Home
FUTURE STUDENTS ask.UWindsor SUPPORT UWINDSOR

Dr. Deborah Cook (1954-2020)

City view of ParisI received my doctorate from Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne in 1985. In Paris, I had the opportunity to take courses with Jacques Derrida at the École Normale, and Michel Foucault at the Collège de France. Upon my return to Canada, I began to study Foucault’s work seriously. For the next five years, I led a peripatetic life as a wandering scholar, teaching (among other places) at Queen’s University and the University of Victoria. My research on Foucault during this period served as the basis for my first book: The Turn Towards Subjectivity: Michel Foucault’s Legacy (Peter Lang, 1993).

I was given a tenure-track position at the University of Windsor in 1989. In 1993, I was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor. Early in the nineties, I began to turn my attention to the work of Theodor W. Adorno. For more than two years I learned German while translating his work. Two translations were published in Telos in the mid-nineties: "Theory of Pseudo-Culture" and (a collaborative translation) "On Tradition." My first book on Adorno, The Culture Industry Revisited: Theodor W. Adorno on Mass Culture (Rowman and Littlefield) appeared in 1996. Thereafter, I spent a few years studying the phenomenon of political violence with the intention of writing a book. An article on the topic appeared in Social Justice, even as I continued to study Adorno’s work.

I was granted full professorship in 2000. At that time, I abandoned the project on political violence and began writing Adorno, Habermas, and the Search for a Rational Society (Routledge, 2004) To date, I have published more than thirty articles on Adorno; five of these are reprinted in anthologies. A book I edited, Theodor Adorno: Key Concepts, published by Acumen, appeared in 2008. Adorno on Nature was also published by Acumen in 2011. Dr. Cook passed away October 2022.

Dr. Cook's CV in Word .doc format

Fall Courses:

  • Philosophy and Human Nature (PHIL 1120)
  • Recent German Philosophy (PHIL 4700/5700)

Winter Courses:

  • Existentialism (PHIL 2520)
  • Hegel and German Idealism 

Books (authored and edited):

  • Adorno on Nature (Stocksfield, England: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2011) pp. ix-198.
  • Theodor Adorno: Key Concepts, ed. Deborah Cook, (Stocksfield, England: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2008) pp. viii-211.
  • Adorno, Habermas, and the Search for a Rational Society (London and New York: Routledge, 2004) pp. xii-228.
  • The Culture Industry Revisited: Theodor W. Adorno on Mass Culture (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996) pp. xiv-190.
  • The Subject Finds a Voice: Foucault’s Turn Toward Subjectivity (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1993) pp. xi–151.

Chapters in books:

  • “The Rise and Decline of the Individual: Exit Hamlet, Enter Hamm,” Individualism: The Cultural Logic of Modernity, ed. Zubin Meer, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield) forthcoming.
  • “Theodor W. Adorno,” History of Continental Philosophy, ed. Alan Schrift, Vol. 5: Critical Theory to Structuralism: Philosophy, Politics, and the Human Sciences, ed. David Ingram, (Chesholm, England: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2010), pp. 81-104.
  • “Adorno: An Introduction,” Theodor Adorno: Key Concepts, ed. Deborah Cook, (Stocksfield, England: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2008) pp. 3-19.
  • “Adorno: Influences and Impact,” Theodor Adorno: Key Concepts, ed. Deborah Cook, (Stocksfield, England: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2008) pp. 21-37.
  • “The Sundered Totality: Adorno’s Freudo-Marxism,” Theodor Adorno, Part IV: Reason, Domination and the Subject, ed. James Schmidt, (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2007) pp. 371-96. [Reprint]
  • “Adorno, Ideology and Ideology Critique,” Theodor Adorno: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Vol. II, ed. Simon Jarvis, (London and New York: Routledge, 2007) pp. 294-311. [Reprint]
  • “Reassessing the Culture Industry,” Theodor Adorno: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Vol. II, ed. Simon Jarvis, (London and New York: Routledge, 2007) pp. 312-41. [Reprint]
  • “From the Actual to the Possible: Nonidentity Thinking,” Adorno and the Need in Thinking: New Critical Essays, eds. Donald Burke, et al., (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: The University of Toronto Press, 2007) pp. 163-80. [Reprint]
  • “Adorno and Habermas on the Human Condition,” Theodor W. Adorno, Vol. I: Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theory, ed. Gerard Delanty, (London, Thousand Oaks, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004) pp. 135-59. [Reprint]
  • “Adorno on Late Capitalism: Totalitarianism and the Welfare State,” Theodor W. Adorno, Vol. III: Social Theory and the Critique of Modernity, ed. Gerard Delanty, (London, Thousand Oaks, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004) pp. 277-294. [Reprint]
  • “Adorno on Mass Societies,” Theodor W. Adorno, Vol. III: Social Theory and the Critique of Modernity, ed. Gerard Delanty, (London, Thousand Oaks, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004) pp. 295-315. [Reprint]
  • “Foucault e il Corpo,” Michel Foucault e il Divenire Donna, eds. S. Vaccaro and M. Coglitore, trans. unknown, (Milan: Collana Mimesis, 1997) pp. 79-88.
  • “Symbolic Exchange in Hyperreality,” Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, ed. Douglas Kellner, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994) pp. 150-67.
  • “Rereading Gadamer: A Response to James Risser,” Gadamer and Hermeneutics, ed. Hugh Silverman, (New York: Routledge, 1991) pp. 106-16.

Articles in print:

