Life's Pasts and Futures: On Being and Science
It is hard to imagine a question more important than ‘What is life?’ Historically, both philosophy and science made attempts to locate or define the nature/essence of life itself. But recent thought recognizes that life is not just a thing to study, since ways of thinking about life alter what counts as living which then has ethico-political implications for what and whose lives matter. This shift from theorizing life itself to framing life as a 'problem' forms the basis of the two books that will be delivered in this project, with a caveat that new modes of knowing life, like epigenetics, present challenges that must be addressed. The first monograph 'Vital Ontologies: The Facts of Life, Reconsidered' catalogues and critically explores the history of theories of life, shows why new modes of thought are needed, and builds on emerging theories to sketch an original theory of the problem of life. The second, co-authored monograph 'Future Perfect: Life in an Epigenetic Tense' uses that theoretical basis to reimagine the problem of life through epigenetic science with the aim to offer a novel framework for analyzing the problem of life anew. These books seek to make substantial contributions to philosophy of science and critical fields that address the problem of life explicitly or implicitly, e.g. gender, sexuality, race, environmental, and animal studies, and to deepen knowledge about what constitutes an individual or a life and the effects that has on possibilities for living.
Final report
Most significant results
The sabbatical year was originally funded to finalize two books (forthcoming in 2025): "Vital Ontologies: The Facts of Life," Reconsidered (Columbia University Press), and "Future Perfect: Life in an Epigenetic Tense" (Open Humanities Press, co-authored with Claire Colebrook). Historically, both philosophy and the sciences have attempted to locate or define the essence of ‘life itself,’ and theories that emerged from these attempts are deeply embedded into our modern understanding of the human. But, I argue, life is not just another object of study, since ways of thinking about life alter what counts as living which then has ethico-political implications for what and whose lives matter. As such, they have had an immense impact on the distributions of power and oppression and an immense impact on distributions of power and axes of inequality. So, taking life as a ‘problematic’ rather than as a question to be answered or an object to be studied, these books transform our understanding of life and open up new possibilities for understanding the place of the human in the world—for living.
This was already double the work plan expected of an ordinary sabbatical grant. Yet, during my leave, I finalized two additional book manuscripts and six chapters/articles. One of these books is a is a posthumous collaboration: Michel Tibon-Cornillot’s "The Laboratory Planet: Instability and the Disappearance of Industrial Societies" (Columbia University Press, 2025). After Tibon-Cornillot’s death, I edited and readied his original French manuscript for translation; then, during sabbatical leave, I wrote a Foreword, 'On the Fundamental Instability of Life,' and expanded and updated his thought in a Postscript, 'The Afterlife of Industrial Society: Posthumous Conclusions.' My thinking in these two supplements to his brilliant, untimely book were inspired by conversations we had before he died and from writing the two official sabbatical books—especially since his book interweaves questions of life and science, especially cloning, with political and social questions related to modernity.
The second additional book is an edited collection called "Theory at the End of the World" (Columbia University Press, 2025 – co-edited with Rick Elmore, Rachel Loewen Walker, and Vernon Cisney). This volume includes my double chapter 'Permacrisis, Statelessness, and the Extinction of Being.' This chapter, along with three forthcoming articles/chapters—'Is Another World Possible? On Queer and Black Being and Rethinking the Future' (Lambda Nordica 2025) and 'Why Should I Care? A Politics of Indifference' (Paragraph 2025), and 'From the Cradle to the Cave: Architectures of a New Humanity' (Cambridge Companion to Franz Fanon 2026)—are connected by red threads that intertwine political and social questions of race, queerness, coloniality, the climate capitalism, and crisis with philosophical issues of identity, existence, time, worlds, and futures. These essays are, thus, varied ways of negotiating the relationship between ontology (what we are, what life is) and the ethical, social, and political dimensions of modern life—providing important results that issue from the shift in thinking of life as a problematic that I have undertaken in the two sabbatical books.
Other results (aside from publications)
Sabbatical research visits and conferences, lectures, and a keynote provided further ways to develop and refine the arguments in the aforementioned books and essays, to network, and to disseminate the research results. In total, the year included five such trips. The first was a research visit to the Louisiana Museum (Copenhagen), where I visited the “Anthropocene Museum” exhibit by Kenyan architectural firm Cave_bureau. This research informed the invited keynote lecture “Permacrisis by Design” at Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Embodied Climates conference and has been reworked into the forthcoming essay 'From the Cradle to the Cave' for the Cambridge Companion to Franz Fanon. The second trip was to McGill University in Montreal, where I presented 'Sexual Indifference (and Epigenetics)' with a response by the Associate Dean of Law and non-binary Professor, Darren Rosenblum, attended the law school’s internal research seminar, and met with a group of faculty from the Institute Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, the Philosophy Department, and Media Studies. In addition, I presented 'Indifference to Sexual Difference' in an invited presentation at the Society of Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy conference hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University. Themes from those talks have been expanded into the "Epigenetics/Epigenesis" book and the 'A Politics of Indifference' essay mentioned above. The third trip was to New York, where I worked on the "Vital Ontologies" book, and to Pennsylvania State University to work with my co-author on the "Epigenetics/Epigenesis" book. This trip was dedicated entirely to writing the two sabbatical books. The fourth trip was to Paris, where I finalized and submitted the manuscript for "Theory at the End of the World" and once again worked with my co-author. The fifth was a brief trip to New York to work my with co-author.
New research questions
There are several areas of inquiry that have emerged from the sabbatical research that will figure in projects planned for the coming years: the first cluster concerns the ontological issues of indifference and statelessness and their relationship to classic conceptions of crisis, recent conceptions of permacrisis, and the possibility of social and political transformation—this new research will be developed into a book project, "Permacrisis and the Future"; the second involves expanding on the ontological work contained in the "Vital Ontologies" book and the six essays and combining it with analyses of our contemporary political moment rife with conflict and the rise of new and insidious forms of fascism—this will result in a second book project called "What is it to be a Question?"; and, finally, since the "Epigenetics/Epigenesis" book raised a host of issues that we were unable to address in a single book, planning is already underway for a second co-authored book on the subject.
Dissemination/Collaboration
• "Vital Ontologies" will be published on Columbia University Press.
• "Epigenetics/Epigenesis," where I am first author (though it is entirely co-written) will be published open access at Open Humanities Press, with print editions available for purchase through MIT Press.
• Both the Tibon-Cornillot book, where I am named as Editor with Foreword and Postscript, and the co-edited "Theory at the End of the World" volume, where I am the primary and first named editor, will be published on Columbia University Press. Together, these include three of the six essays written during sabbatical.
• 'Is Another World Possible?' will be published in the journal Lambda Nordica (open access, 2025)
• 'Why Should I Care?' will be published in the journal Paragraph (peer-reviewed, 2025)
• 'From the Cradle to the Cave' will be published on Cambridge University Press (peer-reviewed, 2026).
The sabbatical year was originally funded to finalize two books (forthcoming in 2025): "Vital Ontologies: The Facts of Life," Reconsidered (Columbia University Press), and "Future Perfect: Life in an Epigenetic Tense" (Open Humanities Press, co-authored with Claire Colebrook). Historically, both philosophy and the sciences have attempted to locate or define the essence of ‘life itself,’ and theories that emerged from these attempts are deeply embedded into our modern understanding of the human. But, I argue, life is not just another object of study, since ways of thinking about life alter what counts as living which then has ethico-political implications for what and whose lives matter. As such, they have had an immense impact on the distributions of power and oppression and an immense impact on distributions of power and axes of inequality. So, taking life as a ‘problematic’ rather than as a question to be answered or an object to be studied, these books transform our understanding of life and open up new possibilities for understanding the place of the human in the world—for living.
This was already double the work plan expected of an ordinary sabbatical grant. Yet, during my leave, I finalized two additional book manuscripts and six chapters/articles. One of these books is a is a posthumous collaboration: Michel Tibon-Cornillot’s "The Laboratory Planet: Instability and the Disappearance of Industrial Societies" (Columbia University Press, 2025). After Tibon-Cornillot’s death, I edited and readied his original French manuscript for translation; then, during sabbatical leave, I wrote a Foreword, 'On the Fundamental Instability of Life,' and expanded and updated his thought in a Postscript, 'The Afterlife of Industrial Society: Posthumous Conclusions.' My thinking in these two supplements to his brilliant, untimely book were inspired by conversations we had before he died and from writing the two official sabbatical books—especially since his book interweaves questions of life and science, especially cloning, with political and social questions related to modernity.
The second additional book is an edited collection called "Theory at the End of the World" (Columbia University Press, 2025 – co-edited with Rick Elmore, Rachel Loewen Walker, and Vernon Cisney). This volume includes my double chapter 'Permacrisis, Statelessness, and the Extinction of Being.' This chapter, along with three forthcoming articles/chapters—'Is Another World Possible? On Queer and Black Being and Rethinking the Future' (Lambda Nordica 2025) and 'Why Should I Care? A Politics of Indifference' (Paragraph 2025), and 'From the Cradle to the Cave: Architectures of a New Humanity' (Cambridge Companion to Franz Fanon 2026)—are connected by red threads that intertwine political and social questions of race, queerness, coloniality, the climate capitalism, and crisis with philosophical issues of identity, existence, time, worlds, and futures. These essays are, thus, varied ways of negotiating the relationship between ontology (what we are, what life is) and the ethical, social, and political dimensions of modern life—providing important results that issue from the shift in thinking of life as a problematic that I have undertaken in the two sabbatical books.
Other results (aside from publications)
Sabbatical research visits and conferences, lectures, and a keynote provided further ways to develop and refine the arguments in the aforementioned books and essays, to network, and to disseminate the research results. In total, the year included five such trips. The first was a research visit to the Louisiana Museum (Copenhagen), where I visited the “Anthropocene Museum” exhibit by Kenyan architectural firm Cave_bureau. This research informed the invited keynote lecture “Permacrisis by Design” at Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Embodied Climates conference and has been reworked into the forthcoming essay 'From the Cradle to the Cave' for the Cambridge Companion to Franz Fanon. The second trip was to McGill University in Montreal, where I presented 'Sexual Indifference (and Epigenetics)' with a response by the Associate Dean of Law and non-binary Professor, Darren Rosenblum, attended the law school’s internal research seminar, and met with a group of faculty from the Institute Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, the Philosophy Department, and Media Studies. In addition, I presented 'Indifference to Sexual Difference' in an invited presentation at the Society of Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy conference hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University. Themes from those talks have been expanded into the "Epigenetics/Epigenesis" book and the 'A Politics of Indifference' essay mentioned above. The third trip was to New York, where I worked on the "Vital Ontologies" book, and to Pennsylvania State University to work with my co-author on the "Epigenetics/Epigenesis" book. This trip was dedicated entirely to writing the two sabbatical books. The fourth trip was to Paris, where I finalized and submitted the manuscript for "Theory at the End of the World" and once again worked with my co-author. The fifth was a brief trip to New York to work my with co-author.
New research questions
There are several areas of inquiry that have emerged from the sabbatical research that will figure in projects planned for the coming years: the first cluster concerns the ontological issues of indifference and statelessness and their relationship to classic conceptions of crisis, recent conceptions of permacrisis, and the possibility of social and political transformation—this new research will be developed into a book project, "Permacrisis and the Future"; the second involves expanding on the ontological work contained in the "Vital Ontologies" book and the six essays and combining it with analyses of our contemporary political moment rife with conflict and the rise of new and insidious forms of fascism—this will result in a second book project called "What is it to be a Question?"; and, finally, since the "Epigenetics/Epigenesis" book raised a host of issues that we were unable to address in a single book, planning is already underway for a second co-authored book on the subject.
Dissemination/Collaboration
• "Vital Ontologies" will be published on Columbia University Press.
• "Epigenetics/Epigenesis," where I am first author (though it is entirely co-written) will be published open access at Open Humanities Press, with print editions available for purchase through MIT Press.
• Both the Tibon-Cornillot book, where I am named as Editor with Foreword and Postscript, and the co-edited "Theory at the End of the World" volume, where I am the primary and first named editor, will be published on Columbia University Press. Together, these include three of the six essays written during sabbatical.
• 'Is Another World Possible?' will be published in the journal Lambda Nordica (open access, 2025)
• 'Why Should I Care?' will be published in the journal Paragraph (peer-reviewed, 2025)
• 'From the Cradle to the Cave' will be published on Cambridge University Press (peer-reviewed, 2026).