/profile/lorenzochiesa.html Chiesa’s Faculty Homepage] at Newcastle University
[https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/lorenzo-chiesa-5811/ Chiesa's profile] at The MIT Press
[https://egs.edu/biography/lorenzo-chiesa/ Chiesa's Faculty Homepage] at the European Graduate School
Lorenzo Chiesa, keynote lecture, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdycPcKCMcA “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, lecture [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg9mjqvwyGI “Psychoanalysis, Religion, Love”] at “Psychoanalysis and Political Theory” international conference (University of Salerno), 6 June 2013
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A_FuhzKK5A Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture] at “Lacan contra Foucault Subjectivity, Universalism, Politics” international conference (American University of Beirut), 31 January 2015
[https://vimeo.com/35279864 Lorenzo Chiesa, Introduction] “The Human Animal in Politics, Science, and Psychoanalysis” international conference (KW Gallery Berlin), 16 December 2011
Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYnqkDsVCQk “About Contemporary Materialist Dialectic”] (European University at Saint Petersburg), 15 April 2012
Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIQe-m9lySA “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 “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfRGY9wNmIU Jouissance, Inherent Transgression, and Revolution]” (Jnanapravaha Mumbai), 6 January 2019
Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPU6-zdSft0 The Future of an Illusion?]” (Newcastle Festival of Philosophy), 22 May 2021
Lorenzo Chiesa, lecture “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O51_PRrDEw4 Freud’s Alibi and Lacan’s New Triumph of Religion]” (Lacan in Scotland), 22 April 2021