Leo Deng
 

I'm a PhD student currently researching 20th-21st-century Philosophy (mainly, Althusser, Badiou, and the history of "Continental" thought), Decolonial & Neocolonial Marxisms (post-Bolívarian theorists, post-Garvey black nationalists, Fanon, Cabral, Rodney, J. Sakai, Jose Maria Sison), Anti-Colonial and Cold War History, Literary Theory/Criticism (Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction), Global Realisms (especially, Soviet and Chinese), Queer Theory, and Asian-American genre-bending literatures. My background resides in expertise on Althusser's philosophy and its relation to non-Western Marxisms, Dialectics (especially negative variants, e.g., Adorno), Hegelian 'absolute-theory,' and Analytic Philosophy (specifically, Carnegie Mellon's), while jumping around fields and applying such theoretical lenses in aesthetics, fashion, social history, political economy, memiors, and novels. I was also a trained painter and visual artist with a degree from an accredited Art school (CMU CFA). I have produced work in Carnegie Graduate Philosophy, English, and Critical Theory (in Art; now called, Critical Studies) courses, Duquesne University Graduate Philosophy seminars, and Warwick Postgraduate seminars. My undergraduate career culminated in an honors thesis on Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. I am currently producing work with Stephen Houlgate and Nicholas Lawrence at Warwick on Hegel's Science of Logic and World Literature in the Anthroprocene, working towards a dissertation on the conceptual and metaphysical transformation undergone from Hegel's 'Dialectic' (specifically from the Logic and Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences) to the Marxist (Materialist) Dialectic (which--contra-Hegel--relies specifically on an ongoing tradition rather than a system constructed by one theorist).