The Department of Philosophy is delighted to announce that Dr. Ernesto Blanes-Martinez (PhD SUNY Stony Brook, 2022) will join us in Fall 2023 as an assistant professor of philosophy specializing in phenomenology. Prior to his studies at Stony Brook, Dr. Blanes-Martinez earned a JD from the University of Puerto Rico School of Law and an MA in philosophy and critique of contemporary culture from the University of Paris VIII.
Dr. Blanes-Martinez’s research focuses on the connections between Husserlian phenomenology and political philosophy. His research takes as its point of departure the work of Edmund Husserl and the history of classical phenomenology, and concentrates on the critical reception of Husserl’s work in France during the 1940s and 50s. He pays special attention to the historical context in which the project of a synthesis with Marxism arises, and studies the ontological and dialectical transformations of phenomenology that enabled innovations in twentieth century French thought. He’s particularly interested in the ways in which political experience provides a guiding thread to analyze the connections between what otherwise appear as incompatible conceptions of subjectivity in distinct philosophical traditions. In addition to his work in phenomenology, Dr. Blanes-Martinez has research interests in the philosophy of law and in Latin American and Puerto Rican thought.
His first book project examines the work of Vietnamese Francophone philosopher Tran-Duc-Thao, and argues for the crucial role of anti-colonial experience in understanding the connection between Marxism and phenomenology in France during the late 1940s and early 50s. The book engages in a reflection on the phenomenological dimensions of political subjectivation by interrogating phenomenological notions such as affectivity, alterity, intersubjectivity and embodiment from the perspective of anti-colonialism and a materialist conception of meaning.
