I am a philosopher based in London and the author of Partisan Genealogy: Foucault's Critique of Penal Power (SUNY Press, 2026). I specialize in continental philosophy (especially Foucault and Marx), critical theory, and philosophy of race. I also teach A-level philosophy.
There are two poles of my research. The first pole is methodological and concerns the relationship between history and political struggles. Here I try to explain how historical modes of inquiry can contribute to ongoing emancipatory struggles while still remaining critical and thereby able to revise the views of agents. The second pole is social-theoretic and concerns the relationship between political forms and capitalism. In particular, I elucidate how law, the penal system, and varied kinds of state violence are linked to capitalist structures and social relations.
Partisan Genealogy: Foucault's Critique of Penal Power addresses both of these poles by reinterpreting Foucault in the context of his engagement with contemporary Marxist thinkers and anti-prison struggles in the 1970s. As Frieder Vogelmann (University of Freiburg) has written, "Eli Lichtenstein's wonderful book shows that Michel Foucault's genealogy is the method of a materialist philosophy bound up with political struggles. At a time when genealogy has garnered wider attention but is often stripped of its critical punch, this important intervention is required reading far beyond Foucault scholarship."
I have published articles in journals including the European Journal of Philosophy, Constellations, Philosophy & Social Criticism, and Critical Philosophy of Race. I have also written non-academic essays for publications such as Spectre, Salvage, Viewpoint, and Truthout. I completed my PhD in philosophy at Northwestern University in 2022. Here is a copy of my CV.
Refereed Journal Articles:
Forthcoming - "Foucault and Marx on historical transformations of thought," Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities 33, no. 5. PhilPeople.
Abstract: A consensus view holds that Foucault’s historical methodology is incompatible with that of Marx. This paper challenges the consensus view by motivating the compatibility between Foucault’s archaeological method and historical materialism on a narrow but essential point of historical interpretation: the explanation of historical transformations of thought. Whereas Foucault’s apparent rejection of causal historical explanation has been interpreted to entail a rejection of historical materialism altogether, I demonstrate, first, that archaeology nonetheless remains a materialist methodology, insofar as it explains transformation on the basis of conditions that are not only discursive but also non-discursive and material. Second, I argue that Marx likewise interprets changes in thought not as the effects of immediate economic or technological causes, but on the basis of a range of conditions that are congruous with those central to archaeology. This common framework of explanation indicates that archaeology and historical materialism should be understood as minimally compatible in methodological terms and that Foucault’s method is thus not substantively opposed to that of Marx.
2025 - “Biopolitics, Capital, and Carcerality in Foucault’s Unfinished Account of the Racial State,” Critical Philosophy of Race 13, no. 1, 75-94, DOI: 10.5325/critphilrace.13.1.0075.
2023 - “Explanation and evaluation in Foucault’s genealogy of morality,” European Journal of Philosophy 31, no. 3, 731-747, DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12809.
2023 - “Adorno, Marx, and abstract domination,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 49, no. 8, 998-1023,DOI: 10.1177/01914537211059508.
2022 - “Sovereignty, Genealogy, and the Critique of State Violence,” Constellations 29, no. 2, 214-228, DOI: 10.1111/1467-8675.12577.
2021 - “Foucault’s Analytics of Sovereignty,” Critical Horizons 22, no. 3, 287-305, DOI: 10.1080/14409917.2021.1953750.
2020 - “On the Ways of Writing the History of the State,” Foucault Studies, no. 28, 71-95, DOI: 10.22439/fs.v1i28.6074.
Book Reviews:
2025 - "Tuomo Tiisala, Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons: Elaborating Foucault's Pragmatism," European Journal of Philosophy, DOI: 10.1111/ejop.13064.
2020 - “Deborah Cook, Adorno, Foucault and the Critique of the West,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 41, no. 1, 319-322, DOI: 10.5840/gfpj202041112.
Links:
Contact:
eli[dot]b[dot]lichtenstein[at]gmail[dot]com