Purpose

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

ACADEMIC PLANS I am interested in graduate study in the field of political theory because I PAST WORK In my past work, I have sought to demonstrate the immense potential of Lacanian thought to invigorate the consideration of the political. I have developed a strong theoretical background in Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, and have sought to incorporate the specific critical and historical analyses of modernity into my approach political theory. My interest in developing an approach to political theory informed by the specific critical and historical analytical tools In my past work, I political theory POST-STRUCTURALISM My past work has explored the implications of post-structuralist theory for politics. I have sought to apply post-structuralist thinking to central conceptual categories in politics, showing how these might be rethought and taken in new directions. I believe that a poststructuralist approach can shed new light on topics such as liberalism, rights, power, idelogy, ethics, subjectivity, sovereignty, violence, and collective identity. I explore how poststurcturalist theoretical perspectives allow an interrogation of the discursive and conceptual limits of these ideas, revealing their heterogenities, paradoxes and contradictions, adn thus showing how they might be reinterpreted. DEMOCRATIC THEORY As an undergraduate student, I was anxious to engage with advanced work in political theory. In my sophomore year, I enrolled in a graduate-level seminar on democratic theory. I began to study modern and contemporary democratic theory in my undergraduate studies at Cornell University. In my sophomore year, I was anxious to engage with more advanced work in political theory and thus chose to enroll in a graduate seminar on democratic theory. In this field, my particular interests range from modern and contemporary democratic theory and the history of the liberal and republican traditions (and their critics) to critical theory, continental philosophy, and post-Marxist, post-structuralist, and (Lacanian) psychoanalytic theories, etc. I am particularly interested in exploring how political theorists might employ the theoretical insights of such major thinkers as Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, BACKGROUND MARX, NIETZSCHE, AND FREUD Through a Ph.D. program in Political Theory, I plan to explore further the issues that my undergraduate studies have explored. In this program, I hope to draw from my background in both nineteenth and twentieth century critical and continental thought (including post-Marxist, post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theory) in developing new approaches to urgent topics confronting political theory today. These are the issues that I hope to address in my graduate studies at Berkeley. RESEARCH PLANS In my work, I have tried to demonstrate how a political theorist might employ the insights of thinkers such as Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud in order to interrogate critically formations of power, political identity, citizenship and political subjectivities in contemporary liberal democracies. I believe that one can employ the insights of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud t interrogate critically formations of power, political identity, citizenship, and political subjectivity in contemporary liberal democracies. SOVEREIGNTY My senir thesis focuses on the relationship of political sovereignty to global capital and other transnational forces My most recent research focuses on the concept of political sovereignty as it is connected to globalization and other transnational forces. SENIOR THESIS I am particularly interested in drawing from the insights of contemporary critical and continental theory in order to approach urgent topics confronting political theory today. such as sovereignty, formations of power, political identity, citizenship and political subjectivities My senior thesis focuses on key themes in political theology, such as sovereignty and the state of exception, and engages with contemporary thinkers, such as Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek. In my senior thesis, I draw from contemporary thinkers in order to approach the issues of sovereignty and the relation between law and violence (especially with regard to the foundation and preservation of the former) which I believe are ACADEMIC GOALS Ultimately, I hope to achieve an academic position in a Political Science department, where I will conduct research and teach (politics) at a college level. UNIVERSITY FIT The Ph.D. program at Berkeley is uniquely equipped to guide me toward these objectives.