Dr F. Nick Nesbitt

Senior Lecturer

Ph.D. Harvard University (1997)

Personal Details

Telephone:	+44 (0)1224 272161
E-mail:	n.nesbitt@abdn.ac.uk
Address:	Taylor Building A29

Biography

I joined the faculty at the University of Aberdeen in March, 2007. I received my PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures (French) with a Minor in Brazilian Portuguese from Harvard University in 1997. I taught in the Department of French and Italian at Miami University (Ohio) from 1997-2007, and in 2003-4 I was a Visiting Assistant Professor and Mellon Fellow at the Cornell University Society for the Humanities. My work in Francophone Studies focuses on the intellectual history of the black Atlantic world, addressing the modes of subjectivation (literary-textual, critical-theoretical, musical-visual, political) and events that have impelled individuals and communities beyond the limits of their given worlds. In 2003, I published Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature, a study of Antillean literature and black Atlantic critical theory. My second book project for University of Virginia Press is entitled Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment (2008). The book interprets the Haitian Revolution in its relation to global modernity and the Spinozian Radical Enlightenment. I am also the editor of Toussaint Louverture: The Haitian Revolution (Verso 2008) and co-editor with Brian Hulse of the forthcoming volume Sounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Music (Ashgate 2009).

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Research Interests

French-Caribbean and African Studies
Postcolonial and Critical Theory
Political Philosophy
African Diasporic Music and Cinema
Special interest in the work of Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Aimé Césaire, Theodor Adorno, and Jan Patočka

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Current Research

I am currently working on book projects on global colonialism (with Jean-Godefroy Bidima), Antillean critical theory, and truth and political subjectivation.

In the Spring and Fall terms of 2009, I am convening a seminar for the Centre for Modern Thought on Alain Badiou's Logics of Worlds (Continuum, 2009). http://www.abdn.ac.uk/modernthought/study/seminar.php

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Collaborations

I am currently co-editing a volume with Professor Brian Hulse of William & Mary entitled Sounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Music (Ashgate, 2009).

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Research Grants

Harvard University, Graduate Society Fellowship, 1994-95

Harvard University, Edmund J. Curley Fellowship, 1995-96

Cornell University Society for the Humanities Mellon Fellowship, 2003-4

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Professional Service

Manuscript Reviewer: Routledge, Penn State University Press, University of Virginia Press, Lexington Press, Liverpool University Press, Edinburgh University Press, PMLA, Antipode, French Forum, Research in African Literatures, Cincinnati Romance Review, Journal of Haitian Studies, SmallAxe, Callalloo, etc.

Tenure and Promotion Reviews: SUNY (Stony Brook), Bryn Mawr College

PhD, MLitt, and BA Dissertation External Examiner: University of Glasgow, Goldsmith’s University, Swarthmore College

Fellowship/Project Assessment: Wayne State University

Project Director:
•   Convener, ‘Haiti and the Politics of the Universal,’ an international conference on Haiti and critical theory, University of Aberdeen, March 12-13, 2010
•   Convener, L.P. Irvin international colloquium “Thinking Beyond Borders: Globalization and Universalism in the Francophone World.” Held in Oxford in conjunction with the Collège International de Philosophie (Paris) March 21-22, 2003
•    Director, Miami University Intensive Study in Paris, France Responsibilities included conception, administration, and teaching (courses on postcolonial cinema and the postcolonial construction of social space) study-abroad program investigating postcolonial Paris as a cosmopolitan site of globalization. June 2001
•    Convener, Graduate Student Conference: “Postcolonial Dialogues,” featuring key-note speaker Professor J. Michael Dash (NYU), December 2000
•    Director, Miami Program in Dijon, France, Summer 2000

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Selected Publications

Books:

Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature (University of Virginia Press, 2003).

Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment (University of Virginia Press, 2008).

Editor: Toussaint Louverture: The Haitian Revolution (Verso, Revolutions Series, 2008).

Book Chapters and Journal Articles:

“Critique and Clinique: Coltrane With Masoch.” In Sounding the Virtual: Deleuze and Musicology. Brian Hulse and Nick Nesbitt, eds. Ashgate Publishers, 2009 (forthcoming).

