Current position

Michiel Leezenberg is associate professor (UHD) in the Department of Philosophy (chair of Philosophy of Science). He is coordinator of the Research Master in Philosophy and the B.A. honors program in philosophy, and participates in the M.A. program Islam in the Modern World .

Teaching

In the academic year 2011-2012, I will be teaching the following courses:
-Social and Political Ideologies in Islam
-Foucault: Knowledge, Language, and power
-The Nationalization of the Humanities
-Introduction to non-Western and Comparative Philosophy

Research

At present, I am engaged in the following NWO-funded research projects:

• Bildung and Enlightenment as Discipline: An Interactional Perspective;
• (with R. Peters) The Sacred and the Secular: Genealogies of Self, State, and Society in the Modernizing Islamic World

Just published:

Just published, 2:

Also available:

Last updated: February 18, 2012

Select list of publications

Books
-(with G. de Vries) Wetenschapsfilosofie voor Geesteswetenschappen   (Amsterdam University Press)
- Islamitische filosofie: Een geschiedenis . Amsterdam: Bulaaq 2001 (English translation in preparation)
- Contexts of Metaphor . Oxford: Elsevier Science 2001 (Current Research in the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface, vol. 7)
- De vloek van Oedipus: Taal, democratie en geweld in de Griekse tragedie . Amsterdam: Van Gennep 2006
- Rede en religie: Een verkenning . Eindexamencahier filosofieonderwijs VWO. Amsterdam: Van Gennep 2007
- Islamitische filosofie: een geschiedenis (tweede editie). Amsterdam: Bulaaq 2008
Articles
-From the Peloponnesian War to the Iraq War: A Postliberal Reading of Greek Tragedy. To appear in L. Hardwick (ed.), Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds . Oxford University Press
- Comparatieve filosofie van het koffieleuten. Krisis , Summer 2007
-Islam en verlichting. Wijsgerig Perspectief 46 (2006), no. 4: 7-15
-Gricean and Confucian Pragmatics: A Contrastive Analysis. Journal of Foreign Languages , November 2006: 2-21
-Urbanization,Privatization, and Patronage: The Political Economy of Iraqi Kurdistan. In F. Abdul-Jabar & H. Dawod (eds.) The Kurds: Nationalism and Politics . London: Saqi Books 2006, pp. 151-179 (Arabic version: al-tamaddun wa'l-khasskhassa wa'l-mahsubiyya: al-iqtisâd al-siyâsî li kurdistân al- 'irâq. In Fâlih `Abd al-Jabbâr and Hishâm Dâwûd (eds), al-ithniyya wa'l-dawla: al-akrâd fî'l-'irâq wa'l-irân wa turkiyâ . Beyrut: Ma`had al-dirâsât al-istrâtîjiyya 2006)
-Political Islam among the Kurds. In F. Abdul-Jabar & H. Dawod (eds.) The Kurds: Nationalism and Politics . London: Saqi Books 2006, pp. 203-227; Arabic version: al-islâm al-siyâsî bayn al-akrâd, ibid.
-Iraqi Kurdistan: Contours of a Post-Civil War Society. Third World Quarterly 26 , no.4-5 (September 2005): 631-647
-Greek Tragedy as Impolite Conversation: Towards a Practice Approach in Linguistic Theory. In S. Marmaridou & M. Drossou (eds.) Reviewing Linguistic Thought: Converging Trends for the 21st Century . Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter (2005), pp. 191-208
-Power and Political Spirituality: Michel Foucault on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In J. Bernauer & J. Carette (eds.) Foucault and Theology . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2004
2004e Bruder, Untertane oder Feinde? Die unsichere Zukunft der Kurden im Irak. INAMO no. 37 (2004): 25-28
2004f Orhan Pamuks Ottomaanse verleden: Een antihumanistische lezing. Yang 40 no. 1: 129-141
2004k The Anfal operations in Iraqi Kurdistan. In S. Totten a.o. (eds.) Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (2nd ed.). Routledge, pp. 375-393
2004n Katharsis, Greek and Arab Style: On Averroes's Misunderstanding of Aristotle's Misunderstanding of Greek Tragedy. Documenta XX, no. 4 (December 2004)
-Economy and Society in Iraqi Kurdistan: Fragile institutions and enduring trends. In T. Dodge & S. Simon (eds.) Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change . Adelphi Papers 354. Oxford: IISS/Oxford University Press
-Kurdish Alevis and the Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s. In P. White & J. Jongerden (eds.) Turkey's Alevi Enigma . Leiden: Brill, pp. 197-212
-Communication as Social Practice: The Interface Between the Cognitive and the Social Sciences. In L. Komlosi a.o. (eds.) Communication and Culture: Argumentative, Cognitive and Linguistic Perspectives . Amsterdam: Sic Sat 2003, pp. 69-77
-De politieke economie van Iraaks Koerdistan. In B. Cornillie en H. Declercq (red.) In de schaduw van Saddam: Het Koerdische experiment in Irak . Amsterdam: Bulaaq 2003, pp. 120-133
-Politieke Islam in Iraaks Koerdistan. Ibid., pp. 152-167
2003m Edward Said, Michel Foucault en de islam. Eutopia , nr. 6 (december 2003): 73-77
-Power in Communication: Implications for the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface. Journal of Pragmatics 34 : 893-908
-Refugee camp or freetrade zone? The Economy of Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991. In K. Mahdi (ed.) Iraq's Economic Predicament . London: Ithaca Press 2002
-Politischer Islam bei den Kurden. Kurdische Studien 2 (2001): 5-38
-John R. Searle. In M. Doorman and H. Pott (Hrsg.) Filosofen van deze tijd . Amsterdam: Prometheus 2000
-Humanitarian Aid in Iraqi Kurdistan. CEMOTI no. 29 (2000): 31-49
-Neoliberale Gewaltherrschaft: Die Erbe der Baath-Partei im Irakisch-Kurdistan. INAMO no. 21 (2000): 16-19
-Kamelenvlees op een bergtop: Averroës en Ibn Taymiyya als paradigma's in het islamitisch denken. Krisis , voorjaar 1999
-Power andPolitical Spirituality: Michel Foucault on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. arcadia: Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft 33 (1998): 72-89
-Indexicals. In P.V. Lamarque (ed.), Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language . Oxford: Pergamon 1997, pp. 222-6
-Between Assimilation and Deportation: History of the Shabak and the Kakais in Northern Iraq. In B. Kellner-Heinkele & K. Kehl-Bodrogi (eds.) Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East . Leiden: Brill 1997
-Irakisch-Kurdistan seit dem zweiten Golfkrieg. In C. Borck u.a. (eds.) Ethnizität, Nationalismus, Religion und Politik in Kurdistan . Münster: LIT Verlag 1997
-Metaphor and Literacy. In E. Weigand & F. Hundschnurscher (eds.) Lexical Structures and Language Use: Proceedings of the International Conference on Lexicology and Lexical Semantics, Munster, September 1994 . Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 1996
-Vreemdelingen in Nederland: Migratie, etniciteit en cultuur. Krisis , no. 54 (1994): 19-30
-(with Hendrik Boeschoten and Margreet Dorleijn) Turkish, Kurdish and other languages from Turkey. In G. Extra & L. Verhoeven (eds.), Community Languages in the Netherlands . Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger 1993
-Gorani Influence on Central Kurdish: Substratum or Prestige Borrowing? ILLC Prepublication Series X-93-03; to appear inshaallah in the Proceedings of the Symposium on bilingualism in Iranian cultures, Bamberg, July 1992.

