Dr. Sebastian Truskolaski

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellow with the project Gestures of Community: Reading Hölderlin with Benjamin, Landauer, and Rosenzweig

CV

  • Since 2021 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow, Leibniz Centre for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin in the program area History of Theory
  • Since 2021 Lecturer (Assistant Professor), Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester
  • 2019-21 Lecturer (Assistant Professor, Adjunct), Departments of German and Comparative Literature, King's College London
  • 2017-19 Assistant Professor (Adjunct), Department of Germanic Studies, Trinity College Dublin
  • 2016-17 Lecturer in Critical Studies (Adjunct), Hereford College of Arts
  • 2013-16 Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • 2011-16 Ph.D, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK: "Bilderverbot: Adorno and the Ban on Images"
  • 2009-10 MA, Philosophy and Contemporary Critical Theory, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, University of Middlesex
  • 2004-7 BA (Hons), Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London

Research Interests

  • Modern European Philosophy from Kant to Derrida.
  • German-Jewish thought from Mendelssohn to Celan.
  • Aesthetic theory from Shaftesbury to Adorno.
  • Literary theory from Romanticism to Post-Structuralism.
  • Theories (and practices) of translation from Luther to Benjamin.

Publications

Monographs

  • Sebastian Truskolaski, Adorno and the Ban on Images (London: Bloomsbury, 2021)

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • Sebastian Truskolaski, 'Life of the Community: Gustav Landauer Reads Friedrich Hölderlin', New German Critique, no. 152 (2024), pp. 79-104.
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Etwas Fehlt: Marxian Utopias in Bloch and Adorno’, Praktyka Teoretyczna,  Vol. 35, no. 1 (2020), pp. 167-185.
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Inverse Theology: Adorno, Benjamin, Kafka’, German Life and Letters, Vol. 70, no. 2 (2017), pp. 192-210.
  • Jan Sieber & Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘The Task of the Philosopher’, Anthropology & Materialism, no. 4 (Special issue on Walter Benjamin, 2017), pp. 1-17.
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Adorno’s Imageless Materialism’, Studies in Social & Political Thought, no. 23 (2014), pp. 14-23.

Edited Volumes

  • Stefano Marchesoni, Nassima Sahraoui & Sebastian Truskolaski, New Benjamin Studies, Vol. 1: Community in Walter Benjamin's Philosophy (Leiden: Brill/Fink, 2025)
  • Jan Sieber & Sebastian Truskolaski (eds.), Anthropology & Materialism, Special issue on Walter Benjamin and Philosophy (2017).
  • Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Tales Out of Loneliness, eds./trans. Esther Leslie, Sam Dolbear & Sebastian Truskolaski (London: Verso, 2016).

Translations

  • Theodor W. Adorno & Gershom Scholem, Correspondence: 1939-1969, ed. Asaf Angermann, trans. Sebastian Truskolaski & Paula Schwebel (Cambridge: Polity, 2021).
  • Eva Geulen, “Expression and Suffering; Semblance and Mimesis”, in: Critique: The Stakes of Form, ed. Holger Kuhn, Isabel Mehl, Oona Lochner, Beate Söntgen & Sami Khatib (Berlin: Diaphanes Verlag, 2020).
  • Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Tales Out of Loneliness, eds./trans. Esther Leslie, Sam Dolbear & Sebastian Truskolaski (London: Verso, 2016).

Chapters in Edited Collections

  • Esther Leslie, Sam Dolbear & Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Walter Benjamin and the Magnetic Play of Words’, in: Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Tales out of Loneliness, eds./trans. Esther Leslie, Sam Dolbear & Sebastian Truskolaski (London: Verso, 2016), pp. ix-xxxii.

Handbook Entries

  • 'The Centre of All Relations: Walter Benjamin on Friedrich Hölderlin', The Palgrave Walter Benjamin Handbook, ed. Nathan Ross (London: Palgrave, 2025).
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Benjamin, Walter (1892-1940)’, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2022) [Online].
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Materialism’, in: The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, eds. Werner Bonefeld, Beverley Best and Chris O'Kane (London: SAGE, 2018), pp. 661-677.

Non Peer-Reviewed Articles

Reviews / Reports / Symposia

  • Sebastian Truskolaski, 'Toward the Critique of Violence', in: Philosophy of Photography, Vol. 13, no. 1 (2022), pp. 301-306 [Review of Walter Benjamin, Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition, eds. Peter Fenves & Julia Ng (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021)]
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Disciplinary Discontent’, in: Syndicate [Symposium on Richard Eldridge’s Images of History: Kant, Benjamin, Freedom and the Human Subject, December 2019]
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Der Kult des Kapitals’, in: Modern Language Review, Vol. 114, no. 2 (2019), pp. 409-411. [Review of Eds. Mauro Monzi et al, Der Kult des Kapitals (Heidelberg: Winter, 2017)]
  • Alex Fletcher, Rose-Anne Gush & Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘From Berg to Beyoncé’, in: Radical Philosophy, no. 199 (Sep/Oct 2016), pp. 65-67. [Report on Adorno & Politics conference, Istanbul, May 2016.]
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘Analyse What?’, in: Radical Philosophy, no. 190 (Mar/Apr 2015), pp. 59-61. [Review of Fabian Freyenhagen, Adorno’s Practical Philosophy: Living Less Wrongly  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)]
  • Sebastian Truskolaski, ‘M.O.R.’, in: Radical Philosophy, no. 185 (May/Jun 2014), pp. 59-61. [Review of Andrew Bowie, Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 2013)]