Mathew Abbot

Mathew Abbott is Lecturer in Philosophy at Federation University Australia. His research draws on both analytic and continental philosophy, exploring intersections of aesthetics and politics. He is the author of the monograph »Abbas Kiarostami and Film-Philosophy«, forthcoming this year with Edinburgh University Press. Drawing on thinkers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Alice Crary, and Martin Heidegger, the book develops a new, deflationary and anti-theoretical film-philosophy through the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami.In 2014 Mathew published another monograph with EUP: »The Figure of This World: Agamben and the Question of Political Ontology«. The work defends and develops Agamben's philosophy as post-Heideggerian political ontology, giving new accounts of key Agambenian concepts, including bare life and the state of exception. Mathew's current research projects include a monograph on aesthetic naturalism and the art/life distinction, a project on reality and scepticism in documentary cinema, and an edited collection on the philosophicals ignificance of Michael Fried's art history and criticism.