Olivia Guaraldo, Ph.D
Professore aggregato
University of Verona
Tel. +39 45 802 8066
Fax +39 45 8010379
E-mail: olivia.guaraldo@univr.it
After receiving a doctoral degree in Political Science from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, Olivia Guaraldo began researching and teaching at the University of Verona, Italy, where she currently teaches political science and the philosophy of politics. Her field of research includes modern and contemporary political thought, with a special focus on the political significance of philosophy. Her main topic of research is the thought of Hannah Arendt. Guaraldo attempts to combine the political approach to philosophy with a ‘gender sensitive’ approach that is based on the ‘thought of sexual difference’, a theoretical perspective that enables the deconstruction of Western textuality from a feminist standpoint. Her approach to politics is also influenced by a rhetorical, poetic analysis that is intended to contest the supposed primacy of philosophical discourse.
Guaraldo has edited the Italian translation of Judith Butler’s book, Precarious Life, and the goal of her most recent research project was to carry out a political reading of one of the classical topoi of the political tradition, namely the connection between politics and violence. The aim is to ‘read’ the connections between violence and politics from a perspective that analyses and deconstructs the modern political ‘solution’ of the State as a monopolist of violence, insofar as it is unable to read the contemporary outbursts of violence (the new forms of war and terrorism, the proliferation of hyper-visible forms of torture, the relatively new and ever increasing phenomenon of female body-bombers, the public use of mourning and the (in)visibility of the victims etc.)