My current research exists along three related trajectories. The first deals with the concept and manifestations of race. I am co-author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Race. I am also working on a book project linking work in Critical Black Studies, Anglo-American philosophy of race, and Continental Philosophy.

The second comprises a series of essays in contestatory political philosophy, including papers on the conceptual connection between legitimacy and resistance, the concept of partial legitimacy, the potential justification of revolutionary violence in legitimate states, the revolutionary praxis of Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean anti-colonialist Amílcar Cabral, and papers on the possibilities of contestation in Hobbes and Rousseau.

The third trajectory is in Latin American and Latinx philosophy and takes the form of a book project co-authored with Alejandro Arango (Gonzaga University). Tentatively titled Reconsidering Latinidad, we offer a pragmatic and deflationary account of Latinidad as a social affordance, and argue that neither race, ethnicity, nor ethnorace are sufficient for comprehending the specificity of Latinidad, given its historical emergence as an identity and its varied social, political, and cultural manifestations. We understand Latinidad as a meaningful yet incomplete category of social identity that interacts with other racial, ethnic, national, and cultural categories, and that has the potential to ground solidarity among Latinx people in the name of particular goals.

What ties these three threads of research together, and what motivates my engagement with each of them, is a preoccupation with the conceptual, historical, social, and political demarcations of ideas of ‘the people.’ More broadly, I am interested in the relationship between, on the one hand, issues of democracy, equality, justice, and legitimacy, and on the other, those dealing with resistance, contestation, freedom, and emancipation. I understand contestation as critical  for any attempt to construct conceptions of ‘the people’ that are sensitive to disagreements over who counts as members of a political society, and what meaningful participation in that society looks like. Through this lens, identity construction is understood within historical context as a politics of identity. That is, through the possibilities that emerge or disappear from within social and political conditions over time.

In 2017 Rowman & Littlefield International published my book, Political Philosophy and Political Action: Imperatives of Resistance. The text grounds critical engagement with political philosophy from within an analysis of contemporary resistance movements. Juxtaposing critical interpretations of Rousseau, Marx, Dewey, and Rancière alongside analyses of contemporary resistance movements such as Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and the Arab Spring illustrates the importance of real political action for democratic political philosophy. I use an analysis of political philosophy’s ideals of equality and democracy to argue for the continued relevance of the history of political theory for real politics, while simultaneously emphasizing the potential shortcomings of such theorizing. Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate how theory must always remain not only grounded in general political principles, but must also retain a connection to the material realities of insurrectionist politics.