Profile

Anita Chari is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, and a political theorist, somatic practitioner, and writer. Her research focuses on the Frankfurt School, Western Marxism, and the relationship between Critical Theory, contemporary art, and embodied practices. Her current book manuscript on the conceptual artist, Claire Fontaine, “But My Love Doesn’t Die”: Claire Fontaine and the Aesthetics and Politics of Critical Art has emerged from a decade-long conversation with the artist, which began with her first monograph, A Political Economy of the Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique (Columbia University Press, 2015). Her interdisciplinary scholarly research explores the political significance of embodiment practices for our times. Her research on embodied practices and political theory has appeared in venues including Contemporanea: A Glossary of the XXI Century (MIT Press, forthcoming, 2024), Bodies in Politics: Explorations in Somaesthetics and Somapower (Brill, forthcoming, 2024), Dispositif: A Cartography (MIT Press, 2023), Theory and Event, New Political Science, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Contemporary Political Theory, and Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond (Routledge, 2020). Her art criticism and experimental writing has appeared in venues including: Flash Art, Claire Fontaine: Newsfloor (Walter König, 2020), The Hysterical Material (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Twentieth Century Hustlers (Cleveland Museum of Art, 2020), May Revue, Something Other than Life Death (Catalyst, 2018), Critical Bastards, and Bailliwik. She is co-founder of Embodying Your Curriculum™, an organization that supports academics, educators, and social justice leaders to bring embodiment practices into higher education. You can contact her at anitac@uoregon.edu.