Philip Wood, Ph.D., Yale University. French and German Philosophy. Aesthetic Theory. Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century French Literature. Office: RH 212 Office hours: 12:10 - 1:00 Phone: 713-348-2618 E-mail: prw@rice.edu Spring 2008 Courses: FREN 581: Gilles Deleuze II Research Interests: Critical examination of cultural constructionism as part of what Derrida has described as "mondialatinisation" (capitalist globalization or a continuation of the religious and metaphysical project of the old Empire of the west [Rome]). The continued significance of the aesthetic experience (what we used to call "beauty") in an age of multi-culturalism and cultural constructionism. Beauty as ekstasy -- the suspension of constructed subjectivity or personhood. Critical investigation of the contemporary dogma that literary canons are simply configurations of power and resistance. Exploration of the similarities between recent French figures (Deleuze, Derrida, Baudrillard et al.) and traditional esoteric accounts of personhood, identity and ek-stasis in diverse cultures and religions. Representative Publications: From Existentialism to Poststructuralism and the Coming of the Postindustrial Age, Stanford University Press, (In progress). "Beyond the Simulacrum of Religion versus Secularism: Modernist Aesthetic 'Mysticism'; Or, Why We Will Not Stop Revering 'Great Books'"(Religion and Literature, Spring 2005, 93-117) Terror and Consensus, co-edited with Jean-Joseph Goux, Stanford University Press, 1998. Understanding Sartre, University of South Carolina, 1990. "'Democracy' and 'Totalitarianism' in Contemporary French Thought, the 'Death' of the Subject, The Heidegger Scandal and Ethics in Postructuralism," in Jean-Joseph Goux and Philip Wood (eds.) Terror and Consensus: Vicissitudes of French Thought, Stanford University Press, 1998. "A Revisionary Account of the Apotheosis and Demise of the Philosophy of the Subject: Hegel, Sartre, Heidegger, Structuralism and Postructuralism," in (ed.) Dennis Minahen Sartre Revisited, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.