Graduate Student Directory

Key D Macfarlane
  • Title
    • PhD Candidate
  • Division Humanities Division
  • Department
    • History of Consciousness Department
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Hours Tuesdays, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM in Oakes Cafe, or by appointment
  • Mail Stop History Of Consciousness

Research Interests

Phenomenology, Critical Theory, Philosophy of Mind, Political Philosophy, Consciousness, Space and Time

Biography, Education and Training

My research focuses on the relationship between conscious experience and politics, bridging the fields of phenomenology, critical theory, and philosophy of mind. My dissertation, Revolutionary Reduction, considers the historical and theoretical connections between Husserlian phenomenology and Marxism. I argue that the neglected tradition of Marxist phenomenology provides crucial critical resources for our moment of global crisis, particularly with regard to rethinking questions of self-consciousness, collective intentionality, and everyday life.

 

I also work on questions related to the politics and production of space, and have published articles on the political economy of waste in the US and global context, sanctuary space and refugee struggles in Europe, the biopolitics of noise in urban space, and the relationship between migration, borders, and the policing of “surplus populations.”

 

I am currently editing, with Dr. Margath Walker, a special issue in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space on the problem of space in the Frankfurt School. 

 

Education:

M.A., Geography, University of Washington

B.A., Philosophy and English, Colgate University

Selected Publications

Forthcoming: "Survivals of the Absolute: Lefebvre on Sedimentation and Abstraction," in Anthem Companion to Henri Lefebvre, eds. Tilman Schwarze and Matt Dawson.

 

"Sanctuary Space, Racialized Violence, and Memories of Resistance" (with Katharyne Mitchell), Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Vol. 112, No. 8, 2022, pp. 2360-2372.

 

“Capital and Space,” in Audrey Kobayashi (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd edition. vol. 2, Elsevier, 2020, pp. 1–7.

 

“Time, Waste, and the City: The Rise of the Environmental Industry,” Antipode, vol. 51, no. 1, 2019, pp. 225–247.

 

“Hamburg’s Spaces of Danger: Race, Violence, and Memory in a Contemporary Global City” (with Katharyne Mitchell), International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 43, no. 5, 2019, pp. 816–832.

 

“A Thousand CEOs: Relational Thought, Processual Space, and Deleuzian Ontology in Human Geography and Strategic Management,” Progress in Human Geography, vol. 41, no. 3, 2017, pp. 299–320.

 

Public Writing:

“The Rat Maze: Capitalism and Consciousness,” Blue Labyrinths, November 10, 2020.

  

The Greenhouse Effect,” Mute Magazine, February 4, 2018.

Selected Presentations

"Revolutionary Depth: Merleau-Ponty on Lived Space and Class Consciousness," 48th Annual Conference of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle, M.C. Dillon Memorial Lecture, Villanova University, Philadelphia, October 25, 2024.

 

"Residue and Revolution: Henri Lefebvre and the Explosion of Class Struggle," Radical Philosophy Association Conference, Salt Lake City, October 10, 2024.

 

"Subjectivity and Self-Estrangement: Enzo Paci on Marxism, Phenomenology, and the First Person," Copenhagen Summer School in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Cophenhagen, August 15, 2024.

 

“Residues of the Dialectic: Lefebvre on Sedimentation,” The American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Honolulu, April 20, 2024.

 

"Space and the Frankfurt School" (with Margath Walker), American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting, Portland March 22, 2024.

 

“Marxism and Lived Experience,” Historical Materialism Conference, London, November 10, 2023.

 

“The Problem of Marxist Phenomenology,” Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research, Summer School, Is There a Revolutionary Subject? Beirut, June 30, 2023.