I am a critical theorist working in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, drawing on feminist philosophy, psychoanalysis, and political theory. I teach at Emory University where I am Professor of Philosophy with a secondary appointment as Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University. I am also Director of Emory’s Psychoanalytic Studies Program; affiliated faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. I blog at gonepublic.net.
For my work, I draw widely from various traditions in philosophy and from experiments in self-government around the world.
My most recent book is Feminism: A Quick Immersion with Tibidabo Publishing where I lay out my own lifelong approach to feminist theory and practice, which does not always sit comfortably with mainstream feminist theory. My previous book, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis, won the American Pyschoanalytic Association’s 2020 Courage to Dream Book Prize for the book that best integrates academic and clinical aspects of psychoanalysis. The book focuses on the pathologies that underlie the rise of hyper-nationalism, polarization, and entrenched divides. It lays out what kind of deliberative political process could help collectivities work through these difficulties. My previous book, Democracy and the Political Unconscious (Columbia University Press, 2008), charts a course for democratic practice in a world sorely needing transformation. It explores the potential of deliberative dialogue and other public testimonies to work through the traumas of oppression, terror, and brutality that keep political communities from developing spaces and practices through which all can help shape their common world.
My books also include Julia Kristeva (Routledge 2003); Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship (Cornell 2000); and the co-edited anthology, Democratizing Deliberation. I have also published over fifty journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. Additionally, I am the co-editor of the Kettering Review, published by the Kettering Foundation, and an editor of the feminist section of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Noëlle McAfee 