Gavin Arnall

My research and teaching interests converge at the intersection of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. With a background in Comparative Literature, I specialize in modern and contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean. I also work on the history of Marxism, philosophies of translation, competing notions of what constitutes universality, indigenous and African diaspora studies, avant-garde poetry and film, and critical theory.

 

My first book, Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change (Columbia University Press, 2020), sheds light on a persistent but often latent division in Frantz Fanon's writings, a subtle internal struggle between two modes of thinking about change. I argue that there are two Fanons: a dominant Fanon who conceives of change as a dialectical process of becoming and a subterranean Fanon who experiments with an even more explosive theory of transformation. To develop this argument, I offer a close and symptomatic reading of Fanon's entire oeuvre, from cannonical texts like Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth to his psychiatric papers and recently published materials, including his play, Parallel Hands.

 

Subterranean Fanon was selected as an Editor's Pick for the journal EuropeNow,  it was featured in a podcast with the New Books Network, and it was the focus of events sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in South Africa.

 

My next book, Translating Universality: Marxism and Indigenous Radicalisms in Latin America, explores past and present (missed) encounters between Marxist and indigenous worldviews and practices. Key figures for this study include José Carlos Mariátegui, José María Arguedas, Álvaro García Linera, Raquel Gutiérrez, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, and Subcomandante Marcos.

 

I am the co-editor of two forthcoming volumes: Translation and Universality: Sites of Struggle (with Katie Chenoweth, Fordham University Press) and Between Revolution and Democracy: José Aricó, Marxism, and Latin America (with Susana Draper, Brill’s Historical Materialism Book Series). I am also the translator of Emilio de Ípola’s Althusser, The Infinite Farewell (Duke University Press, 2018).

 

I have received fellowships in support of my research from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, UM’s University Musical Society, and Princeton University’s Center for Human Values. I have served on the Executive Committee for the Modern Language Association’s Forum on Marxism, Literature, and Society (2017-2022), and I am the faculty mentor of the Marxisms Collective, a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop.