Research Associate
Sami Khatib specializes on Critical Theory with interdisciplinary research interests in Philosophy, Aesthetic Theory, Visual Arts, Media Theory, and Cultural Studies. He joined the OIB from October 2023 to November 2024. Prior appointments include guest professorships at the HfG Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (2021-23) and the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg (2020-21), a professorship of Visual Arts at the American University in Cairo (2019-20), a postdoctoral fellowship at the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique” at Leuphana University Lüneburg (2017-18), a visiting professorship of philosophy and aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2017), a visiting professorship at the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut (2016-17), and a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Arts and Humanities at the American University of Beirut (2015-16). He holds an MA degree in Media Studies and Philosophy (2004) and a PhD degree in Media Studies (2013) from Freie Universität Berlin. His publications include a co-editorship of the volume “Critique: The Stakes of Form” (Zürich, Berlin: Diaphanes, 2020) and authorship of the book “Teleologie ohne Endzweck: Walter Benjamins Ent-stellung des Messianischen” [“Teleology without End.” Walter Benjamin’s Dislocation of the Messianic] (2013)
In recent years, there has been a new interest in research and education in Critical Theory in and from the Global South. At a time when the notion of critique came under attack in Western academia (Anker/Felski 2017; Asad et al. 2009, Latour 2004), be it for its European Enlightenment legacy, anthropocentric agency or its turn towards a neoliberal logic of self-improvement and self-care, the perspective and scope of Critical Theory has broadened. Its globalization points beyond the binary of Western/non-Western thought.
Current Publication Projects
Book: Realabstraktion: Die Geburt der Ästhetik aus dem Geiste des Kapitalismus [working title, “Real Abstraction: The Birth of Aesthetics from the Spirit of Capitalism”], projected for 2024.
Jan Sieber: Das ästhetisch Unbewusste [The Aesthetic Unconscious], eds. Sami Khatib, Jenny Nachtigall, Samo Tomšič, Vienna: Turia + Kant, forthcoming 2024.
Irving Wohlfarth: Collected Essays on Walter Benjamin [working title], eds. Sami Khatib, Jan Sieber (†), vol. 1: “Always radical, never consistent,” London: Verso, forthcoming 2024.
Book
“Teleologie ohne Endzweck.” Walter Benjamins Ent-stellung des Messianischen [“Teleology without End”: Walter Benjamin’s Dislocation of the Messianic], Marburg: Tectum 2013, URL .
Co-Edited Volumes
Critique: The Stakes of Form, eds. Sami R. Khatib, Holger Kuhn, Oona Lochner, Isabel Mehl, Beate Söntgen, Zürich, Berlin: Diaphanes, 2020.
Journal Articles (peer review)
“Aesthetics of the ‘Sensuous Supra-Sensuous’,” Selva, Fall 2022, issue 4, URL .
“Palestine and its German Discontents,” Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 20, Issue 2: The JVC Palestine Portfolio, Sept. 2021, 238-241.
“Art and Scholarship in Moments of Historical Danger,” Roundtable contribution in Vardan Azatyan, Frederic J. Schwartz, T. J. Clark, Sami Khatib, Miško Šuvaković, Ursula Frohne; Art and Scholarship in Moments of Historical Danger, ARTMargins 2021; 10 (3), 177-181, URL .
“The Drive of Capital: Of Monsters, Vampires and Zombies,” in Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power, Special issue “Im/Possibility: On the Production, Distribution, and Articulation of the Possible and the Impossible,” ed. Dennis Büscher-Ulbrich et al. (Feb. 2021), 101-113, URL .
“What Does Art Exhibit? Remarks on ‘Exhibition Value’,” in “Exhibiting Matters,” eds. Milica Tomić and Dubravka Sekulić, GAM, 2018, Vol. 14, 54-59, URL .
“Realism Today?” roundtable discussion, ed. Octavian Eşanu, in ARTMargins, 2018, Vol. 7, No. 1, 58-82.
“Barbaric Salvage: Benjamin and the Dialectics of Destruction,” special issue on “Barbarisms,” parallax, 2018, Vol. 24, No. 2, 135-158, URL .
“Practice Makes Perfect. On Undoing Bourgeois Pedagogy,” special issue on “Walter Benjamin, Pedagogy and the Politics of Youth,” eds. Matthew Charles and Howard Eiland, boundary 2, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2018, 63-86, URL
“Response to ‘Art, Society/Text: A Few Remarks on the Current Relations of the Class Struggle in the Fields of Literary Production and Literary Ideologies’, ed. Karen Benezra, ARTMargins, 2017, Vol. 6, No. 3, 50-81.
