Santiago Zabala

His books, articles, and research focus on the meaning of art, politics, and freedom in the twenty-first century when, as he claims, "the greatest emergency has become the absence of emergency." The goal of philosophy for Zabala is to thrust us into these absent emergencies (such as climate change or economic inequality) in order to disrupt the ongoing “return to order” that surveillance capitalism and right-wing populism are imposing upon us. These problems are discussed in his most recent books—Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020) and Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (Columbia University Press, 2017)—and in many articles. His forthcoming book is Disruption.

Zabala is ICREA Research Professor at the Pompeu Fabra University, where he currently teaches contemporary and political philosophy, supervises Ph.D. students and directs the UPF Center for Vattimo’s Archives and Philosophy. In addition to an extensive speaking schedule at conferences, festivals, and art Biennales, Zabala is also visiting professor at Renmin University, IDSVA, and several other international institutions.

In 2017 S. Mazzini and O. Glyn-Williams released a book on Hermeneutic Communism published by Springer Verlag, Making Communism Hermeneutic: Reading Vattimo and Zabala, with critical contributions from 17 renown scholars from all over the world as well as Vattimo and Zabala's responses.

According to Hamid Dabashi "European thinkers like Žižek and Zabala, important and insightful as they are in their own immediate circles, are out of touch with these realities, and to the degree that they are they cannot come to terms with their unfolding particularities in terms immediate to their idiomaticities. For them "Philosophy" is a mental gymnastics performed with the received particulars of European philosophy in its postmodern or poststructuralist registers – exciting and productive to the degree that they can be."[2][3] Zabala's response to Dabashi in Al-Jazeera

Also Brian Leiter criticized Zabala on his blog (Leiter Reports).[4] Zabala's response to Leiter on Columbia University Press Blog.

Author:

• Being at Large. Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (2020). Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
• Why Only Art can Save Us. Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (2017). New York: Columbia University Press.
• Hermeneutic Communism (2011, coauthored with G. Vattimo) New York: Columbia University Press. Translated into Italian, Spanish, and Turkish.
• The Remains of Being (2009). New York: Columbia University Press. Translated into Chinese and Spanish.
• The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy. A Study of E. Tugendhat (2008). New York: Columbia University Press. Translated into Italian.

Editor

• The Future of Religion, by Rorty and Gianni Vattimo, edited by S. Zabala, (2005) New York: Columbia University Press. Translated in 16 languages.
• Consequences of Hermeneutics (2010, co-edited with Jeff Malpas) Northwestern University Press.
• Nihilism and Emancipation, by Gianni Vattimo, edited by S. Zabala, (2004) New York: Columbia University Press. Translated in 6 languages.
• Weakening Philosophy, edited by S. Zabala (2007) Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Translated into Spanish and Italian.
• Art's Claim to Truth, by Gianni Vattimo, edited by S. Zabala (2008) New York: Columbia University Press.
• Essere e dintorni, by Gianni Vattimo, edited by A. Martinengo, G. Iannantuono, and S. Zabala (2018) Milan: La Nave di Teseo.
• On Philosophical Education, edited by S. Zabala. Special Issue of Philosophy Today: An International Journal of Contemporary Philosophy, Volume 61, Issue 2 (Spring 2017). With contributions from Judith Butler, Simon Critchley, and others.
• The Emergency of Philosophy, edited by S. Zabala. Special Issue of Philosophy Today: An International Journal of Contemporary Philosophy, Volume 59, Issue 4 (Fall 2015). With contributions from Adrian Parr, Bonnie Honig, and others.
• Being Shaken, (2014, co-edited with M. Marder) Palgrave.

• Global Center for Advanced Studies

• Zabala's Official Website
• Santiago Zabala at the Pompeu Fabra University
• ICREA
• E-International Relations interview with Santiago Zabala
• Los Angeles Review of Books interview with Santiago Zabala
• CUP's Blog interview with Santiago Zabala on Why Only Art can Save Us