Egginton, William 1969-

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Egginton, William 1969-

PERSONAL:

Born March 24, 1969, in Syracuse, NY. Education: Dartmouth College, A.B. (summa cum laude), 1991; University of Minnesota, M.A., 1994; Stanford University, A.M., 1996, Ph.D., 1999.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, John Hopkins University, 407 Gilman Hall, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218; fax: 410-516-5358. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academic. State University of New York at Buffalo, assistant professor, 1999-2004, associate professor of Romance languages and literatures, 2004—; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, professor of German and Romance languages and literatures, 2006—. Visiting associate professor of Spanish at Cornell University, 2004.

MEMBER:

Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Stanford University Comparative Literature fellow, 1994-99; Stanford Humanities Center fellow, 1996-97; guest fellow of the Vienna Institute for Human Sciences, 2002.

WRITINGS:

How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 2003.

(Translator and author of introduction) Lisa Block de Behar, Borges: The Passion of an Endless Quotation, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 2003.

(Editor, with Mike Sandbothe) The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements between Analytic and Continental Thought, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 2004.

Perversity and Ethics, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2006.

The Philosopher's Desire: Psychoanalysis, Interpretation, and Truth, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2007.

A Wrinkle in History: Essays on Literature and Philosophy, Davies Group (Aurora, CO), 2007.

Contributor to academic journals, including Journal of Literary Theory, SAQ, Hispanic Issues, Journal for Cultural and religious Theory, New Centennial Review, MLN, Journal of the History of Ideas, Oui Parle, SubStance, and Stanford Humanities Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

William Egginton is a Romance language scholar and philosopher. Fluent in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and proficient in Portuguese, Egginton took to languages easily. He completed all of his higher education degrees in the 1990s at Dartmouth College, the University of Minnesota, and Stanford University. Upon completing a Ph.D. in 1999, Egginton began working as an assistant professor of romance languages and literatures at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was later promoted to associate professor and additionally lectured at Cornell University. Egginton contributes widely to academic journals and periodicals.

In 2003 Egginton published his first book, How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity. That same year he translated and wrote the introduction to Borges: The Passion of an Endless Quotation. The following year, Egginton edited a book with Mike Sandbothe, called The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements between Analytic and Continental Thought.

In 2006 Egginton published Perversity and Ethics. In this book Egginton makes the argument that modern philosophical discussions on the topic of ethics should also take special note of the topic's relation and connection to that of perversity. Egginton supports his claims by using writings from Sigmund Freud's debate on metapsychological theory; Jacques Lacan's seventh seminar regarding the ethics of psychoanalysis and his reworking of Freud's reality principle; a general debate on psychoanalysis and deconstructive thinking using the writings of Lacan, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Soren Kierkegaard; sexual diversity and the ethics of duplicity; and emphasis on the importance of psychoanalytical discussions when debating philosophical ethics. The first chapter of the book focuses on Freud and his discussion on metapsychological theory. The second chapter primarily deals with Lacan and his take on the issue but also delves into parallel works by other philosophers, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Heidegger, Alain Badiou, and Immanuel Kant. The third chapter covers deconstruction in addition to the theology of desire. The last chapter covers the ethics of duplicity and sexual differences.

Egginton published The Philosopher's Desire: Psychoanalysis, Interpretation, and Truth in 2007. In the book he discusses the concept of dialogic interpretation, a philosophical idea that is rooted in the hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, structuralism, and psychoanalysis. Egginton defends dialogic interpretation from posthermeneutic and poststructuralist detractors using the writings of a number of philosophers, including Freud, Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, and Heidegger. He also makes use of Latin American fiction authors in making his argument and defense, including Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Augusto Roa Bastos.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

MLN, December, 2003, Bradley J. Nelson, review of How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity, p. 1327.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 2006, review of Perversity and Ethics; November, 2007, review of The Philosopher's Desire: Psychoanalysis, Interpretation, and Truth.

Symploke, January 1, 2006, Alphonso Lingis, review of Perversity and Ethics, p. 358.