Emily Apter

Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Princeton University.

Philosophizing in Languages, Political Theory, Translation theory and praxis sexuality and gender, critical theory, continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, gender and ontology, new French philosophy, political fiction, French fiction and poetics, periodization critique, history and theory of Comparative Literature, critical pedagogies.

2021-22 Faculty, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program

2018 Faculty, European Graduate School – Saas-Fée

2018 Executive Council, International Comparative Literature Association

2017-18 President, American Comparative Literature Association

2017 Faculty, School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell Univ.

2016 Faculty, London Graduate School

2015 Appointed Visiting Professor, Univ. of St. Gallen, Switzerland

2014-19 Executive Council, Modern Languages Association (MLA)

2014-18  Division on Comparative Studies in Twentieth-and Twenty-First Century Literature, MLA

2014 French Voices Awards Committee (French Consulate)

2013-2018 Delegate for New York MLA

2012 Visiting Professor, NYU-Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris)

2011 Visiting Prof., Humanities Center, University of Pittsburgh

2006-2010 MLA Division: Comparative Studies in Romanticism and the Nineteenth Century

2022  GRI Fellowship (NYU-Paris)

2020-22  Matei Calinescu MLA Book Prize Committee

2020-2023 Bennett-Polonsky Humanities-Lab, “Knowledge Alphabets: Translation Across Natural and Digital Languages”

2018-2020 Advisory Board FILLM (The International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures)           

2019 Daimler Fellow, American Academy in Berlin

2019 Workshop (with Ali Benmakhlouf) on “Justice and Justification Across Languages,” Casablanca, Morocco

2019 Jury Member, Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts

2014 Humanities Council Fellow, Princeton University

2010-2012 Awarded 2 yr. Mellon Grant (with Co-Organizer Jacques Lezra),  “The Problem of Translation.”

2004 Guggenheim Fellowship

2003 Elected Member of New York Humanities Institute

2001 Rockefeller Fellowship, Institute for Research in African, Diaspora and Caribbean Cultures, CUNY, New York 

Recent Essays

“Ransom! On Baudelaire’s Politics of Distributive Injustice,” Crisis and Critique, 9.1 Special Issue: “The Present of Poetry,” (Sept 2022).  https://crisiscritique.org/index.html

“Ecosophies,” (in French), in Relief, July, 2022.

“Corporate Persons and the Leviathan of the Contracepted,” in Philosophy, World, Democracy  https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/articles-1/corporate-persons-and-the-leviathan-of-the-contracepted (July 2022)

“Live Free or Die? Psychopolitical Infrastructures of Denialism,” e-flux, June, 2022.

https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/sick-architecture/471538/live-free-or-die-psychopolitical-infrastructures-of-denialism/

Towards a Spivakian Theory of Translation,” Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring 2022): 1-9.

“Afterword: Trans-ontology and the Geschlecht Complex,” in The Geschlecht Complex: Addressing Untranslatable Aspects of Gender, Genre, and Ontology  eds. Oscar Jansson and David LaRocca, (Bloomsbury, May, 2022).

 “Translation as Relational Practice,” in How To Relate: Artistic Knowledges and Relational Practices ed. Annika Haas (Berlin: UDK Berlin (University of the Arts, 2021)

Entry “Interference” in Future Theory: A Handbook of Critical Concepts (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021): 253-262.

Contribution to memorial volume on Bernard Stiegler, ed. Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galilée, 2021).

“On Obstruction, or the Art of Micropolitics,” Essay accompanying a show “Wild Frictions: The Politics and Poetics of Interruption,” that travelled to San Francisco and Berlin, curated by Amara Antilla and Sandra Teitge, Third Rail, 14  (Summer, 2021)  and online. 

http://thirdrailquarterly.org/on-obstruction-or-the-art-of-micropolitics/.  

Q & A with artist Aliza Shvartz, in October 176 (Spring, 2021): 85-110.

“What is Just Translation?” Public Culture 33, No. 1 (Jan. 2021): 89-111.

“Towards a Theory of Reparative Translation,” eds. Benjamin Lewis Robinson and Francesco Giusti, The Work of World Literature (Berlin: ICI Press, 2021). 207-226. 

Chinese Translation (by Mo Yaping) in the journal Research on Sinoforeign Literary & Arts Theories, (published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  Issue #1 2022.

