Talk:Simona Forti

Biography

Simona Forti was born in Modena in 1958. She graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bologna in 1983. in the following years she attended the Phd courses in political theory at the Turin Univesristy as well as the Phd courses in political philosophy at at The New School in New York. She received her PhD in History of Political Thought from Turin University in 1989. In 2004 she was appointed Full Professor of History of Political Philosophy at the University of Piemonte Orientale, where he usually teaches. She is one of the founding members of FINO”, a PhD Program in Philosophy coordinated by the Northwestern Italian University Consortium, and the standing president of Bios, an international and interdisciplinary research center on biopolitics and bioethics based at the University of Piemonte Orientale

Research interests

Simona Forti is widely recognized in Italy and aboard for her far-reaching studies on Hannah Arendt’s thought and the philosophical idea of Totalitarianism. In recent years she has given important contributions to the debate on [biopolitics] launched by Michel Foucault, by focusing on Nazi biopolitics of the souls and democratic biopolitics of the bodies. In her last volume on the new demons, translated into English by the Stanford University Press, she offers a new and inspiring genealogy of the relationship between evil and power, contending that evil must be explored in tandem with the passive attitude towards rule-following, the need for normalcy and recognition, the desire to stay alive at all costs as well as the desire for obedience nurtured by our contemporary mass democracies.

From 2003-2011 Simona Forti was elected as member of the jury for “Der Hannah-Arendt Preis für politischen Denken” at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Bremen and Berlin. From 2004 to 2007 she served as the Italian member of the Coordinating “International Committee of the European Science Foundation Network Activity on "The Politics and History of European Democratisation" (PHED) for the European Science Foundation.

She has held visiting appointments at many European and American universities. She held lessons and seminars at The New School for Social Research in New York, an institution which has actively contributed to spread in the United States the modern continental European philosophical tradition known as Continental philosophy. Moreover, during the spring semester 2013-14 she has been awarded a “Fulbright Distinguished Chair” at Northwestern University, (Evanston, Il).

Selected Works

• The New Demons. Rethinking evil and power today, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2015;
• Parrhesia between East and West: Foucault and Dissidence, in V. Lemm, M. Vatter (ed.), The Government of Life. Foucault, Biopolitics and Neoliberalism, Fordham University Press, New York 2014;
• I Nuovi demoni. Pensare oggi male e potere, Feltrinelli, Milano 2012; trad. spagnola Los Nuevos Demonios. Repensar hoy el mal y el poder, Edhasa, Buenos Aires 2014;
• Corpi democratici, politicamente corretti, in G. Zagrebelsky (ed.), Le ragioni dei molti e il potere dei pochi, Einaudi, Torino 2011;;
• La vita e le sue qualità ai tempi del biopotere, Filosofia politica, XXIII, n. 3, 2009;
• Spectres of Totality, in K. Palonen, T. Pulkkinen, J.M. Rosales (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Politics of Democratization in Europe, Ashgate Publishing Company, Farnham 2008;
• El Totalitarismo: Trayectoria de una idea limite, Herder Editorial, Barcelona 2008;
• Paranoia e politica, ( con Marco Revelli ), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2007;
• The Biopolitics of Souls. Racism, Nazism and Plato, Political Theory, XXXIV, n.1, 2006;
• Hegel, Marx and Arendt, in Hannah Arendt: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, ed. by G. Williams, Routledge, London 2006;
• Hannah Arendt’s Legacy at 100 Years of Her Birth, Revista de Ciencia Politica, XXVI, n. 2, 2006;
• Hannah Arendt tra filosofia e politica, Mondadori, Milano 2006;
• Edizione di H. Arendt, "Alcune questioni di filosofia morale", Einaudi, Torino 2006;
• La filosofia di fronte all’estremo, Einaudi, Torino 2004;
• Edizione di e Introduzione a Archivio Arendt II 1950-1954, Feltrinelli, Milano 2003, 2005;
• Edizione di Archivio Arendt 1, 1930-1948; Feltrinelli, Milano 2001;
• Il totalitarismo, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2001, 2003, 2005;
• Vida del espìritu y tiempo de la polis. Hannah Arendt entre filosofìa y politica, Ediciones Càtedra, Madrid 2001

Links

• [http://bios.polis.unipmn.it/index.php?what=home&lang=IT BIO's homepage in the University of Piemonte Orientale's website
• [http://www.frenchanditalian.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/forti.htm=EN Simona Forti's homepage in the Northwestern University's website