“Where the Past Was, There History Shall Be: Benjamin, Marx, and the ‘Tradition of the Oppressed’,” special issue on Walter Benjamin: “Discontinuous Infinities,” eds. Jan Sieber and Sebastian Truskolaski, Anthropology & Materialism. A Journal of Social Research, 1/2017, URL .
“Melancholia and Destruction: Brushing Walter Benjamin’s ‘Angel of History’ Against the Grain”, special issue “Politics and Melancholia”, eds. Dominiek Hoens and Justin Clemens, Crisis and Critique, vol. 3, issue 2, September 2016, 20-39, URL .
“Politics of ‘Pure Means’: Walter Benjamin on Divine Violence,” in Black Box: A Record of the Catastrophe, PM Press, Vol. 1, Dec. 2015, 87-103.
“Messianisches Medium. Benjamins Sprachpolitik,” in Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, ed. Tamara Tagliacozzo, Vol. 8, N. 2: “Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and Language,” Dec. 2014, 155-170, URL .
“Walter Benjamin and the Subject of Historical Cognition,” special issue “Walter Benjamin Unbound,” eds. Alexander Gelley, Ilka Kressner and Michael G. Levine, Annals of Scholarship, Vol. 21.1, 2015, 23-42, URL .
“‘To Win the Energies of Intoxication for the Revolution’: Body Politics, Community, and Profane Illumination,” Anthropology & Materialism. A Journal of Social Research, 2/2014: “The Persistence of Myth,” URL .
“A Non-Nullified Nothingness: Walter Benjamin and the Messianic,” Stasis. Journal in Social and Political Theory, First Issue: “Politics of Negativity,” Fall 2013, 82-108, URL .
“The Messianic Without Messianism. Walter Benjamin's Materialist Theology,” Anthropology & Materialism. A Journal of Social Research, 1/2013: “Across the Fields,” UR L (Hebrew trans. in Jews and Revolutions, eds. Moshe Zuckermann and Rachel Livne-Freudenthal, Hebrew trans. Gal Hertz, Chidushim – Studies in the History of German and Central European Jewry, special issue, 18, 2016, 237-248 ] ).
“The Time of Capital and the Messianicity of Time: Marx with Benjamin,” Studies in Social and Political Thought, Vol. 20, Winter 2012/13, Sussex, 46-69, URL .
Book Chapters
“Beyond Mysticism and the Apocalypse: Benjamin’s Dislocation of the Messianic,” in: Benjamin and Political Theology, eds. Brendan Moran and Paula Schwebel, London: Bloomsbury, 2024 (forthcoming).
“Singularitätseffekte,“ Historiker Streiten, Susan Neiman and Michael Wildt (eds.), Berlin: Ullstein, Propyläen, 2022, 59-74.
“The Perpetual Recurrence of Primitive Accumulation: Reading Karl Marx with Rosa Luxemburg,” in: Beyond Repair, ed. Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Ernest Ah, Berlin: Archive Books, 2020.
“Marx, Real Abstraction and the Question of Form,” in: Critique: The Stakes of Form, eds. Sami R. Khatib, Holger Kuhn, Oona Lochner, Isabel Mehl, Beate Söntgen, Zürich, Berlin: Diaphanes, 2020, 69-92.
“How to Exhibit the Spatialization of History?,” in Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibition, ed. Tristan Garcia, Vincent Normand, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019, 259-268.
“‘Sinnlich übersinnlich’”: Die Ästhetik der Realabstraktion,” in Marx und die Krise, eds. Mauro Ponzi, Altea Koenig, Würzburg: Königshausen u. Neumann, 2019, 73-95, URL .
“Karl Marx. Mit Benjamin für Marx, mit Marx für Benjamin,” in Entwendungen – Walter Benjamin und seine Quellen, eds. Jessica Nitsche, Nadine Werner, München: Fink, 2019, 321-347, URL .
“Walter Benjamin’s Figures of De-Figuration: The Barbarian, the Destructive Character, and the Monster,” in Benjamin’s Figures - Dialogues on the Vocation of the Humanities, eds. Madeleine Kasten, Rico Sneller, Gerard Visser, Nordhausen: Bautz, 2018, 71-92.
“Chapter 37: Society and Violence,” in Sage Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Vol. 2, eds. Werner Bonefeld, Beverley Best, Chris O’Kane, Newbury Park: Sage, 2018, 607-624, URL .
“‘Sensuous Supra-Sensuous’. The Aesthetics of Real Abstraction,” in Aesthetic Marx, eds. Samir Gandesha and Johan F. Hartle, London: Bloomsbury, 2017, 49-72, URL .
La desfiguración mesiánica. Walter Benjamin y Franz Kafka,” Spanish trans. Nicolás García, in Franz Kafka: culpa, ley y soberanía, eds. Esteban González Jiménez, Medellín: Editorial de la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, 2017, 197-219.