“Brain Theory,” Contribution to Epigenesis – A Paradigm for Philosophy? – Edited Roundtable on the work of Catherine Malabou.  Contributions by Catherine Malabou, Emily Apter, Peter Szendy, Alexander Galloway, Emanuela Bianchi, Alexander Miller.  October (Spring, 2021).

"Get Your Knee Off Our Neck!" Guyotat et le 'moi indélégable'" Eds. Michel Surya and Donatien Grau, Lignes (Feb. 2021): 63-74.

“The Prison-House of Translation? Carceral Models, Translational Turns,” Diacritics 47:4 (2020): 50-79.

“Cosmopolitics,” in Political Concepts: The Balibar Edition ed. Jacques Lezra, Fordham UP. (Fall 2020)

Introduction (co-authored with Martin Crowley) to special issue of Diacritics on “Economies of Existence.” Vol. 47, No. 1 (2019): 3-15.

“Alphabetic Memes: Caricature, Satire and Political Literacy in the Age of Trump,” October Nov. 2019.

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/octo_a_00366 (Based on the essay, I was interviewed for a film on memes cited in bibliography of record on Memetics).

“The Micropolitics of Memes,” catalogue for CrackUp-CrackDown exhibition of the 33^rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts (fall 2019).

“Regioning Difference:  Translation and Critical Cartography,” ARTmargins fall, 2019.

“Theorizing in Untranslatables,” https://newalphabetschool.hkw.de/category/translating/

 “Justifying the Humanities,” in Comparative Literature (Spring 2019).

“Untranslatability and the Geopolitics of Reading,” in PMLA 134.1 (Jan. 2019): 194-200.

“Mes déjeuners avec Jean Piel,” Critique Mémoires - Ent’revues Spring 2019.

“Bartleby Politics,” in Handsomely Done: Aesthetics, Politics and Media After Melville ed. Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz (Northwestern Univ. Press, 2019), pp. 35-54

Review essay of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature Across Continents, in Wallace Stevens Review. Dec. 2018.

“The Critical Life:  Rethinking Biography in an Experimental Mode,” in Ways of Re-thinking Literature eds. Donatien Grau and Thomas Bishop, (Routledge, 2018) pp. 20-33.

“Cosmopolitics,” Political Concepts, Vol. 1, Issue 4.1 “The Balibar Edition” (2018).

“Political Serials: Tanner ’88 to House of Cards,” in American Literature as World Literature, ed. Jeffrey R. Di Leo (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 107-126.

“Textual Modes of Existence: Translated, Archived, Curated, Punctuated, Looked At, Listened To….” The New Existentialism ed. Tim Griffin (NY: Les Presses du reel, 2018), pp. 81-102.

“La micropolitique moléculaire du désir,” La Deleuziana 82-90. (Dec. 2107)

“Armed Response: Translation as Judicial Hearing,” e-flux September, 2017.

“Gender, Ontology, Sexual Difference: Derrida and Malabou,” in PhiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism, (2017): 109-124.

“Overburden:  The Language of Mining in Data-Mining,” e-flux, Spring 2017

“’The Democratic Torrent:’ Rancière’s Micropolitics,” in Understanding Rancière, Understanding Modernism ed. Patrick Bray, (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2017), pp.11-32.

 “Translation and Event” in The Concept in Crisis Rereading Reading Capital: 1965-2015 edited by Nick Nesbitt (Duke University Press, 2017), pp. 49-69.

 “Shibboleth:  Policing by Ear and Forensic Listening in Projects by Lawrence Abu Hamdan,” in October 156  (April 2016). Republished as lead catalogue essay of artist’s work.

Response to Questionnaire on “Materialisms,” in October 155, April, 2016

Interview with Simone Bertoia on Translation Theory, Centennial Review (2016)

“Le comparatisme comme approche critique/Comparative Literature as a Critical Approach,” in Rencontres – Littérature générale et comparée ed. Anne Tomiche, (Paris: Garnier, Spring, 2016).

“Rethinking Periodization for the `Now-Time:’” in Being Contemporary, ed. Lia Brozgal (Liverpool University Press, Spring, 2016).

 “Lexilalia:  On Translating an Untranslatable Dictionary of Philosophical Terms” (for Paragraph, special issue on Translation edited by Michael Syrotinski). (Fall, 2015).

 “Blue Sky Days are Always Ominous,”  Catalogue Essay for a show of work by David Birkin at The Mosaic Rooms Gallery in London (Jan. 2015)

"Recent French Theory:  Modes of Existence, Measured Life” for special issue of Textual Practice devoted to the topic: How Abstract Is It?  Economic Crisis and the Return of the Real (Fall 2014), to be republished in a book of the same title, Routledge, 2017.

 “Impolitic,” in Political Concepts (ed. Anne Stoler), Spring, 2014.

“Barbara Cassin, philosophe de l’intraduisible,” publication of the Actes du Colloque from the Cerisy-la-Salle colloquium on the work of Barbara Cassin.  (2014)

“Fictions politiques/démarches impolitiques,” in French journal Raison Publique

Co-editor with Emmanuel Bouju of special issue on Political Fiction for Raison Publique (spring, 2014).

Preface, English edition of the Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: dictionnaire des intraduisibles (Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon).  Princeton University Press, 2014, vii-xv.

“Translation at the Checkpoint,” in Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50, Issue 1 (Fall, 2014): 56-74.

“Politics ‘small p’: Second Empire Machiavellianism in Zola’s Son Excellence Eugène Rougon in Romanic Review Vol. 102 Nos. 3-4 May-Nov. 2011 (published in 2013): 411-426.

“Planet Dysphoria,” for special issue of Third Text on “Art and Ecology,” No. 120 (Jan. 2013): 131-140. 

“Occupy Derivatives!/Politics ‘smallest p’”  October 142 (Fall 2012): 86-106.

 “Towards a Unisex Erotics: Claude Cahun and Geometric Modernism,” in Modernist Eroticisms: European Literature After Sexology, eds. Anna Katharina Schaffner and Shane Weller (Palgrave, MacMillan, 2012): 124-149.

French translation (by Fabienne Durand-Bogaert) of “Muntadas’s Art of Translation,” catalogue essay for exhibition: “Muntadas: Entre/Between” Paris, Jeu de Paume, 2012.

“Campus et media:  lutte à mort pour le marché des “vies” (Critique May, 2012).

“Philosophizing World Literature,” in special issue of SITES, “Littérature et Philosophie,” ed. Réda Bensmaia.  Vol. 16, no. 2 (March, 2012): 171-186.

“Le Bovary de Marx,” Revue LHT no. 9 Special issue “Après le Bovarysme,” http://www.fabula.org/lht/9/ (Spring, 2012).

Conversation with Artist Silvia Kolbowski, The Brooklyn Rail (October 2011). www.brooklynrail.org/2011/10/art/silvia-kolbowski-with-emily-apter

“Pour une politique de la traduction.  Entretien avec Emily Apter” with Kate Briggs and Hélène Quiniou in Revue Internationale des Livres et des Idées No. 2 (Nov-Dec. 2011): 44-51.

“Muntadas’ Art of Translation,” Catalogue essay for Exhibition, “Muntadas: Entre/Between” at the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (Nov. 23 211-March 26, 2011).

Response to Maurice Samuels’ essay on “Trauma in Literary History” in Romanic Review (Fall, 2011).

"The `World' in Littérature-Monde," in Transnational French Studies ed. Alec Hargreaves et al. (Liverpool University Press, Spring 2011).

“Terrestrial Humanism: Edward Said and World Literature” (Blackwell Companion to Comparative Literature), eds. Ali Behdad and Dominic Thomas (2011).

"O Seminar!" Cabinet 39 (Fall 2010) 97-104.

“Philosophical Translation and Untranslatability,” in Profession PMLA, (Fall 2010): 50-63.

“The Right to Translation: Deconstructive Pedagogies, 1979/2009,” boundary 2  Vol. 37, 3 (Fall 2010): 29-56.

“The Nineteenth-Century Business Novel: Speculation and Economic Xenophobia as Literary World-Systems” in French Global: A New Approach to French Literary History (Columbia UP, 2010), 338-403.

“Women’s Time (Again),” in a special issue of differences: “What’s the Difference?  The Question of Theory” (Fall, 2010),1-18.

“Celebrity Gifting:  Mallarmé and the Poetics of Fame,” in Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame, and Power in the Long Nineteenth Century eds. Ed Berenson and Eva Giloi (Bergahn Books, Fall 2010), 86-102.

Afterword (co-authored with Elaine Freedgood)  to a special issue “The Way We Read Now:  On Symptomatic Reading and its Aftermath,” Representations 108 (Fall, 2009): 139-146.