“The Incandescent I, Destroyer of Worlds.” Forthcoming, Research in African Literatures, special issue on Aimé Césaire, Adlai Murdoch, editor. Fall 2009.

“Deleuze, Glissant, and the Production of Postcolonial Concepts ” Forthcoming in Deleuze and the Postcolonial. Eds. Paul Patton and Simone Bignall. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

“From Sacrifice to Solidarity: The Truth Politics of Haitian Literature.” Forthcoming in Canadian Revue of Comparative Literature, 2009.

“Aristide and the Politics of Democratization.” SmallAxe 30 (13:3), Fall 2009. 137-147.

“On the Political Efficacy of Idealism: Tocqueville, Schoelcher, and the Abolition of Slavery” in America Through European Eyes. Eds. Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey Isaac. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2009. 91-116.

"La société égalitaire sans état: Gérard Barthélémy et le problème du pouvoir dans la Révolution Haïtienne." Revue de la Société haïtienne d'histoire et de géographie: Hommage à Gérard Barthélemy. 83 (236), Janvier-juin 2009. 131-146.

“Alter-rights: Haiti and the Singularization of Universal Human Rights, 1804-2004." Forthcoming in International Journal of Francophone Studies, Fall 2008.

“Turning the Tide: The Problem of Popular Insurgency in Haitian Revolutionary Historiography.” SmallAxe, #27, 12 (3) Oct. 2008, 14-31.

“The Haitian Revolution and the Globalization of the Radical Enlightenment” in Carribean(s) on the Move—Archipiélagos literarios del Caribe. Ed. Ette, Ottmar. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main, 2008. 39-59.

“Departmentalization and the Logic of Decolonization.” L’Esprit créateur 47 (1), Spring 2007. 32-43.

“Ou libere? Voice, Form, Transcendence in the Short Stories of Edwidge Danticat” in Haïti Chérie: A Reader’s Guide to Edwidge Danticat. Ed. Martin Munro. 2007.

"The Idea of 1804." Yale French Studies. Special issue on the Haitian Revolution edited by Deborah Jenson. 107 (Spring 2005), 6-38.

"Penser la révolution haïtienne." Critique 711-712 (August-September 2006), 652-664.

"A Singular Revolution." Memory, Empire and Postcolonialism: Legacies of French Colonialism. Ed. Alec Hargreaves, Lanham: Lexington, 2005. 37-50.

"Deleuze, Adorno, and the Composition of Musical Multiplicity." In Deleuze and Music. Ian Buchanan, Editor. Edinburgh University Press, 2004.

"Caribbean Literature in French." In The Cambridge History of African Literature. F. Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi, Editors. Cambridge University Press, December, 2003.

"The Expulsion of the Negative: Deleuze, Adorno, and the Ethics of Internal Difference." SubStance #107, 34 (2), Summer 2005.

"Stepping Outside the Magic Circle: The Critical Thought of Maryse Condé." Romanic Review, Special issue on Maryse Condé edited by Kaiama Glover. 94: 3-4, 391-404.

"Le sujet de l'histoire: Mémoires troublées dans Traversée de la mangrove et Le cœur à rire et à pleurer." Maryse Condé, Une nomade inconvenante: Mélanges offerts à Maryse Condé. Ibis Rouge Editions: Guadeloupe, 2002. 113-119.

"Imaginaire créateur et autonomie postcoloniale." Rue Descartes, Spring 2002, pp. 65-72. Special issue on African Philosophy edited by Jean-Godefroy Bidima.

"African Music, Ideology, and Utopia." Research in African Literatures, Summer 2001, pp. 175-86. Special issue on African Music.

"Antinomies of Double Consciousness in Aimé Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal." Mosaic, 33 (3) September 2000, pp. 107-28.

“Negritude” in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. Anthony Appiah, Basic Books: October, 1999.

"Sounding Autonomy: Adorno, Coltrane, and Jazz" Telos, (116) Summer 1999, pp. 81-98.

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