Department of Global Political Studies (GPS)
Global Political Studies unit 2
Presentation
Jon Wittrock is Doctor of Political and Social Sciences and Associate Professor (Docent) in political science. He completed his PhD at the European University Institute and has been active as a researcher and teacher at several universities, in Sweden and abroad. His research focuses on human rights and political philosophy, with a particular emphasis on the potential implications of investigating the empirical and conceptual borderlands between the religious and the secular, as well as on how different dimensions of autonomy do and may impact on human rights.
Selected publications
"All that is Holy: The Role of Religion in Postcapitalist Communities" Rethinking Marxism 32:4 2020
"Constituent Power and Constitutive Exceptions: Carl Schmitt, Populism and the Consummation of Secularisation" in Matilda Arvidsson; Leila Brännström; Panu Minkkinen (eds.) Constituent Power: Law, Popular Rule and Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2020.
Contemporary Democracy and the Sacred: Rights, Religion and Ideology. London: Bloomsbury 2018.
Which Way I Flie: Reforming Nihilism in the Anthropocene in Richard Polt & Jon Wittrock (eds.) The Task of Philosophy in the Anthropocene. London/New York: Rowman & Littlefield 2018.
"The EU as a ‘Large Space’? Carl Schmitt and the Contemporary Dilemmas of Political Rituals and Cultural Borders" in Mats Andrén; Thomas Lindkvist; Ingmar Söhrman; Katharina Vajta (eds.) Cultural Borders of Europe: Narratives, Concepts and Practices in the Present and the Past. New York/Oxford: Berghahn 2017.
"Sacred Nature and the Nature of the Sacred: Rethinking the Sacred in the Anthropocene" Telos 177 2016.
"Processes of Order and the Concreteness of the Sacred: On the Contemporary Relevance of Carl Schmitt's Critique of Nihilism" in Matilda Arvidsson; Leila Brännström; Panu Minkkinen (eds.) The Contemporary Relevance of Carl Schmitt: Law, Politics, Theology. New York: Routledge 2015.
"Heidegger within the Boundaries of Mere Reason? 'Nihilism' as a Contemporary Critical Narrative" in Sven Eliaeson; Lyudmila Harutyunyan; Larissa Titarenko (eds.) After the Soviet Empire: Legacies and Pathways. Leiden/Boston: Brill 2015.
"Nihilism and the Resurrection of Political Space: Hannah Arendt's Utopia?" in Elena Namli; Jayne Svenungsson; Alana Vincent (eds.) Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi 2014.