Johanna Oksala, PhD

About

Johanna Oksala is the Arthur J. Schmitt Professor of Philosophy. She joined Loyola University Chicago in August 2019. Before coming to LUC, Oksala taught at Pratt Institute of Art and Design (NY, USA), New School for Social Research (NY, USA), University of Helsinki (Finland), and University of Dundee (Scotland, UK).

Professor Oksala’s areas of expertise are political philosophy, feminist philosophy, environmental philosophy, Foucault, and phenomenology. She is the author of five monographs and over fifty refereed journal articles and book chapters. Her work has been translated into ten languages. Oksala is on the editorial board of several academic journals, and she has given over a hundred conference papers and invited talks internationally.

Oksala’s books include: Foucault on Freedom (Cambridge UP, 2005), How to Read Foucault (Granta Books, 2007), Foucault, Politics, and Violence (Northwestern UP, 2012), Political Philosophy: All That Matters (Hodder and Stoughton, 2013), Feminist Experiences (Northwestern UP, 2016).

For further information on Professor Oksala’s academic experience and publications, see https://johannaoksala.com

Oksala’s current research focuses on environmental political theory. She is writing a monograph that explores new ways of linking feminist and ecological critiques of capitalism. Two chapters are published as journal articles: ‘Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology,’ (Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, vol. 33, no: 2, pp. 216-234), and ‘Feminism against Biocapitalism: Gestational Surrogacy and the Limits of the Labor Paradigm’ (Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 44, no: 4, pp. 883-904).

Degrees

PhD, University of Helsinki

Research Interests

Political philosophy, feminist philosophy, environmental philosophy, Foucault, phenomenology

Selected Publications

Monographs

Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological Investigations. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2016.

Political Philosophy: All That Matters. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2013.

Foucault, Politics, and Violence. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2012.

How to Read Foucault. London: Granta Books (Republished in USA, South-Korea, Japan, and Brazil), 2007.

Foucault on Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Recent articles and book chapters (2016–2021)

“Neoliberal Subjectivation: Between Foucault and Marx,” forthcoming in Critical Inquiry.

“Feminism against Neoliberalism: Questioning the Political with Wendy Brown,” forthcoming in Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta (eds.), Power, Neoliberalism, and the Reinvention of Politics. Penn State University Press.

Feminism against Biocapitalism: Gestational Surrogacy and the Limits of the Labor Paradigm. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 44, no: 4, pp. 883-904, 2019.

Gutting, Gary and Oksala, Johanna: Michel Foucault. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/foucault.

Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, vol. 33, no: 2, pp. 216– 234, 2018.

Ordoliberalism as Governmentality, in Thomas Biebricher and Frieder Vogelmann (eds.), The Birth of Austerity: German Ordoliberalism and Contemporary Neoliberalism. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield International, pp. 181–196, 2017.

Feminism, Capitalism, and the Social Regulation of Sexuality, in Banu Bargu and Chiara Bottici (eds.), Feminism, Capitalism, and Critique: Essays in Honor of Nancy Fraser. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 67–84, 2017.

Feminism and Power, in Ann Garry, Serene Khader and Alison Stone (eds.), Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 678–689, 2017.

Affective Labor and Feminist Politics. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 41, no: 2, pp. 281–303, 2016.

Foucault, Husserl and the Roots of German Neoliberalism. Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 49, no: 1, pp. 115–126, 2016.

Political Philosophy in the Era of Climate Change: Between Eco-Cosmopolitanism and the Green State. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 37, no: 1, pp. 51–70, 2016.

Microphysics of Power, in Lisa Disch and Mary Hawkesworth (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 472–489, 2016.