Jodi Dean

Jodi Dean
Dean in 2017
NationalityAmerican
Alma materPrinceton University (B.A.)
Columbia University (MA, MPhil, PhD)
SchoolMarxism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism
InstitutionsHobart and William Smith Colleges

Jodi Dean is an American political theorist and professor in the Political Science department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state.[1] She held the Donald R. Harter ’39 Professorship of the Humanities and Social Sciences from 2013 to 2018.[2] Dean has also held the position of Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.[3] She is the author and editor of thirteen books,[4] including Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging (Verso 2019).[5]

Biography

Dean received her B.A. in History from Princeton University in 1984. She received her MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia University in 1992. Before joining the Department of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, she taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has held visiting research appointments at the Institute for the Human Sciences in Vienna, McGill University in Montreal, and Cardiff University in Wales.[citation needed]

Dean is an active member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.[6][7]

On 13 April 2024, Hobart and William Smith Colleges President Mark Gearan issued a statement announcing that Dean had been "relieved of classroom duties" following an essay she wrote for Verso Books,[8][9][10] in which "she spoke about feeling exhilarated and energized by the paragliders on October 7".[11][12][13][14] In a posting to the social media website X, Dean confirmed she had been relieved of teaching responsibilities.[15][13][16] The suspension was lifted in July 2024.

Work

Emphasizing the use of Leninism, psychoanalysis, and certain postmodernist theories, Dean has made contributions to political theory, media studies and third-wave feminism, most notably with her theory of communicative capitalism—the online merging of democracy and capitalism into a single neoliberal formation that subverts the democratic impulses of the masses by valuing emotional expression over logical discourse.[17] She was formerly co-editor of the political theory journal Theory & Event.[18]

The Communist Horizon

In the first few chapters of her 2012 book The Communist Horizon, Dean surveys the contemporary political landscape, noting the persistence of anti-communist rhetoric more than twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.[19] She says that capitalists, conservatives, liberals, and social democrats all agree that 20th-century communist regimes were unqualified failures, thereby limiting the scope of discussion around political alternatives to liberal democracy and free markets, a fusion of which constitutes Dean's conception of neoliberalism.[citation needed] She asserts that when people think of capitalism they do not consider what she believes are its worst results (unemployment, economic inequality, hyperinflation, climate change, robber barons, the Great Depression, and the Great Recession) because the history of capitalism is viewed as dynamic and nuanced. By contrast, Dean writes that the history of communism is not considered dynamic or nuanced. Instead, there is a fixed historical narrative of communism that emphasizes authoritarianism, the gulag, starvation, and violence.[20][21]

First, Dean holds that communism is widely viewed as interchangeable with the Soviet Union, an association that fails to acknowledge the diversity of communist experiments in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, or Latin America are often given little attention. Second, Dean asserts that the seventy-year history of the Soviet Union is condensed to the twenty-six years of Joseph Stalin's rule. Third, Dean critiques the reduction of communism to Stalinist violence and repression, highlighting the modernization and industrialization of the Soviet economy, the successes of the Soviet space program, and improving overall standards of living in the formerly agrarian economy. Fourth, Dean holds that public discourse on the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 oversimplify communism as a failed authoritarian project, reinforcing Cold War binaries and stifling discussions of communism as a viable alternative to capitalism. Lastly, Dean contends that the association of communism with Stalinism and authoritarianism is used to dismiss the possibility of communism working in practice by implying that any challenge to the political status quo will inevitably result in purges and violence.[20][21]

Bibliography

Books

  • Solidarity of Strangers: Feminism after Identity Politics (University of California Press 1996)[22]
  • Feminism and the New Democracy: Resisting the Political (editor, Sage 1997)[23]
  • Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace (Cornell University Press 1998)[24]
  • Political Theory and Cultural Studies (editor, Cornell University Press 2000)
  • Publicity's Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy (Cornell University Press 2002)[25]
  • Empire's New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri (co-editor with Paul A. Passavant, Routledge 2004)
  • Žižek's Politics (Routledge 2006)[26]
  • Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society (co-editor with Geert Lovink and Jon Anderson, Routledge 2006)
  • Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (Duke University Press 2009)[27]
  • Blog Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010) ISBN 9780745649702[28]
  • The Communist Horizon (London & New York: Verso Books, 2012)[29] ISBN 9781786635525
  • Crowds and Party (London & New York: Verso Books, 2016)[30] ISBN 9781781687062
  • Comrade – An Essay on Political Belonging (London & New York: Verso Books, 2019)[31] ISBN 9781788735018
  • Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writing, edited by Jodi Dean and Charisse Burden-Stelly (London & New York: Verso Books, 2022) ISBN 9781839764974

Lectures

Articles

References

  1. ^ "Academics". hws.edu. Archived from the original on September 18, 2013. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  2. ^ "Endowed Professor Spotlight: Jodi Dean". The HWS Update. Hobart and William Smith Colleges. December 20, 2018. Archived from the original on September 22, 2021. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
  3. ^ "Politics without Politics" Archived January 2, 2023, at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ^ "Jodi Dean". Los Angeles Review of Books. Archived from the original on August 17, 2020. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
  5. ^ Alvarez, Maximillian (October 11, 2019). "The Comradely Professor". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on August 9, 2020. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
  6. ^ "Jodi Dean – Crowds and Party – Rock Salted". January 2018. Archived from the original on June 25, 2020. Retrieved June 25, 2020.
  7. ^ Featherstone, Liza (May 17, 2020). "The Left in Lockdown". Jacobin. Archived from the original on January 11, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2024. Without being part of a political organization, she says — Dean is a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) — this difficult political moment might have overwhelmed her. As soon as the shutdown hit, however, the PSL assigned her to lead online study groups. "I would have been sucked into misery," she says. "But the party gave me a sense of duty and responsibility."
  8. ^ "Palestine speaks for everyone". Verso. Retrieved April 14, 2024.
  9. ^ "Israel-Palestine War:US Professor Placed On Leave For Describing 7 October Attacks As 'Exhilarating'". Middle East Eye.
  10. ^ BUCHIERE, STEVE (April 16, 2024). "Hobart and William Smith Colleges President Mark Gearan calls Jodi Dean's comments on Hamas attacks 'repugnant'". Finger Lakes Times. Retrieved April 17, 2024.
  11. ^ "A Tenured Professor Was Removed From The Classroom Over A Pro-Palestine Essay". Chronicle of Higher Education.
  12. ^ "Statements". www.hws.edu. Retrieved April 14, 2024. I have asked the Provost and Dean of Faculty to work with faculty and institutional leadership to investigate this matter so we can properly and fairly respond. While this work is underway, Professor Dean has been relieved of classroom duties.
  13. ^ a b "HWS Prof Who Found Hamas Attack on Israel "Exhilarating" Relieved of Duties". Finger Lakes Daily News. April 15, 2024. Retrieved April 15, 2024.
  14. ^ "Hobart and William Smith Colleges professor suspended for comments on Israel-Hamas war". WXXI News. April 16, 2024. Retrieved April 17, 2024.
  15. ^ Dean, Jodi (April 13, 2024). "Jodi Dean on X:"McCarthyism is real. I've been relieved of teaching responsibilities. Don't stop talking about Palestine."". X.com. Retrieved April 13, 2024.
  16. ^ "" McCarthyism Is Real": Hobart and William Smith Colleges Suspend Prof. for Defending Palestinians". Democracy Now!. Retrieved April 15, 2024.
  17. ^ "AEJMC". aejmc.org. Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Archived from the original on December 16, 2019. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  18. ^ "The Johns Hopkins University Press – Theory & Event". jhu.edu. Johns Hopkins University Press. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  19. ^ Jodi Dean (2012). The Communist Horizon. New York: Verso.
  20. ^ a b Jule Ehms (March 9, 2014). "The Communist Horizon" Archived November 18, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. Marx & Philosophy Society. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
  21. ^ a b Ghodsee, Kristen (2015). The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe. Duke University Press. p. xvi–xvii. ISBN 978-0822358350. Archived from the original on April 14, 2024. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
  22. ^ "Solidarity of Strangers". cdlib.org. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  23. ^ "Feminism and the New Democracy: Resisting the Political". sagepub.com. Archived from the original on January 13, 2015. Retrieved January 13, 2015.
  24. ^ "Aliens in America". cornell.edu. Archived from the original on October 24, 2015. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  25. ^ "Publicity's Secret". cornell.edu. Archived from the original on October 20, 2015. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  26. ^ "Zizek's Politics". routledge.com. August 14, 2006. Archived from the original on January 13, 2015. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  27. ^ "Duke University Press". dukeupress.edu. Archived from the original on July 17, 2012. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  28. ^ Dean, Jodi (August 30, 2010). Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive: Jodi Dean: 9780745649702: Amazon.com: Books. Polity. ISBN 978-0745649702.
  29. ^ "VersoBooks.com". Archived from the original on October 22, 2015. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  30. ^ "VersoBooks.com". Archived from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  31. ^ "VersoBooks.com". Archived from the original on October 18, 2019. Retrieved November 3, 2019.
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External videos
video icon Jodi Dean – Communism or Feudalism? on YouTube
video icon Roe v. Capitalism with Professor Jodi Dean on YouTube
video icon A Proposal to Save the Climate: ‘Decommodify, Decolonize and Decarbonize the Country’ w/ Jodi Dean on YouTube