Clinton Debogorski
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Clinton Debogorski Department of Philosophy University of Toronto 170 St. George Street email: [email protected] Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 homepage: https://clintondebogorski.weebly.com EDUCATION Ph.D. Candidate, University of Toronto Dissertation - Dialectics of Canadian Enlightenment: anarchist fragments on genocidal culture Committee - Mark Kingwell (supervisor), Willi Goetschel, Andrew Franklin-Hall M.A. Philosophy, University of Toronto, 2013 B.A. (Hon.) Philosophy, McGill University, 2008 Areas of Specialization: Genocide Studies, Western Political Theory, Phenomenology Areas of Competence: Indigenous Political Theory, 19th Century Philosophy, Frankfurt School PUBLICATIONS 2016. Review of Lee Braver’s (ed.) Division III of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Symposium online reviews: https://www.c-scp.org/2016/12/15/lee-braver-ed-division-iii-of- heideggers-being-and-time 2018. The Trinity Review, Spring Journal. “Theses on Genocide: a situationist plagiary of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach.” (Composed under pen-name C. Debordski). GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, & AWARDS SSHRC Doctoral Award, 2015-2018 (federal scholarship) Ontario Graduate Scholarship, 2014-2015 (provincial scholarship) UT Fellowships, 2011-2018 Master’s Recruitment Award, 2011 (declined), from University of Alberta, only 50 offered university-wide Prince of Wales Gold Medal for Mental & Moral Philosophy, 2008 (top honour from McGill Department of Philosophy) TALKS “Heidegger and Genocide.” Northwest Texas Philosophical Association, 50th Annual Conference (Dallas, Texas), March 2018. “What is Camp Capitalism? On Multicultural Genocide and the Indian Residential School System.” Presentation for Women and Minorities in Philosophy Conference (University of Toronto), March 2018. “Heidegger on Suicide.” North Texas Philosophical Association, 49th Annual Conference (Dallas, Texas), March 2017. “Iris Marion Young’s Five Faces of Oppression: the Missing G-Word.” Guest lecture for Prof. Andrew Franklin-Hall’s Introduction to Political Philosophy course (University of Toronto), April 2016. “In Tribute to a Literary Masochist: Some Psycho-philosophical Remarks on Freud’s “Dostoyevsky and Parricide.”” Guest lecture for Prof. Emeritus André Gombay’s final course on Freud (University of Toronto), March 2013. ACADEMIC-ACTIVIST PRESENTATIONS “Tricks and Reassimilation: ” Presentation for “Brightening the Spirit—Breaking the Silence: Community Workshop on Understanding Suicide.” Six Nations Polytechnic Institute (Ohsweken, Ontario), June 2015. “The Enemy Who Lives in Our Heads: Native Peoples and Submission to Canada’s Therapeutic State.” Presentation with Shaunessy McKay for “Shifting the Mental Health Narrative: An intersectional inquiry on economic injustice, causality, recovery and the power of community,” a conference hosted by Alternatives counselling service (Toronto, Ontario), May 2018. TEACHING Instructorships Ethics and Society: Colonialism and Genocide, Summer 2016 Teaching Assistantships Introduction to Political Philosophy: Fall 2018 Introduction to Philosophy (1-year course): Fall/Spring 2017/18 Introduction to Political Philosophy: Spring 2016, Fall 2014 Law and Morality: Fall 2016 Introduction to Ethics: Spring 2015 Philosophy of Sexuality: Spring 2013 Introduction to Continental Philosophy: Fall 2012, Summer 2014, Summer 2015 Psychoanalysis: Spring 2012, Spring 2013 Introduction to Existentialism: Fall 2011 Research assistantships: Professor Mark Kingwell, University of Toronto, February 2018—present REFERENCES Mark Kingwell University Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto (416) 978-3286 [email protected] Willi Goetschel University Professor of German Literature and Philosophy, University of Toronto (416) 926-2320 [email protected] Andrew Franklin-Hall Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto (416) 978-3311 [email protected] DISSERTATION ABSTRACT: If readers were to take a single lesson from my dissertation, I hope it is this: our longstanding (and deafening) silence as philosophers concerning genocide is as anti-philosophical as it is ethically unacceptable. Especially given the (no doubt ideologically-laden and in many respects highly problematic) work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on the Indian Residential School System (TRC), it is a profound dereliction of our duty as philosophers in “Canada” to continue turning away from the social and material fact that our thoughts, discussions, analyses, and actions have been unfolding within an historical context that is multiply genocidal in character, most brutally (but by no means exclusively) vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples both here and elsewhere (owing largely to the “Canadian” international mining industry). There is a genocidal culture, I argue, at the heart of what mainstream apologists of that state apparatus and its culture prefer, in the wake of the TRC, to misrepresent as a more or less bygone era of “cultural genocide.” In a series of interconnected, aphoristic fragments (‘anarchisms’), I describe and critique this genocidal culture, which extends far beyond “Canada,” as one of camp capitalism (Lagerkapitalismus). On the brighter side, I argue that Raphael Lemkin’s original characterization of genocide as the cultural (or inter-cultural) destruction of ways of life, when unsettled from its narrowly legalistic contexts and conjoined with my own critical interventions against daily life under Lagerkapitalismus, carry emancipatory implications not only for theory and practice, but for creative culture (or “genos-activity”) itself, understood as a hybrid, open-ended meshing of interpretative thought and action. .