Susan Buck-Morss

Susan Buck-Morss
Name	Susan Buck-Morss
Birth date	1947
Occupation	Philosopher, Historian, Cultural Theorist
Alma mater	University of Chicago, Yale University
Notable works	The Dialectics of Seeing; Dreamworld and Catastrophe; Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History

Susan Buck-Morss is an American philosopher and historian known for interdisciplinary work linking Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and Frantz Fanon to modern political and cultural phenomena. Her scholarship spans connections among Hegelianism, Marxism, critical theory, Black Atlantic, and postcolonial thought, engaging broadly with debates in philosophy, history, political theory, and visual culture.

Early life and education

Born in 1947, Buck-Morss was shaped by intellectual currents in the United States and Europe involving figures such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Ernst Bloch, Herbert Marcuse, and Siegfried Kracauer. She completed undergraduate and graduate studies at institutions linked to scholars like Leo Strauss, John Rawls, Hannah Arendt, Richard Rorty, and Allan Bloom. Her doctoral work involved close readings of Hegel and Marx alongside archival research in collections associated with Walter Benjamin and correspondents like Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács, and Friedrich Engels.

Academic career and positions

Buck-Morss has held professorships and visiting appointments at universities and institutes including the City University of New York, Cornell University, Columbia University, Princeton University, Yale University, and international centers such as the Institute for Advanced Study and the New School for Social Research. She has participated in symposia alongside scholars from Harvard University, University of Chicago, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Toronto. Her institutional affiliations connect her to research networks featuring the American Philosophical Society, Social Science Research Council, Max Planck Institute, and the Institut für Sozialforschung.

Major works and intellectual contributions

Buck-Morss's influential books include The Dialectics of Seeing, which repositions Walter Benjamin in conversations with Marx, Hegel, Georges Bataille, and Sigmund Freud; Dreamworld and Catastrophe, which juxtaposes Disneyland with the Hiroshima and September 11 attacks imaginaries via readings of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard; and Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, which rethinks Hegel through the lens of the Haitian Revolution and figures like Toussaint Louverture, Alexander Dumas, Aimé Césaire, and C.L.R. James. She has reframed debates around aesthetic theory by bringing together archives associated with Benjamin, Brecht, Paul Klee, Georges Seurat, and Käthe Kollwitz. Her essays examine intersections among Cold War culture, Soviet archives, revolutionary movements such as Cuban Revolution and Algerian War of Independence, and thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, Edward Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Research interests and theoretical influences

Her research draws on strands from Hegelian philosophy, Marxist theory, Frankfurt School, and postcolonial theory, engaging figures including Georg Lukács, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva. Buck-Morss explores visuality and modernity through intersections with film studies thinkers such as Bazin, André Bazin, Gilles Deleuze, Laura Mulvey, and Stuart Hall; and with art historians like Rosalind Krauss, T.J. Clark, John Berger, and Heinrich Wölfflin. She integrates archival methods influenced by historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, E.P. Thompson, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Dominique Laporte, and engages political theorists including John Rawls, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Sheldon Wolin.

Awards, honors, and fellowships

Buck-Morss has received fellowships and honors from institutions like the Guggenheim Foundation, MacArthur Foundation (as applicant/nominee contexts intersecting with similar scholars), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and European awards associated with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation. She has been a fellow at centers including the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Institute for Advanced Study, and research residencies tied to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Bundesarchiv.

Selected bibliography and key publications

- The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project — engages Walter Benjamin, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Georges Bataille, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Baudelaire. - Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West — dialogues with Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard, Walt Disney, Hiroshima, and September 11 attacks. - Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History — links Hegel with the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture, C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, and Alexandre Dumas. - "Introduction" and essays on Walter Benjamin in collections alongside Bertolt Brecht, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Ernst Bloch. - Numerous articles in journals and edited volumes addressing visual culture, political theory, revolutionary movements, and critical theory, often citing Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Louis Althusser, and Jacques Derrida.

Category:Living people Category:American philosophers Category:20th-century philosophers Category:21st-century philosophers