Episode 156: Badiou, Universalism & Racial Politics — with Elisabeth Paquette

About Our Guest

Elisabeth Paquette

I am an assistant professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina, and affiliate faculty with the Department of Africana Studies, the Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies. I received my B.A. from Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada), my M.A. from the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada), and my Ph.D. from York University (Toronto, Ontario, Canada).

My research interests include social and political philosophy, decolonial theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and continental philosophy. My publications can be found in philoSOPHIA, Philosophy Compass, Radical Philosophy Review, Hypatia, Philosophy Today, and Badiou Studies. My first book — Universal Emancipation: Race beyond Badiou — was published with the University of Minnesota Press in October 2020.

Currently, I am working on two book projects. The first book is an edited collection with a number of exceptional Badiou scholars, which centers around theories of sexuality in, through, and against Alain Badiou’s conception of “indifference to difference” and what Louise Burchill calls Badiou’s “turn” in a 2011 paper titled “Figures of Femininity in the Contemporary World.”

The second book is a single author manuscript on the writings of Sylvia Wynter. Therein, I analyze Wynter’s articulation of emancipation and solidarity by developing her account of Indigeneity alongside her discussion of anti-Black racism. More specifically, my project seeks to engage Wynter’s project around five themes: environmental racism, feminist theory, Marxism, representations of Shakespeare’s Caliban, and ceremony as method for solidarity.

I incorporate much of my research into my teaching and pedagogy. I teach classes on feminist theory, Indigenous theory, critical race theory, and decolonial theory at both the undergraduate and graduate level. My classes have been cross-listed with Philosophy, Women’s and Gender Studies, Liberal Studies, Africana Studies, and Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies.