Fanny Söderbäck is Associate Professor of Philosophy. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research and has held positions at Siena College and DePaul University. She specializes in Feminist Philosophy, and works on issues such as embodiment, birth, temporality, narration, historical memory, violence, and vulnerability.

She is the author of Revolutionary Time: On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray (SUNY Press, 2019). She has edited Feminist Readings of Antigone (SUNY Press, 2010) and is a co-editor of the volume Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). She is also the editor of a special issue of philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism on the topic of birth. Her work has appeared in scholarly journals such as Diacritics, Hypatia, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Signs, and Theory & Event.

She is currently working on a book project on Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, in which she puts her work into conversation with queer and trans theories as well as Latinx, Black, and decolonial feminisms to re-envision selfhood and human relations through the framework of singularity.

Fanny is the co-founder and co-director of the Kristeva Circle, a society devoted to organizing meetings and conferences around the work of French philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva.

PUBLICATIONS

Monograph

Revolutionary Time: On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019).

Edited Volumes

philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism, special issue on birth, vol. 4, no. 1 (2014).

Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice, co-edited with Henriette Gunkel and Chrysanthi Nigianni (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Feminist Readings of Antigone (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).

Glänta, special issue on collaborative art, co-edited with Göran Dahlberg, vol. 1–2 (2006).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

“Narration as a Practice of Care in the Wake of Violence: Adriana Cavarero’s Narrative Theory and Saidiya Hartman’s Critical Fabulation,” The Journal of Italian Philosophy, special issue on Adriana Cavarero (forthcoming).

“Stranger than Other Strangers: On the Crossroads Between Subjectivity and Language in Kristeva and Anzaldúa,” Revolution in Poetic Language: 50 Years Later, ed. Emilia Angelova (Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming).

“Sexual Violence as Ontological Violence: Narration, Selfhood, and the Destruction of Singularity,” Political Bodies: Writings on Adriana Cavarero’s Political Thought, ed. Paula Landerreche Cardillo and Rachel Silverbloom (Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming).

“Fantastic Antigones: The Tragic Legacy of Trans Grief,” Feminist Philosophy: Time, History, and the Transformation of Thoughts, ed. Synne Myrebøe, Vala Palmadottir, and Johanna Sjöstedt (Stockholm: Södertörn Studies in Intellectual and Cultural History, forthcoming).

“Maternal Enigmas: Kristeva and the Paradoxes of Motherhood,” The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva (Library of Living Philosophers Book 36), ed. Sara G. Beardsworth (Chicago: Open Court, 2020), pp. 639–654.

“Time for Love: Plato and Irigaray on Erotic Relations,” in Thinking Life with Luce Irigaray: Language, Origin, Art, Love, ed. Gail M. Schwab (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020), pp. 137–156.

“Singularity in the Wake of Slavery: Adriana Cavarero’s Ontology of Uniqueness and Alex Haley’s Roots,” Philosophy Compass e12685 (2020).

“Birth,” The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory, ed. Robin Truth Goodman (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), pp. 59–79.

“Performative Presence: Judith Butler and the Temporal Regimes of Global Assembly,” diacritics, special issue on Collective Temporalities: Decolonial Perspectives, vol. 46, no. 2 (2018): 32–49.

“Natality or Birth? Arendt and Cavarero on the Human Condition of Being Born,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, vol. 33, no. 2 (2018): 273–288.

“Liminal Spaces: Reflections on the In-Between,” Architecture and Culture, vol. 5, no. 3 (2017): 383–393.

“In Search for the Mother Through the Looking-Glass: On Time, Origins and Beginnings in Plato and Irigaray,” in Engaging the World: Thinking after Irigaray, ed. Mary C. Rawlinson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016), pp. 11–37.

“Julia Kristeva,” in Fifty-One Key Feminist Thinkers: The Key Concepts, ed. Lori Marso (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 129–134.

“Timely Revolutions: On the Timelessness of the Unconscious,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, special issue on Kristeva’s concept of revolt, vol. 22, no. 2 (2014): 46–55.

“Why Birth?” Introduction to philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism, special issue on birth, vol. 4, no. 1 (2014): 1–11.

“Being in the Present: Derrida and Irigaray on the Metaphysics of Presence,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 27, no. 3 (2013): 253–264.

“Revolutionary Time: Revolt as Temporal Return” (reprint of my essay from Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society), in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 340, ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Cengage Learning, 2013), pp. 300–311.

