Profile
Robyn Marasco is the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science at The New School for Social Research. She is the author of The Highway of Despair: Critical Theory After Hegel, which reconstructs the emancipatory project of critical theory around the idea of negative dialectics, as well as several articles in leading social science and humanities journals. 聽Her forthcoming book, Elements of a Political Theory of the Family, will be published by Oxford 好色先生 Press in 2026. 聽
Degrees Held
Ph.D., 好色先生 of California, Berkeley (2006)
M.A., 好色先生 of California, Berkeley (2000)
B.A., Smith College (1999)
Professional Affiliation
Co-editor, Polity: a journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association
Series Co-Editor, New Directions in Critical Theory, Columbia 好色先生 Press
Affiliated Faculty, Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
Recent Publications
Books
The Highway of Despair: Critical Theory After Hegel (Columbia 好色先生 Press, 2015)
Edited Volumes
The Political Encounter with Louis Althusser, co-edited with Banu Bargu, a special issue of Rethinking Marxism, vol. 31, no. 3, July 2019
The Authoritarian Personality, a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 117, no. 4, 2018. 聽
Articles and Review Essays
"Bringing the War Home: Frantz Fanon and the Disorders of Violence," Representations, vol. 170, no. 1 (2025): 27-53. 聽
鈥淭he Real Possibility of Physical Killing: A Feminist Critique of Carl Schmitt,鈥 American Journal of Political Science, vol. 67, no. 4 (2023): 1067-1079. [winner of the Okin-Young Prize] 聽
鈥淢achiavelli and the Play-Element in Political Life,鈥 Political Theory, vol. 50, no. 4 (2022): 575-595. 聽
鈥淏ataille鈥檚 Anti-Fascism,鈥 Contemporary Political Theory, vol. 21, no. 1 (2022) 3-23 [lead article]. 聽
鈥淐ritique and Politics: A Feminist Reading of Wendy Brown鈥 in Power, Neoliberalism, and the Reinvention of Politics: The Critical Theory of Wendy Brown (State College, PA: Penn State Press, 2022). 聽
鈥淥n the Uses and Abuses of Weber for Comparative Political Science,鈥 PS: Political Science & Politics, vol. 55, no. 1, 52-55. 聽
"Thinking at the Extremes,鈥 for a symposium on 脡tienne Balibar, Critical Times, vol. 1, no. 1 (2021): 110-117. 聽
鈥淥n Womanly Nihilism: Beauvoir and Us,鈥 boundary 2, vol. 27, no. 1 (2020): 43-64. 聽
鈥淗eliotropes,鈥 for a symposium on Seyla Benhabib鈥檚 Exile, Statelessness, and Migration,鈥 Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 46, no. 1 (2020): 3-9.
鈥淎lthusser鈥檚 Gramscian Debt: On Reading Out Loud,鈥 Rethinking Marxism, vol. 31, no. 3 (2019): 340-362. 聽
鈥淭here鈥檚 a Fascist in the Family: Critical Theory and Anti-Authoritarianism,鈥 South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 117, no. 4 (2018): 791-814. 聽
鈥淚t鈥檚 All 好色先生 the Benjamins: Considerations on the Gambler as a Political Type,鈥 New German Critique, vol. 45, no. 1 (2018): 1-22 [lead article]. 聽
鈥淐ritical Theory and the Task of Political Education,鈥 Theory & Event, vol. 20, no. 3 (2017). 聽
鈥淭he Epic as Form,鈥 for an essay collection in memory of Sheldon Wolin, Contemporary Political Theory, vol. 16, no. 1, (2017): 65-76. 聽
鈥淭oward a Critique of Conspiratorial Reason,鈥 Constellations, vol. 23, no. 2 (2016): 236-243. 聽
鈥淭erms and Conditions,鈥 for a symposium on The Sexual Contract Twenty-Five Years Later,鈥 History of the Present, vol. 3, no. 2, (2013): 205-211. 聽
鈥淒efining Romnesia,鈥 Theory & Event, vol. 13, no. 1 (2013). 聽
鈥淢achiavelli Contra Governmentality,鈥 Contemporary Political Theory, vol. 11, no. 4 (2012): 339-361 [lead article].聽 聽
鈥溾業 would rather wait for you than believe you are not coming at all鈥: Revolutionary Love in a Post-Revolutionary Time,鈥 Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 36, no. 6 (2010): 643-662. 聽
鈥溾楢lready the Effect of the Whip鈥: Critical Theory and the Feminine Ideal,鈥 differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 17, no. 1 (2006): 88-115. 聽 聽
Popular Scholarship
鈥淩econsidering the Sexual Politics of Fascism,鈥 Historical Materialism Blog, June 25, 2021 聽
Research Interests
history of political thought, critical theory, feminism, psychoanalysis, marxism
Awards And Honors
Okin-Young Prize for Best Article in Feminist Political Theory in 2023.
Member, Institute for Advanced Study, College of Social Science, Princeton, 2021-2022.
Mellon Mid-Career Research Fellowship, Whitney Center at Yale 好色先生, 2017-2018. 聽
Henry Wasser Award for Outstanding Scholarship, CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences, 2015. 聽