People

Jasper Friedrich

Research Topic:

The Miserable is Political: A Critical Theory of Anger and Depression
AFFILIATION
Political Theory Network
College
Corpus Christi College
Course
DPhil Politics
supervisor

I am a DPhil student in political theory at Corpus Christi College and the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and teach undergraduate tutorials in Political Theory at Merton College and Somerville College.

My work is concerned with the politics of emotions, mental health, reconciliation and political apologies, as well as theories of power. I draw on a wide range of sources in my writings, including critical theory and continental political philosophy, but also sociological and psychological theory, cognitive science, sociolinguistics and analytic philosophy of language among other things. Currently, I am working on a DPhil thesis titled The Miserable is Political: A Critical Theory of Anger and Depression. It explores how emotional reactions to injustice and exploitation are increasingly depoliticised through a 'therapeutic' politics and makes an argument for why and how we should understand anger and depression as political emotions.

For my DPhil, I am a recipient of a Clarendon Scholarship and the Corpus Christi–A. E. Haigh Scholarship. Previously, I completed an MSc in Political Theory Research at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, with a thesis on the politics of mental health and generous funding from an Oxford–Trygfonden Scholarship. Before that, I studied International Relations and Linguistics at the University of Aberdeen and wrote an undergraduate thesis on state apologies for historical injustices.

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles

J. Friedrich (forthcoming). ‘Philosophy from the Texture of Everyday Life: The Critical-Analytic Methods of Foucault and J. L. Austin’. Foucault Studies.

J. Friedrich (2022). 'Anger and Apology, Recognition and Reconciliation: Managing Emotions in the Wake of Injustice'. Global Studies Quarterly  2(2): ksac023 [open access].

J. Friedrich (2022). ‘Settling Accounts at the End of History: A Nonideal Approach to State Apologies’. Political Theory 50(5): 700-722. View PDF of ‘Settling Accounts at the End of History: A Nonideal Approach to State Apologies' [open access]

J. Friedrich and R. Shanks (2021). ‘“The Prison of the Body”: School Uniforms between Discipline and Governmentality’. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. Online first. Also available in PDF [open access].

M. Zoodsma, J. Shaafsma, T. Sagherian-Dickey and J. Friedrich. (2021) ‘These are not Just Words: A Cross-National Comparative Study of the Content of Political Apologies’. International Review of Social Psychology 34(1) [open access].

Book reviews

J. Friedrich (2022). Review of S. Elden, The Early Foucault (Cambridge: Polity, 2021). Foucault Studies 32, pp. 109-113 [open access].

J. Friedrich (2021). Review of M. Dean & D. Zamora, The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution (London: Verso, 2021). Foucault Studies 31, pp. 257-261. View PDF of The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution [open access].