Alessandra Aloisi

After studying philosophy at the University of Pisa and at the Sorbonne, Alessandra Aloisi completed her PhD in Aesthetics at the University of Pisa.

In 2015-2017, she was Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick with a research project on Distraction as a Philosophical Concept and Stylistic Device in France and Italy (17th-19th centuries). She joined the University of Oxford in 2018 as a Departmental Lecturer in 18th- and 19th-Century French at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Jesus College. At present, she is a College Lecturer in French at Oriel College and Wadham College.

Research Interests 

Alessandra’s research interests broadly concern modern and early-modern French literature and philosophy, as well as cultural exchanges in modern Europe, namely between France and Italy. She specialises in the 18th and 19th centuries (in particular the pre-Freudian theorisations of the unconscious, the intersections between literature and the prehistory of cinema, and the cross-fertilisation of medicine, literature, and philosophy), and her research interests also extend to 20th-century theory and aesthetics.

Books:

La potenza della distrazione, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2020.

• Spanish translation: El poder de la distracción, trad. Juan Carlos Gentile Vitale (Alianza Editorial, 2022).
• Expanded English edition: The Power of Distraction: Diversion and Reverie from Montaigne to Proust (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming September 2023).

Desiderio e assuefazione. Studio sul pensiero di Leopardi, Pisa: Ets, 2014.

Edited books:

Maine de Biran: Of Immediate Apperception, 1807, ed. A. Aloisi, M. Piazza, & M. Sinclair, transl. M. Sinclair, with an Introduction by A. Aloisi & M. Piazza, London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2020.

Archaeology of the Unconscious: Italian Perspectives, ed. A. Aloisi & F. Camilletti, with an Introduction by A. Aloisi & F. Camilletti, London/New York: Routledge, 2019.

G. Leopardi, Il gallo silvestre e altri animali, Anthology of texts, ed. A. Prete & A. Aloisi , with an Introduction by A. Prete and notes by A. Aloisi, Lecce: Manni, 2010. 

Journal special issues

Maine de Biran and the Afterlives of Biranism, eds. A. Aloisi & D. Antoine-Mahut, with a co-authored Introduction, special issue of Perspectives on Science, MIT Press (accepted: forthcoming).

Journal articles:

‘Cenesthesia or the Immediate Feeling of Existence: Maine de Biran and the Problem of the Unconscious between Physiology and Philosophy’, in Maine de Biran and the Afterlives of Biranism, eds. A. Aloisi & D. Antoine-Mahut, special issue of Perspectives on Science, MIT Press (accepted: forthcoming).

‘The Vie de Henry Brulard as an Essay on Moral Geology. Character, Habit, and Disposition in Rousseau and Stendhal’, Paradigmi, XXXVIII, 3/2020, 547-68.

‘Il pensiero italiano tra le discipline’, La filosofia italiana in questione, ed. F. Pitillo, special issue of Filosofia italiana, 1/2019, 83-91.

‘L’(in)attualità filosofica di Leopardi’, Il Cannocchiale, a. XLIV, n. 1-2, gennaio-dicembre 2019, 243-60.

‘Maine de Biran’s Conception of Melancholy, Between Medicine and Philosophy’, in Melancolia. Metamorfosi dell’umor nero, ed. V. Serio, special issue of Odradek. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics and New Media Theories, vol. 1, n. 1, 2018, 7-19.

‘Una macchina dal nome infernale in arrivo da un paese romantico’, Intersezioni. Rivista di storia delle idee, n. 2, 2017 (August), 163-83.

‘Elogio dell’inoperosità. Agamben e Leopardi’, Italian Studies, vol. 72, Issue 3, 2017, 282- 91.

‘Immagini della natura nello Zibaldone’, La Rassegna della letteratura italiana, n. 2, 2013 (July-Dec.), 427-41.

‘“Disfare e rimutare di continuo le cose di quaggiù”: appunti su moda, morte e civiltà in Leopardi’, Leussein. Rivista di studi umanistici, n. 2-3/maggio-dicembre 2012, 127-36.

‘Memoria e attenzione involontaria nello Zibaldone’, Rivista Internazionale di Studi Leopardiani, n. 7, 2011, 83-94.

‘Memoria e infanzia in Agostino’, Rivista di filosofia, n. 2, 2010 (August), 187-208.

‘Fisica e metafisica della noia nelle Operette morali di Leopardi’, Rivista internazionale di studi leopardiani, n. 6, 2010, 61-78.

Book Chapters:

‘Tout en amout est signe: De l’amour et le début de la psychologie’, actes du colloque organisé par la Fondazione Primoli sur Stendhal, De l’amout 200 ans après (Rome, 1-3 Decembre 2022), Collezione Primoli, tab edizioni.

