Biography

Elsa Dorlin is Professor of social and political philosophy at the University of Paris VIII Vincennes/Saint-Denis (France). Previously, she was Associate Professor of History of science and History of Philosophy at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and, in 2009, she won the bronze medal of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) for her work on feminist theory and philosophy of gender. She has been Visiting Associate Professor at the Critical Theory Program of the University of California, Berkeley (2010-2011), and recently Abigail R. Cohen Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination (2018-2019). A specialist in the philosophy of Michel Foucault and continental philosophy, Dorlin’s research also focuses on Marxism, black feminist epistemology and Fanonian and decolonial phenomenology. She is the author of several books and articles, included La Matrice de la race. Généalogie sexuelle et coloniale de la Nation française (Paris, La découverte, 2006). Her latest book Self-defense: A philosophy of violence (Paris, Zones, 2017), winner of the 2018 Frantz Fanon Book Prize from the Caribbean Philosophical Association, is translating in eight languages and is forthcoming in English (Verso).         

Project

While at Camargo, Elsa Dorlin worked on a collective and multidisciplinary process entitled Translating Resistance, Smuggling Utopia: Towards a European Pavilion in Marseille which focuses on the trajectories of resistance and utopian thought in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean.