William Egginton Explained

Birth Date:	1969
Birth Place:	Syracuse, New York
Occupation:	Literary Critic, Literary Theorist, Philosopher, Professor at The Johns Hopkins University
Language:	English, Spanish, German, Italian, French
Nationality:	American
Alma Mater:	Dartmouth College, Stanford University
Spouse:	Bernadette Wegenstein
Subject:	Spanish and Latin American Literature, Cervantes, Borges, Fictionality, Psychoanalysis, Continental Philosophy

William Egginton (born 1969)^[1] is a literary critic and philosopher. He has written extensively on a broad range of subjects, including theatricality, fictionality, literary criticism, psychoanalysis and ethics, religious moderation, and theories of mediation.

Life and career

William Egginton was born in Syracuse, New York in 1969. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 1999. His doctoral thesis, "Theatricality and Presence: a Phenomenology of Space and Spectacle in Early Modern France and Spain," was written under the direction of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. He currently resides in Baltimore with his spouse, Bernadette Wegenstein. William Egginton is Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at the Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches Spanish and Latin American literature, literary theory, and the relation between literature and philosophy.^{[2] [3]}

Works

William Egginton is the author of How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher's Desire (2007), The Theater of Truth (2010), In Defense of Religious Moderation (2011), The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered In the Modern World (2016), The Splintering of the American Mind: Identity, Inequality, and Community on Today's College Campuses (2018), The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2023), and Alejandro Jodorowsky: Filmmaker and Philosopher (2024). The Rigor of Angels was selected as one of the "Best Books of 2023" by The New Yorker^[4] and was described as "challenging, ambitious, and elegant" by The New York Times, who included that work in its 2023 list of "Notable Books"^[5] and as one of nine "Critics' Picks" in 2023.^[6] The Rigor of Angels was also mentioned as a close contender for the New York Times "10 Best Books of 2023" during an episode of its The Book Review podcast.^[7]

Egginton is the co-author of Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (2017) and What Would Cervantes Do?: Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature (2022). What Would Cervantes Do? was the subject of a special issue of Hispanic Issues in 2023.^[8] He is also co-editor with Mike Sandbothe of The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy (2004), translator of Lisa Block de Behar's Borges, the Passion of an Endless Quotation (2003, 2nd edition 2014), and co-editor with David E. Johnson of Thinking With Borges (2009).

Selected bibliography

Books

• Egginton, William (2024). Alejandro Jodorowsky: Filmmaker and Philosopher. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1350144774
• Book: Egginton. William. The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality. 2023. Pantheon. New York. 978-0593316306.
  • Review by Kirkus Reviews
  • Review by The Wall Street Journal
  • Review by The New York Times
  • Review by The Millions
  • Review by The New Yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/best-books-2023
• Book: Castillo. David. Egginton. William. What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature. 2022. McGill-Queen's University Press. 978-0228008156.
• Egginton, William. The Splintering of the American Mind: Identity, Inequality, and the Future of Community. New York: Bloomsbury USA.
• Castillo, David R., and William Egginton (2017). Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Book: Egginton. William. The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World. 2016. Bloomsbury USA. New York. 978-1620401750.
  • Pre-review - Christensen, Bryce: December 1, 2015. Booklist.
• Book: Egginton. William. In Defense of Religious Moderation. registration. 2011. Columbia University Press. New York. 978-0231148788.
  • Review - Daley, Kathleen: June 12, 2011. The Newark Star-Ledger.
  • Review by Kirkus Reviews
• Book: Egginton. William. The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo)Baroque Aesthetics. 2009. Stanford University Press. Stanford, California. 978-0804769549.
  • Reviewed in: CLIO 39.3 (2010): 402-407; Modern Language Quarterly 73.1 (2012): 98-101; Comparative Literature Studies 49.2 (2012): 311-314; Revista Hispánica Moderna, 64.2 (2011): 222-224; Teatro: Revista de estudios culturales, 24 (2012) PDF available at:http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/teatro/vol24/iss24/
• Book: Egginton. William. The Philosopher's Desire: Psychoanalysis, Interpretation, and Truth. 2007. Stanford University Press. Stanford, California. 978-0804755993.
  • Reviewed in Choice 45.6:1-2 (2008); Book News (November 2007) http://www.booknews.com/ref_issues/ref_nov2007/stanford2.html
• Book: Egginton. William. A Wrinkle in History: Essays in Literature and Philosophy. 2007. The Davies Group Publishers. Aurora, Colorado. 978-1888570939.
  • Reviewed in Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 29.3 (Spring 2007) 523-525.https://www.jstor.org/stable/27764144
• Book: Egginton. William. Perversity and Ethics. 2006. Stanford University Press. Stanford, California. 978-0804752596.
  • Reviewed in symploklè 14:1-2 (2006):363-4.
• Book: Egginton. William. How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality and the Question of Modernity. 2003. SUNY Press. Albany, New York. 978-0791455463.
  • Reviewed in Modern Language Notes 118.5 (2003): 1327-1329; Theatre Research International 30.1 (2005): 102-3; Revista canadiense de estudios hispanos 29.3 (2005): 609-11; Bulletin of the Comediantes 57.1 (2005): 217-218.

Edited and translated books

• Second edition and translation of Lisa Block de Behar, Borges: The Passion of an Endless Quotation, SUNY Press, 2014
• Co-editor, with David E. Johnson, Thinking With Borges, Aurora, CO: The Davies Group Publishers, 2009
• Borges: The Passion of an Endless Quotation, by Lisa Block de Behar, translated and with an introduction by William Egginton, Albany: SUNY Press, 2003
• Co-editor, with Mike Sandbothe, The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements Between Analytic and Continental Thought, Albany: SUNY Press, 2004
• Co-editor, with Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Peter Gilgen, Disciplining Literature. Stanford Humanities Review 6.1 (1998)

Chapters in books

• “Jodorowsky, Psychomagic, and Subjective Destitution,” in ReFocus: The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, ed. Michael Witte (Edinburgh and London: Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
• “Realism/New Realism,” in The Vattimo Dictionary, ed. Simonetta Moro (Edinburgh and London: Edinburgh University Press, 2023), 163-165
• “Foreword,” in Un-Deceptions: Cervantine Strategies For the Disinformation Age, by David Castillo (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 2021)
• “Cervantes, Reality Literacy and Fundamentalism.” Cervantes and the New Millennium. Ed. Bruce Burningham, Millennial Cervantes, UNC Press, 2020
• “Cervantes’s Treatment of Otherness, Contamination, and Conventional Ideals in Persiles and Other Works,” with David Castillo, in Cervantes’ Persiles, ed., Marina Brownlee, University of Toronto Press, 2019, 205-222
• “The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised! Baroque Lessons in Apocalypticism, Demagoguery, and Reality Literacy,” with David Castillo, Writing in the End Times: Apocalyptic Imagination in the Hispanic World, Hispanic Issues Online Issue 23 (2019); 16-30, https://cla.umn.edu/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/hiol_23_01_castillo_and_egginton.pdf
• “The Screen Behind the Screen: A Penultimate Response to a Polemical Companion,” with David Castillo, in A Polemical Companion to Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media. Eds. Bradley Nelson and Julio Baena. HIOL Debates 8 (2017): 132-146. Web.
• “Afterword,” with David Castillo, in Freakish Encounters: Constructions of the Freak in Hispanic Cultures, ed. Luis Martin Estudillo, 2018: https://cla.umn.edu/hispanic-issues/online/volume-20-freakish-encounters
• “The Philosopher’s Baroque: Benjamin, Lacan, Deleuze,” in the Oxford Handbook to the Baroque, ed. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press, 2019, 487-496
• “What Kind of Humanities Do We Want or Need in the 21stCentury?” with David Castillo, in López-Calvo, Ignacio and Christina Lux, eds.  Humanities and Post-Truth in the Information Age (Northwestern UP, 2019)
• “What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Zombies?” The Philosophical Salon: Speculations, Reflections, Interventions, eds. Michael Marder and Patricia Vieira, London, Open Humanities Press, 2017, 121-24
• “The Empire of Solitude,” with David Castillo, The Philosophical Salon: Speculations, Reflections, Interventions, eds. Michael Marder and Patricia Vieira, London, Open Humanities Press, 2017, 37-41
• Can Neuroscience Overturn Roe v. Wade?" in The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments, eds. Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, New York: Norton, 2016.
• "The Limits of the Coded World," in The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments, eds. Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, New York: Norton, 2016.
• "Bodies in Motion: An Exchange," with Alex Rosenberg, in The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments, eds. Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, New York: Norton, 2016.
• "Afterword: What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Zombies," in Castillo, Schmid, Reilly, and Browning, Zombie Talk: Culture, History, Politics, New York: Palgrave, 2016, 106-114.
• "Borges on Eternity," in Eternity, a History, ed. Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 277-282.
• "Crime Shows—CSI: Hapsburg Madrid," in Peter Goodrich and Valerie Hayaert (eds), Genealogies of Legal Vision, London: Routledge, 2015, 243-58
• "The Eradication of Transcendence," in Braidotti et al. eds, The Postsecular Turn, 2014
• "Potentiality of Life," in Silvia Mazzini ed., Reading Hermeneutic Communism, Continuum, 2014
• "Staging the Event: The Theatrical Ground of Metaphysical Framing," in Michael Marder and Santiago Zabala, eds. Being Shaken, Palgrave, 2014, 177-85
• "¿Tolerancia o fundamentalismo: una pregunta contemporánea," interview collected in Diálogos en la Finis Terrae: Entrevistas de Marco Antonio de la Parra, ed. Constanza López (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Finis Terrae, 2013): 39-50
• "Neither Here nor There: The Everyday Dialectics of Manuel Cruz," in Vivir para pensar, eds. Fina Birulés, Antonio Gómez Ramos and Concha Roldán, Madrid: Paidós, 2011
• "Three Versions of Divisibility: Borges, Kant, and the Quantum," Thinking With Borges, eds. Egginton and Johnson, Aurora, CO, The Davies Group, 2009, 53-72
• Co-author, with Bernadette Wegenstein, UNESCO Online Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities—"Media Impact on Literature" entry, (2008)
• "Intimacy and Anonymity, or How the Audience Became a Crowd," Crowds, eds. Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Tiews, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007, 97-110
• "Keeping Pragmatism Pure: Rorty with Lacan," in Egginton and Sandbothe, eds., The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy: Contemporary Engagements Between Analytic and Continental Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004)
• "Sobre el espaciamiento: el espacio paranoico del Dr. Francia," in Espacios y discurosos compartidos en la literatura de América Latina. Actas del Coloquio Internacional del Comité de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Asociación Internacional de Literatura Comparada, ed. Biagio D'Angelo (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae-Fondo, Editorial de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2003) 102-110
• "Facing the Defacement of Death: Heidegger, Deleuze, and García Lorca," Convergencias Hispanicas: Selected Proceedings And Other Essays On Spanish And Latin American Literature, Film, And Linguistics, eds. Elizabeth Scarlett and Howard B.Wescott (Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2002) 103-118
• "Mímesis e teatralidade," in Mascaras da mimesis: a obra de Luiz Costa Lima (Rio de Janeiro: Record Editora, 1999) 321-342

Articles and other publications

• "Quantum Poetics: How Borges and Heisenberg converged on the notion that language both enables and interferes with our grasp of reality," Aeon, September 14, 2023
• "A meeting of the greatest minds in science, philosophy, and literature," Big Think, September 1, 2023
• "On the 'Inverted Cosmos' - From Aristotle to the Middle Ages," Literary Hub, August 30, 2023.
• "Why Kant Wouldn't Fear AI," TIME, August 29, 2023
• "Artificial Ignorance," The Philosophical Salon, July 3, 2023
• “Kant, Existentialism, and the Anthropic Principle,” The New Politics of Existence, MLN, 137.5 (2023): 917-930
• “The Psychosis of Power: A Lacanian reading of Roa Bastos’s I, The Supreme,” Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures 5.2 (2021): 4-11. http://jflc.hunnu.edu.cn/info/1280/1808.htm
• “Academic Tenure Is Broken,” The New Republic, May 25, 2021, https://newrepublic.com/article/162506/academic-tenure-broken-nikole-hannah-joness-case-makes-clear
• “Cervantes’s Black Mirror,” Cervantes 40 (2021): 175-190
• “Hermeneutics and the Framing of “Truth,” Los Angeles Review of Books, May 5, 2020, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hermeneutics-and-the-framing-of-truth/
• “Ben Lerner’s Intoxicating Honesty,” Public books, October 2, 2019 https://www.publicbooks.org/ben-lerners-intoxicating-honesty/
• “Creating a Space for the Humanities: The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins,” CHCIdeas, June, 2019, https://chcinetwork.org/ideas/creating-a-space-for-the-humanities-the-alexander-grass-humanities-institute-at-johns-hopkins-university
• Kulturphilosoph Egginton: “Ein perfekter Teufelskreis,” interview for the Austrian magazine Trend.at, published August 2019, https://www.trend.at/leben/kultur/william-egginton-teufelskreis-10974542
• “Diversity and the Weaponization of Identity Politics,” LA Review of Books, December 17, 2018: http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/diversity-and-the-weaponization-of-identity-politics/
• “What Frankenstein’s Monster Really Looks Like,” The New York Times, October 31, 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/opinion/frankensteins-monster-halloween.html
• “The Left-Wing Case Against Tenure,” Chronicle Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept 30, 2018: https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Left-Wing-Case-Against/244672?key=abxJkA1FNjoz79TyR28DhTO_edLdZg8yckF6h94t07rHMMEESZFM3zx63XcZ1svFMWx3MjJFRzEwX21iY3dWRDlIclF0dDhTZy1DMzB6NTFnY3Z5M1czYTJnSQ
• “Why Education Must Become More Democratic,” Globe and Mail, August 31, 2018: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-education-must-become-more-democratic/
• “What the Grievance Studies Hoax Really Shows,” New York Times, Oct 6, 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/opinion/grievance-studies-hoax.html
• “The Splintering of the Student Mind,” Chronicle Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 29, 2018: https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Splintering-of-the-Student/244390?key=ZPRvPGcEksyNlrWwMqd4mtut7inbGqAuuokIO1BqxMLGLzQou__c7vIwxT5UY7fZcnF4R1V6eDBNMm5WZHZnUzhLeHVrQjgwWjllTkt1U1J4cjhyYkdyRC1RQQ
• “Die Vereinigten Staaten brauchen eine Rückbesinnung auf die Botschaft der Unabhängigkeitserklärung,” NZZ, May 25, 2018: https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/amerika-die-radikale-vision-der-menschlichkeit-ld.1371425
• “Toward a Baroque Theory of Knowledge in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” Semicerchio, 56.1 (2017): 31-38 http://www3.unisi.it/semicerchio/
• “Cervantes’s Treatment of Otherness, Contamination, and Conventional Ideals in Persiles and Other Works,” with David Castillo, eHumanista/Cervantes 5 (2016): 173-84; http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.span.d7_eh/files/sitefiles/cervantes/volume5/ehumancer5.finalfinal.option2.pdf
• “There’s No Such Thing As Reality (And It’s a Good Thing Too), LA Review of Books, Nov 10, 2016, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/theres-no-such-thing-as-reality-and-its-a-good-thing-too
• “Del amor cortés al diner espectral,” with David Castillo, La maleta de Portbou 18 (July August, 2016), http://www.lamaletadeportbou.com/articulo/del-amor-cortes-al-dinero-espectral/
