I am an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Bucknell University, and affiliate faculty of Critical Black Studies and Latin American Studies. I teach courses in philosophy of race and ethnicity, political philosophy, and Critical Theory.
My primary research at the moment is a book project co-authored with Alejandro Arango (Gonzaga University). Tentatively titled From Latinidad to Latinidades: The Radical Plurality of a Social Identity, 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.
Our collaboration has already produced papers on the meaning of Latinidad, the importance of Afro-Latinidad, and our novel affordance view of social identity, in addition to an edited volume on social identity.
I would also eventually like to get back to some papers that have been on the back burner for some time, all dealing with contestatory political philosophy. These include 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.
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.
