Links to my books are below, but first a quick overview. 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. My previous book, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis, which won the American Pyschoanalytic Association’s 2020 Courage to Dream Book Prize, 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 2008 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 earlier books include Julia Kristeva (Routledge 2003); Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship (Cornell 2000); and the co-edited anthology, Democratizing Deliberation.
Monographs
Feminism: A Quick Immersion, Tibidabo Publishing, 2021
Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis, Columbia University, 2019
Noëlle McAfee uses psychoanalytic theory to explore the subterranean anxieties behind current crises and the ways in which democratic practices can help work through seemingly intractable political conflicts. Fear of Breakdown contends that politics needs something that only psychoanalysis has been able to offer.
In exploring the fear of breakdown that underlies human existence, McAfee creates a genuine intellectual breakthrough—her book is a stunningly original exploration of the political significance of mourning. This is one of the most thrilling books I have read in years.Mari Ruti, Distinguished Professor, University of Toronto
Democracy and the Political Unconscious, Columbia University Press, 2008.
Julia Kristeva, Routledge, 2003.
Persian translation with Nashr-e-Markaz, 2006.
Korean translation with Reading Books, 2007.
Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship, Cornell University Press, 2000
Edited Volumes
Democratizing Deliberation: A Political Theory Anthology, with Derek Barker and David McIvor, Kettering Foundation Press, April 2012
Standing With the Public: The Humanities and Democratic Practice, edited with James Veninga, Kettering Foundation Press, 1997
Noëlle McAfee 