Article on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick for Artforum (September, 2009): 63-64.

“What is Yours, Ours and Mine: On the Limits of Ownership and the Creative Commons,” in Angelaki Vol. 14 No. 1 (April 2009): 87-199.  (A different version of this essay appeared in October 126 (Fall 2008): 91-114).   

“Unimondisme: Esthétique de la société paranoïaque” in Technologies de contrôle dans la mondialisation : enjeux politiques, éthiques et esthétiques" (éditions Kimé, 2010): 149-164.

Introduction: “Untiming the Nineteenth-Century” Forum of Panel Papers from MLA 2007, in PMLA Vol. 124, No. 1 (Jan 2009): 273-288.

“Literary World Systems,” in Teaching World Literature ed. David Damrosch (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2009): pp. 44-60.

“Translation 9/11: Terrorism, Immigration, Language Politics” in Globalization, Political Violence and Translation, eds. Esperanza Bielsa and Christopher W. Hughes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 195-206.  Different version of this essay previously published in The Global South Special Issue: Globalization and the Future of Comparative Literature, Vol. 1. no. 2 (Fall 2007): 69-80.

Contributor, “Forum: The Legacy of Jacques Derrida,” PMLA 120.2 (2005): 464-466.

Online Journalisn/Blogposts/Podcasts/Interviews

Podcast, Baidik Battacharya, Feb. 23, 2021 (broadcast Dec, 2021, University of Delhi

https://soundcloud.com/user-964685515/translation-and-the-untranslatable?si=501383a6156e409b86fb15e0b4821159&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Philosophy Podcast, (with host Alexander Hammo), July 22, 2021.

Philosopher au présent, French YouTube Channel, “Revivre: Après Trump?” (2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWs7IaKAJtc&list=PL_icmLCLTKLw4U3m5OmThOR2k8vKJ7JXG&index=5&t=134s

Stiegler tribute, NYU Maison Française, (Penser/Panser avec Bernard Stiegler -Un Salut”) (2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpSAeVBH9RA

Interview with Annette Joseph-Gabriel on her book: Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire). (2020)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDamlD5oTfM

e-flux podcast: A conversation with feminist artist/theorist Aliza Shvartz on issues related to her exhibition Purported at the gallery Art in General. (2020) Listen here.

Podcast (Stanford Humanities Institute, Center for the Study of the Novel). Jan. 8, 2020.   Discussion of politics and fashion with Margaret Cohen, Rhonda Garelick and Anne Higonnet.

Discussion with Alain Badiou, “Victorious Love,” Maison Française, NYU 11/12/19.

“The Sovereign is he who translates: an interview with Emily Apter,
 Krishnan Unni and Mantra Mukim 3:AM Magazine. May 2019.
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-sovereign-is-he-who-translates-an-interview-with-emily-apter/

Radio Interview, 4/14/18 WNUR's political interview program This is Hell!

Radio Interview, 2/27/18 WORT (Madison-Wisconsin)

Interview, The Wire (New Delhi) 3/16/18.

“Depreciation and Resistance,” http://conversations.e-flux.com/ (1/12/17), Forum: “Sense of Emergency, Politics, Aesthetics, Trumpism”

Discussion on Art and Literature, Maison Française, with Alain Badiou (12/10/15)

Emily Apter, ‘Transatlantic Feminism’ post-DSK affair’. Public Books. 

Blog Discussion on Emma Sulkowitz Projects:

http://silviakolbowskiblog.com/2015/10/22/whats-art-got-to-do-with-it-a-conversation-about-art-and-rape-with-emily-apter-emily-liebert-and-siona-wilson/

Interview, Slate Salon (Radio)
 http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gist/2014/12/the_gist_untranslatable_with_emily_apter_and_guantanamo_with_cliff_sloan.html

“The Falls”: Panel with Emily Apter, Jeff Dolven, Alexander Nagel and Jamieson Webster, Cabinet (Brooklyn, NY) 10/29/2014.  https://cabinetmagazine.org/events/apter_dolven_nagel_webster_the_falls.php

Review of the Whitney Biennial, Artforum 52, no. 9 (May, 2014). 312-313.

Editorial Work: 

Book Series Editor, Translation/Transnation Princeton University Press

https://press.princeton.edu/series/translationtransnation

Diacritics

Political Concepts

Public Culture

October. A Journal of Art, Theory, Criticism, Politics

Translation: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Francospheres