• “Hispanism and Humanitas in the Market University,” with David Castillo, Hispanic Issues Online v. 6 (2016)
• “Bildung is kein Konsumgut,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 27, 2016, p. 44, http://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/zeitgeschehen/kommerzialisierte-hochschulen-bildung-ist-kein-konsumgut-ld.113228
• Interview in “La contra,” La vanguardia, Barcelona, August 2, 2016, http://www.lavanguardia.com/lacontra/20160802/403624885685/no-son-terroristas-por-el-islam-sino-por-su-aislamiento-digital.html
• “Leaving La Mancha,” Financial Times, June 4, 2016, p. 8
• Interview, Full-Stop, May 25, 2016, http://www.full-stop.net/2016/05/25/interviews/andrew-mitchell-davenport/william-egginton/
• “Cervantes es incompatible amb una visió nationalista,” Interview with Antoni Bassas, Ara, May 15, 2016, p. 48.
• “The Art of Fiction and Political Lies,” The Baltimore Sun, January 26, 2016, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-political-lies-20160126-story.html
• “Empire of Solitude,” with David Castillo, Philosophical Salon, LA Review of Books, January 4, 2016, http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/empire-of-solitude/
• “Letter from Austria: Is Europe’s ‘Tolerant Society’ Backfiring?” The New York Times, Opinionator, The Stone, May 23, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/opinion/letter-from-austria-is-europes-tolerant-society-backfiring.html
• "Stranger Than Fiction," The European Magazine, January 15, 2015
• "Vampire Dreamboats and Zombie Capitalists," New York Times Opinionator, The Stone, October 26, 2014
• "On Borges, Particles, and the Paradox of the Perceived World," New York Times Opinionator, The Stone, April 28, 2013
• "Affective Disorder," diacritics 40.2 (2012 [appeared 2013]): 24-43
• "Determinismo versus libertad humana," in Revista Cronopio, Medellín, Colombia, Nov. 4, 2012
• "Can Neuroscience Challenge Roe V. Wade?" New York Times Opinionator, The Stone, Oct 28, 2012
• "The Reality of Caudal," (Re)Reading Gracián in a Self-Made World.Hispanic Issues On Line Debates 4 (Fall 2012): 42–44. Web.
• "Religion – Conspiracy – Code," MLN, special issue: "The Long Shadow of Political Theology," 126.4 (2011): 32-43
• "Afterword: The Trap of Relevance," Hispanic Literatures and the Question of a Liberal Education. Ed. Luis Martín-Estudillo and Nicholas Spadaccini. Hispanic Issues On Line 8 (Fall 2011): 222–229.
• "The Revenge of the Novel: Mario Vargas Llosa, the new Nobel laureate, has always seen fiction as much more than just stories." Foreign Policy, October 7 (2010). http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/07/the_revenge_of_the_novel
• "On Radical Atheism, Chronolibidinal Reading, and Impossible Desires," CR: The New Centennial Review 9.1 (2009): 191–209
• "The Baroque as a Problem of Thought," PMLA 124.1 (2009): 143-49
• Co-author, with David Castillo, "Hispanism(s), Briefly: A Reflection on the State of the Discipline," online supplement to Hispanic Issues (2006)

External links

• Arcade: Literature, the Humanities, & the World
• William Egginton on Twitter
• JHU Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures
• Library of Congress Author Record
• William Egginton on Academia.edu

Notes and References

1. Web site: Egginton, William, 1969- - LC Linked Data Service (Library of Congress). id.loc.gov. 2016-01-29.
2. Web site: ARCADE. ARCADE. 2016-01-29.
3. Web site: Man in the Middle. Johns Hopkins Magazine. 2016-01-28.
4. 2023-01-25 . The Best Books of 2023 . 2023-12-30 . The New Yorker . en-US.
5. News: Staff . The New York Times Books . 2023-11-21 . 100 Notable Books of 2023 . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-12-30 . 0362-4331.
6. News: Szalai . Jennifer . Jacobs . Alexandra . Garner . Dwight . 2023-12-03 . The Critics' Picks: A Year in Reading . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-12-31 . 0362-4331.
7. News: 2023-11-28 . Talking About the 10 Best Books of 2023 . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-12-30 . 0362-4331.
8. Web site: Vol.11: Handling the Truth: A Debates Volume on What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature . 2023-12-30 . College of Liberal Arts . en.