‘L’immanence: une vie… Gilles Deleuze, Maine de Biran, and the Transcendental Field’, in Maine de Biran’s Physio-spiritualism. Genesis and Posterities from 1800 to the 20th Century, ed. Manfred Milz, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2023 (forthcoming).

‘Quel œil peut se voir soi-même? Character and Habit in Maine de Biran and Stendhal’, in Maine de Biran’s Physio-spiritualism. Genesis and Posterities from 1800 to the 20th Century ed. Manfred Milz, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2023 (forthcoming).

‘The Unconscious in Philosophy’, in The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of the Possible, ed. V. P. Glăveanu, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

‘Francesco Soave and the Unconscious of the Somnambulist: Dreams, Madness, and Distraction in Eighteenth-century Italy’, in Archaeology of the Unconscious, Italian perspectives, ed. A. Aloisi & F. Camilletti, London/New York: Routledge, 2019, 33-49.

‘The Melancholy of the Revolution, Maine de Biran facing Napoleon’s Hundred Days’, in Napoleon’s 100 Days and the Struggle for Legitimacy, ed. K. Astbury & M. Philp, London: Palgrave, 2018, 61-80.

‘La Filosofia’, in Giacomo Leopardi, ed. F. D’Intino & M. Natale, Roma: Carocci, 2018, 101-23.

‘Rivoluzione’, in Lessico leopardiano, ed. N. Bellucci & F. D’Intino, Roma: Sapienza Università Editrice, 2016,109-14.

‘La Moda e la Morte: invenzione di una genealogia mitica’, in Le mythe repensé dans l'oeuvre de Giacomo Leopardi, ed. P. Abbrugiati, Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2016, 317-27.

‘L’infinito come condizione di un’esperienza possibile’, in Ten steps. Critical Inquiries on Leopardi, ed. F. Camilletti & P. Cori, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015, 149-73.

‘Limite/confine’, in Lessico leopardiano, ed. N. Bellucci & F. D’Intino, Roma: Sapienza Università Editrice, 2014, 65-72.

‘Leopardi e l’idea di sistema’, in Il velo scolpito. Dialoghi tra filosofia e letteratura, ed. D. Manca, afterword by A. Prete (Ets, 2014), 27-39.

‘Pensiero e figure dell’animalità in Antonio Prete’, in Pensiero poetante e poetica della lontananza, ed. C. A. Augieri, Lecce: Milella, 2012, 125-35.

‘Esperienza del sublime e dinamica del desiderio in Giacomo Leopardi’, in La prospettiva antropologica nel pensiero e nella poesia di Giacomo Leopardi, Firenze: Olschki, 2010, 243-58. 

Book Reviews:
Review of J.C. Hartley, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, H-France Review, Vol. 20, November 2020, n. 204.

Review of Understanding Rancière, Understanding Modernism, ed. P.M. Bray, Modern Language Review, n. 113/4, 2018, 847-48.

Review of M.C. Corballis, The Wandering Mind. What the Brain Does When You are Not Looking, Philosophical Inquiries, 4/2, 2016.

Review of F. Camilletti, Leopardi’s Nymphs: Grace, Melancholy, and the Uncanny, Oblio, IV/16, 2015.

Review of C. Colaiacomo, Il poeta della vita moderna. Leopardi e il romanticismo, Appunti leopardiani/Notes on Leopardi, 7/1, 2014.

Review of G. Polizzi, Giacomo Leopardi. La concezione dell’umano, tra utopia e disincanto, Appunti leopardiani/Notes on Leopardi, 4/ 2, 2012.

Review of P. Cristofolini, L’uomo libero. L’eresia spinozista alle radici dell’Europa moderna, La società degli individui, 32/2, 2008, 175-79. 

Translations from French:
M. de Beistegui, Proust e la gioia. Per un’estetica della metafora, Pisa: Ets, 2013 (funded by Centre National du Livre of Paris)

P. Steiner, Le ricchezze oscene, Pisa: Ets, 2012.

M. de Beistegui, ‘Per un’estetica della metafora’, in P. Godani & D. Ferrari (eds.), La sartoria di Proust. Estetica e costruzione nella Recherche, Pisa: Ets, 2010, 17-46.

D. Zabunyan, ‘Michelangelo Antonioni, un nietzscheano accanito’, in P. Godani & D. Cecchi (eds.), Falsi raccordi. Cinema e filosofia in Deleuze, Pisa: Ets, 2008, 113-25.

G. Deleuze, Cours de Vincennes, lecture of 27/01/1987 on Leibniz (www.webdeleuze.com).