  • “The One and the Many: Revisioning Adorno’s Critique of Western Reason,” Studies in Social and Political Thought 18 (Winter 2010) pp. 30-6.
  • “Commentary on Michael Zimmerman’s ‘Religious Motifs in Technological Posthumanism’,” Western Humanities Review: Western Humanities Alliance Symposium, Special Issue on Nature, Culture, Technology, Vol. LXIII, no. 3 (Fall, 2009) pp. 88-95.
  • “Adorno’s Endgame,” Philosophy Today 52, no. 2 (2008) pp. 173-87.
  • “Thought Thinking Itself,” The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 38, no. 3 (2007) pp. 229-47.
  • “Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw,” Continental Philosophy Review, (March, 2007), DOI: 10.1007/s11007-006-9034-1 (24 pages).
  • “Adorno’s Critical Materialism,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 32, no. 6 (2006), pp. 719-37.
  • “Nature becoming Conscious of Itself: Adorno on Self-Reflection,” Philosophy Today 50, no. 3/5 (Fall 2006) pp. 296-306.
  • “Staying Alive: Critical Perspectives on Self-Preservation,” Rethinking Marxism 18, no. 3 (July 2006) pp. 433-47.
  • “The Sundered Totality of System and Lifeworld,” Historical Materialism 13, no. 4 (2005) pp. 55-78.
  • “From the Actual to the Possible: Non-identity Thinking,” Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 12, no. 1 (2005) pp. 21-35.
  • “Ein reaktionäres Schwein? Political Activism and Prospects for Change in Adorno,” Revue internationale de Philosophie 1, no. 227 (2004) pp. 47-67.
  • “A Response to Finlayson,” Historical Materialism 11, no. 2 (2003) pp. 189-98.
  • “Legitimacy and Political Violence: A Habermasian Perspective,” Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order 30, no. 3 (2003) pp. 108-26.
  • “Adorno and Habermas on the Human Condition,” The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 33, no. 3 (2002) pp. 236-59.
  • “Communication in Constellation: Adorno and Habermas on Communicative Practices under Late Capitalism,” Philosophy Today 46, no. 1 (Winter 2002) pp. 41-59.
  • “The Talking Cure in Habermas’s Republic,” New Left Review 12 (November-December, 2001) pp. 135-51.
  • “Habermas on Reason and Revolution,” Continental Philosophy Review 34 (2001) pp. 321-38.
  • “Critical Perspectives on Solidarity,” Rethinking Marxism 13, no. 2 (Summer 2001) pp. 92-108
  • “The Two Faces of Liberal Democracy in Habermas,” Philosophy Today 45, no. 1 (Spring 2001) pp. 95-104.
  • “Adorno on Mass Societies,” Journal of Social Philosophy 32, no. 1 (Spring 2001) pp. 35-52.
  • “Adorno, Ideology, and Ideology Critique,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 27, no. 1 (2001) pp. 1-20.
  • “Critical Stratagems in Adorno and Habermas: Theories of Ideology and the Ideology of Theory,” Historical Materialism 6 (Summer 2000) pp. 67-87.
  • “Adorno on Late Capitalism: Totalitarianism and the Welfare State,” Radical Philosophy 89 (May-June 1998) pp. 16-26.
  • “The Rhetoric of Protest: Adorno on the Liberal Democratic Tradition,” Rethinking Marxism 9, no. 1 (Spring 1996-97) pp. 58-74.
  • “Some Notes on the Human Condition at the End of the Millennium: A Response to Gwynne Dyer,” Dianoia 5, no. 1 (Spring 1996) pp. 9-16.
  • “The Sundered Totality: Adorno’s Freudo-Marxism,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 25, no. 2 (June 1995) pp. 191-215.
  • “Domination and Enlightenment: The Limits of Manipulation,” The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 26, no. 1 (January 1995) pp. 17-26.
  • “Tradition and Critique,” Telos 94 (Winter 1992) pp. 30-6.
  • “Ruses de Guerre: Baudrillard and Fiske on Media Reception,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 22, no. 2 (1992) pp. 227-38.
  • “Umbrellas, Laundry Bills and Resistance: The Place of Foucault’s Interviews in his Corpus,” Clio 21, no. 2 (1992) pp. 145-55.
  • “Amor Fati and the Spirit of the Lion,” Joyful Wisdom, eds. M. Zlomkslic, Gerard Grand, David Goicoechea, (St. Catherine’s, Ont.: Joyful Wisdom Press, 1991) pp. 95-103.
  • “History as Fiction: Foucault’s Politics of Truth,” The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 22, no. 3 (1991) pp. 139-47.
  • “Nietzsche and Foucault on Ursprung and Genealogy,” Clio 19, no. 4 (1990) pp. 299-309.
  • “Madness and the Cogito: Derrida’s Critique of Folie et Déraison,” The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 21, no. 2 (1990) pp. 164-73.
  • “Remapping Modernity,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 30, no. 1 (1990) pp. 35-45.
  • “Michel Foucault: Rebel with a Cause,” in The Subject in Postmodernism, (Ljubljana: Aesthetics Society, 1989) pp. 46-65.
  • “Nietzsche, Foucault, Tragedy,” Philosophy and Literature 13, no. 1 (1989) pp. 140-50.
  • “In Vino Metaphora,” Vestnik 9, no. 1 (1988) pp. 173-9.
  • “Reading for Pleasure,” Poetics Today 8, nos. 3-4 (1987) pp. 557-63.
  • “Telesprache,” Philosophy and Literature 11, no. 2 (1987) pp. 292-300.
  • “The Limit of Histories: Michel Foucault’s Notion of Partage,” The Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 11, no. 3 (1987) pp. 46-55.
  • “The Turn Towards Subjectivity: Michel Foucault’s Legacy,” The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 18, no. 3 (1987) pp. 215-25.
  • “‘Psychoanalysis and Telepathy’,” International Review of Psychoanalysis 14, no. 3 (1987) pp. 419-20.
  • “Hans-Robert Jauss and the Exemplarity of Art,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 27, no. 3 (1987) pp. 259-67.
  • “Reflections on Gadamer’s Notion of Sprachlichkeit,” Philosophy and Literature 10, no. 1 (1986) pp. 84-92.
  • “Translation as a Reading,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 26, no. 2 (1986) pp. 143-50.
  • “Writing Philosophy and Literature: Apology for Narcissism in Merleau-Ponty,” Eidos 4, no. 1 (1985) pp. 1-9.
  • “Metafizika in Metafora,” tr. Ales Erjavec, Anthropos, nos. 3-6 (1984) pp. 57-60.
  • “Merleau-Ponty and the Modern Novel,” Praxis, nos. 21-2 (1982) pp. 64-9

Articles forthcoming, or in press:

Translations:

  • Of Julien Freund, “Les Lignes de Force de la Pensée politique de Carl Schmitt,” in Telos 102, (Winter, 1995) pp. 11-42.
  • Of “L’Appel à la Vigilance lancé par quarante Intellectuels;” “Appel à la Vigilance;” “L’Eté des Dinosaures” by Charles Champetier; “De la Race à la Culture,” “Transfuge paradoxal ou Nazi masqué: L’Alternative: Discussion ou Inquisition?” “Origines et Métamorphoses de la Nouvelle Droite,” and “Les Intellectuels et la ‘Confusion des Idées’: Une Lourde Erreur d’Analyse” by Pierre-André Taguieff; “Entretien avec Alain de Benoist,” “Une Lettre d’Alain de Benoist,” “Querelles d’Ancien Régime,” and “L’Idée d’Empire” by Alain de Benoist; “La Confusion des Idées,’ and “Les Mots et les Faits” by Roger-Pol Droit; “Un Jeu dangereux” by Pierre VidalNaque; in Telos 98-99 (Winter, 1993–Spring, 1994) pp. 34-54, 81-125, 135-80.
  • Of Theodor W. Adorno, “Theorie der Halbbildung” in Telos 95 (Spring, 1993) pp. 15-38.
  • Collaborated in the translation of Theodor W. Adorno’s “Über Tradition” in Telos 94 (Winter, 1992-93) pp. 75-82.
  • Of “Le Cyclisme canadien” for Radio France; March, 1983.

Reviews:

  • Critical Theory After Habermas: Encounters and Departures, Dieter Freundlieb, Wayne Hudson, and John Rundell, eds., in Journal of Critical Realism 5, no. 1, (2006) pp. 183-7.
  • Adorno’s Positive Dialectic by Yvonne Sherratt, in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (April 2003).
  • Derrida and the Future of Literature by Joseph G. Kronick, in Philosophy in Review 20, no. 4 (August 2000) pp. 264-5.
  • Knowing and Being: A Postmodern Reversal by James Richard Mensch, in The University of Toronto Quarterly 68, no. 1 (Winter 1998-99) pp. 355-6.
  • Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities by Peter Levine, in Clio 25, no. 3 (Spring, 1996) pp. 329-32.
  • The Decline of Modernism by Peter Bürger, in Canadian Philosophical Reviews 13, no. 6 (1993) pp. 288-90.
  • The Coming Community by Giorgio Agamben, in Canadian Philosophical Reviews 13, no. 5 (1993) pp. 209-11.
  • Radical Parody by Daniel O’Hara, in Canadian Philosophical Reviews 13, no. 3 (1993) pp. 113- 15.
  • The Twelfth International Congress of Aesthetics, in the International Association of Aesthetics Newsletter no. 2 (Winter, 1992) pp. 1-2.
  • Writing the Politics of Difference, ed. Hugh Silverman, in Canadian Philosophical Reviews 11, no. 6 (1991) pp. 416-18.
  • Heidegger and Derrida: Reflections on Time and Language by Herman Rapaport, in Canadian Philosophical Reviews 10, no. 10 (1990) pp. 427-9.
  • The Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics by Arthur Kroker and David Cook, in Canadian Philosophical Reviews 7, no. 3 (1987) pp. 114–16.
  • Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida by Allan Megill, in Queen’s Quarterly 92, no. 4 (1985) pp. 874–76