Biography
I am a DPhil candidate in Modern Languages at Jesus College, University of Oxford. Before coming to Oxford, I received a Bachelor of Arts degree from UC Berkeley in Philosophy and Comparative Literature with language concentrations in Chinese and French. Afterwards, I studied at University College London’s The Bartlett School of Architecture where I received a Masters of Research degree in Architecture and Digital Theory under the supervision of architectural historian Mario Carpo and art critic Frédéric Migayrou. My thesis titled “Structuralism, Schizophrenia, and Schema: The Psychiatric Origins of ‘Folding’ in Contemporary Architectural Theory” was marked with distinction.
DPhil Research
My DPhil thesis, preliminarily titled “1/0: An Archeology of Difference in European Thought (1948-1968),” recasts avant-garde poetry in relation to late 20th Century French thought and the computer sciences. The theoretical intention of my research is to trace the extent to which the genesis of the concept of difference, à la Derrida and Deleuze, is indebted to French avant-garde poetry and Anglo-American developments in the computer sciences, and the interrelation between these two traditions. I particularly focus on the poets Antonin Artaud, Isidore Isou, William Burroughs, and Richard Brautigan. In many ways, my research explores how Western philosophy, art, and literature has adapted to the technological developments of the Silicon Valley and how art, culture, and society has become increasingly analyzed and expressed as networks often devoid of historical and ontological foundations. I also trace how this trend was anticipated by the 20th-century avant-garde movements of Dada, Futurism, and Surrealism, and then distinctly recognized by certain experimental American traditions in the 1960s and 1970s. Thematically, my research addresses structuralism, the avant-garde, complex systems, concepts in virtual reality, and the emergence of the rhizome in social theory and literary criticism. I study under the supervision of Professor Nikolaj Lübecker.
Main Research Interests
Modern Poetry, Cybernetics, 20th Century Avant-Garde, Architecture,
Aesthetic Theory, Complex Systems, Information Studies, Deconstruction
Antonin Artaud, Isidore Isou, William Burroughs, Richard Brautigan
Gregory Bateson, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Gilbert Simondon
Conferences, Curations, and Speaking Events
Panel Chair, “Cybernetics and the Construction of the Future,” International Workshop Questioning Human Technogenesis, 9 December 2024, Maison Française d’Oxford, organized by Maison Française d’Oxford, ENS-AXA Chair Geopolitics of Risk, and École Normale Supérieure de Paris - PSL University.
Guest Lecturer, “The Motor Content of Images” Postgraduate Seminar Simondon Oxford Seminars, 11 February 2025, St. John's College, University of Oxford, organized by Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages.
Curator, Representation and Displacement in the Avant-Garde. Featuring artists Hélène de Beauvoir, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, and Hugo Vasarely. Taylor Institution, Oxford, 20 February 2025–21 March 2025. Organized by Taylor Institution, Oxford.