“A Politics of Polyphony,” Introduction to Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice, ed. Henriette Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni, and Fanny Söderbäck (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 3–12.

“Revolutionary Time: Revolt as Temporal Return,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 37, no. 2 (2012): 301–324.

“Impossible Mourning: Sophocles Reversed” (reprint of my essay from Feminist Readings of Antigone), Philosophical Topics, special issue on the work of Hannah Arendt, ed. Karin Fry and Irene McMullin, vol. 39, no. 2 (2011): 165–181.

“Motherhood According to Kristeva: On Time and Matter in Plato and Kristeva,” philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism, vol. 1, no. 1 (2011): 65–87.

“Julia Kristeva face aux feminists Américaines,” trans. Jonathan Chalier, l’Infini, France, vol. 111 (2010): 86–107.

“Motherhood: A Site of Repression or Liberation? Kristeva and Butler on the Maternal Body,” Studies in the Maternal, England, issue 3 (2010).

“Why Antigone Today?” Introduction to Feminist Readings of Antigone, ed. Fanny Söderbäck (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), pp. 1–13.

“Impossible Mourning: Sophocles Reversed,” in Feminist Readings of Antigone, ed. Fanny Söderbäck (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), pp. 65–82.

“Konstellationer,” Introduction to Glänta, special issue on collaborative art, co-written with Göran Dahlberg, vol. 1–2 (2006): 4–9.

“Fadersord och moderskropp,” Glänta, Sweden, vol. 3 (2005): 43–46.

“Loss for Words – Subversive Starvation,” Tessera, Canada, vol. 37–38 (2005): 101–112.

Reviews

Review of Adriana Cavarero’s Surging Democracy: Notes on Hannah Arendt’s Political Thought, Arendt Studies, vol. 6 (2022): 259–266.

Review of Julia Kristeva’s Passions of Our Time, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy (2022): 1–5.

“Forging A Head and Forging Ahead – Miller’s Head Cases.” Review of Elaine P. Miller’s Head Cases: Julia Kristeva on Philosophy and Art in Depressed Times, Theory & Event, vol. 20, no. 1 (2017): 274–279.

Essays in Art Catalogues

“‘Je Est Un Autre’: Encountering the Stranger Within” / “‘Je est un autre’: Rencontre avec l’étranger intérieur,” in catalog published on the occasion of Esther Shalev Gerz’s exhibit WHITE-OUT: Between Telling and Listening (Kamloops Art Gallery, 2012), pp. 51–55.

“Facing the Double,” in catalog published on the occasion of Andreas Gedin’s exhibit Bit By Bit (Stockholm, 2009), pp. 53–61.

Interviews and Book Panels

“A Cosmopolitanism of Internal Strangeness: Self and Other in Plato and Kristeva,” In Praise of the Other: “The Semiotic Rupture” in Kristeva’s Work (published in Persian), ed. Mehrdad Parsa (Tehran, 2022).

Interview on my book Revolutionary Time by Soha Al-Jurf, The Voice of Everything (November 2022), https://newbooksnetwork.com/revolutionary-time External link..

Book Panel on my book Revolutionary Time, respondent Robert Shane, The Kristeva Circle, Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies, New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria (May 2022).

Book Panel on my book Revolutionary Time, respondent Emily Anne Parker, Mercer University, Atlanta, Georgia (May 2022).

Book Panel on my book Revolutionary Time, respondents Sean D. Kirkland, Paula Landerreche Cardillo, and Rafael Vizcaíno, DePaul University Department of Philosophy (November 2021).

Book Panel on my book Revolutionary Time, respondents Elaine Miller and Sid Hansen, The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), Virtual Conference (September 2021).

Interview on my book Revolutionary Time by Sarah Tyson, New Books in Philosophy (January 2021), https://newbooksnetwork.com/revolutionary-time External link..

Roundtable Discussion on my book Revolutionary Time, respondent Lisa Käll, The Seminar in Continental Philosophy, Södertörn University and Stockholm University (November 2020), https://video.su.se/media/Book+Talk+with+Fanny+S%C3%B6derb%C3%A4ck/0_vxal6k3w?fbclid=IwAR1x8_IIirYPb2l34-jGtYf6iqiv2EXyj6BSOU9UlYQlqlJb_IWHfxSghL8 External link..

Interview on philosophy and love with Fanny Söderbäck by Andrea Warmack, Erotes: The Blog of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love (February 2019), https://erotesblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/23/interview-with-fanny-soderback/ External link..