Dr Alexandre Lefebvre

Lecturer in the School of Philosophical & Historical Inquiry (SOPHI) and the School of Social & Political Sciences (SSPS).

Room 416,
A18 Brennan MacCallum
The University of Sydney NSW 2006

T +61 2 9351 4945
F +61 2 9351 3918

PhD Johns Hopkins University
Associate Editor, Contemporary Political Theory

I hold a joint appointment as lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations, and the Department of Philosophy. I received my PhD in 2007 from the Humanities Center, Program in Intellectual History, at the Johns Hopkins University.

My teaching focuses on political and legal thought (with special interest in problems of judgment and human rights), and modern and contemporary French philosophy. Current courses include GOVT 2112: Modern Political Thought and HRTD6906: The Philosophy of Human Rights.

My current research attempts to develop a theory of human rights from the philosophy of Henri Bergson, in dialogue with Pierre Hadot, the later Foucault, Vladimir Jankélévitch, and Gilles Deleuze. It is titled Human Rights as a Way of Life: on Bergson’s Political Philosophy.

I am associate editor of Contemporary Political Theory.

Selected publications

Books

The Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza Stanford: Stanford University Press, Cultural Memory in the Present series, Cloth and Paperback, 2008: 320 pages.

• Translated into Korean (Seoul: Chi Woo, forthcoming 2011)
• Reviewed in Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy; Continental Philosophy Review; Law and Literature; Law, Culture, and the Humanities; Theory and Event

Edited Books
with Melanie White (eds.), Bergson, Politics, and Religion Durham: Duke University Press, Cloth and Paperback, 2012: 352 pages.

Journal Articles
“Democracy and Movement: an Interview with Paul Patton.” Contemporary Political Theory, forthcoming 2012.

“Human Rights in Deleuze and Bergson’s Later Philosophy.” Theory & Event, 14, no 3 (2011).

“Law and the Ordinary: Hart, Wittgenstein, Jurisprudence.” Telos, no. 154, (2011):: 99-118.

with Melanie White. “Bergson on Durkheim: Society Sui Generis.” Journal of Classical Sociology, 10, no. 4(2010) 457-77.

with Melanie White. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s Civic Perfectionism.” Citizenship Studies, 14, no. 4 (2010): 461-71.

“Critique of Teleology in Kant and Dworkin.” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 33, no. 2 (2007): 179-201.

“Habermas and Deleuze on Law and Adjudication.” Law and Critique, 17, no 3 (2006): 389-414.

“We Do Not Yet Know What the Law Can Do” Contemporary Political Theory, 5, no. 1 (2006): 52-67 (Feature Article).

with Engin F. Isin. “The Gift of Law: Greek Euergetism and Ottoman Waqf.” European Journal of Social Theory, 8, no. 1 (2005): 5-23.

“The Political Given: Decisionism in Schmitt's Concept of the Political.” Telos, no. 132 (2005): 83-98.

“A New Image of Law: Deleuze and Jurisprudence.” Telos, no. 130 (2005): 103-26.

"Things Temporal Exposé, Passages from Benjamin.” Journal for Cultural Research, 7, no. 1 (2003): 47-60.

Book Chapters
“Bergson and Human Rights.” In Bergson, Politics and Religion, edited by Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012: 193-214.

with Melanie White. “Introduction: Bergson, Politics, and Religion.” In Bergson, Politics and Religion, edited by Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012: 1-21.

“Human Rights in Deleuze and Bergson’s Later Philosophy.” In Deleuze and Jurisprudence, edited by Laurent de Sutter and Kyle J. McGee. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2012: 66-99.

with Melanie White. “Religion within the Bounds of Mere Emotion: Bergson and Kant.” In Emotions Matter, edited by Alan Hunt, Dale Spencer and Kevin Walby. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 102-123.

“Jurisprudence.” In Sage Encyclopedia of Political Theory, edited by Mark Bevir. London: Sage, 2010.

“The Time of Law: Evolution in Bergson and Holmes.” In Law and Life After Deleuze, edited by Rosi Braidotti, Claire Colebrook and Patrick Hanafin. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009: 24-46.

Review Essays
Michael R. Kelly. Bergson and Phenomenology. Reviewed in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2011.