“No Future: The Space of Capital and the Time of Dying”, in Former West: Art and the Contemporary after 1989, eds. Maria Hlavajova and Simon Sheikh, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017, 639-652, URL (German trans. Sami Khatib (with Kerstin Schoof): “No Future: Der Raum des Kapitals und die Zeit des Sterbens,” jour fixe initiative Frankfurt (ed.): Die Zukunft des Fortschritts, Münster: edition assemblage, 2022, 71-87); updated republication, Umbau journal, 2023, issue 2: Fragile Futures, URL .
“Towards a Politics of ‘Pure Means’: Walter Benjamin and the Question of Violence,” in Conflicto armado, justicia y memoria, Tomo 1: “Teoría crítica de la violencia y prácticas de memoria y resistencia,” ed. Enan Enrique Arrieta Burgos, Medellín: Editorial de la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, 2016, 41-65, URL (Turkish trans. Mehmet Odabaşı:“ 'Saf Araçlar' Politikasına Doğru: Walter Benjamin ve Şiddet Sorunu”, Hukuk Kritik, Jan. 2022, URL ; Portuguese trans. Glenda Vicenzi: “Para uma política dos “meios puros”: Walter Benjamin e a questão da violência,” in Revista Direito e Práxis, v. 11, n. 3, 2020, 1902-1933; Slovenian trans. Samo Tomšič: “Politika čistega sredstva – k Benjaminovi teoriji nasilja”, in Problemi. Journal for Psychoanalytic Theory and Philosophy, 214, 7-8/13 (2013), 85-124).
“Medio messianico. La politica della lingua in Benjamin,” Italian trans. Stefano Marchesoni, in Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem e il linguaggio, eds. Tamara Tagliacozzo, Milano, Udine: Mimesis Edizioni, 2016, 17-38.
“Die Armut des Denkens. Anmerkungen zu Benjamin und Brecht,” in “Um Abschied geht es ja nun...” Festschrift für Hermann Haarmann, Marburg: Tectum, 2015, 41-64.
“Walter Benjamins ‘trans-materialistischer’ Materialismus. Ein Postskriptum zur Adorno-Benjamin-Debatte der 1930er Jahre,” in Am Kreuzweg von Magie und Positivismus. Walter Benjamin und die Anthropologie, eds. Carolin Duttlinger et al., Freiburg: Rombach, 2012, 149-178.
“Walter Benjamin und Karl Marx. Der ‘Begriff der Geschichte’ und die ‘Zeit des Kapitals’,” in Der sich selbst entfremdete und wiedergefundene Marx, eds. Helmut Lethen et al., München: Fink, 2010, 227-244.
“Geschichte, Retroaktivität, Text – Erkundungen zum ‘Begriff der Geschichte’ mit Walter Benjamin und Slavoj Zizek,” in Retrospektivität und Retroaktivität. Erzählen - Geschichte - Wahrheit, ed. Marcus A. Born, Würzburg: Königshausen u. Neumann, 2009, 235-249.
Reviews (Selection)
“Alexander Gelley. Benjamin’s Passages –Dreaming, Awakening”, in The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, New York: Fordham UP, Spring 2016, vol. 91:2, 199-206.
“Jennings, Michael W.; Eiland, Howard: Walter Benjamin. A Critical Life”, in The New Inquiry (April 2014), URL .
“Heinz Brüggemann, Günter Oesterle (eds.): Walter Benjamin und die romantische Moderne” published on the website of the International Walter Benjamin Society, Jan. 2010, URL .
“Falko Schmieder: Ludwig Feuerbach und der Eingang der klassischen Fotografie. Zum Verhältnis von anthropologischem und Historischem Materialismus,” in Weimarer Beiträge, 4/2007, 627-631.
Essays in Catalogues
“Aura, or On Photographic Drive,” in Jaka Babnik, Pygmalions, Jakopic Gallery, City Museum, Ljubljana, 2019.
“Dialektik der Faltung,” in Anne Gathmann, Statik der Resonanz, Elisabethkirche Kassel, exhibition on the occasion of documenta 14, Kassel, 2017.
“Undead Labour: Un/Spinning the Time of Real Abstraction,” in The Economy is Spinning, ed. Kris Dittel, OMP 132, Eindhoven, Feb. 2017, 48-59.
“This is the Reproducibility of Singular Time,” in This is the Time. This is The Record of the Time, eds. Angela Harutyunyan and Nat Muller, Beirut: AUB Press 2016, 40-49.
“Fugues of Time,” in Rapture, part 2/3, ed. Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), publication produced on the occasion of Camille Norment’s participation at La Biennale di Venezia for Art in 2015, Oslo, 2016, 53-83.