Some recent presentations at international conferences:

'Iraqi Kurdistan, 1991-2003: Post-Conflict Plurality or Neoliberal Nepotism?' Invited talk, Workshop Socio-Economic Trajectories of Iraq: 1950-Present, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, May 2006
'Civil Religion: A Genealogical Perspective.' NWO Conference Religion and Powers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 2006
'Comedy between Performativity and Polyphony.' International conference Comedy as a Play with Incongruities. Tetouan, Morocco, April-May 2005
'Ordinary Language as the Norm and as the Normal: Normativity in Linguistic Theorizing.' 9th International Pragmatics Conference, Riva di Garda, Italy, July 2005
'A Contrastive Analysis of Gricean and Confucian Pragmatics,' 3rd InternationalConference on Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics, Shanghai, China, September 2005
'Modern Islamic Intellectual History: Liberal, Marxist, and Genealogical Approaches.' International workshop Islamic Intellectual History, ISIM, Utrecht, September 2005
'Ritual and Drama: Performativity, Liminality, Hybridity.' International conference Ritual, Ceremonial, and Theater Performances, Khartum, Sudan, December 2005
'Performativity and Conflict in Greek tragedy: A Post-Liberal Reading'. Birmingham, conference Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds, May 2004
'Iraqi Kurdistan: Contours of a Post-Conflict Society'. Workshop Post-Conflict and the Remaking of Place and Space, Khartum, Sudan, September 2004
'Kant, die Aufklärung ond der Islam: ewiger Friede oder Clash of Civilizations?' Symposium Immanuel Kant: Vrede tussen secularisatie en religie, Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, December 2004
'Metaphor as Performative', RAAMV Conference, Paris, September 2003
'Averroes and Aristotle on Katharsis.' Conference The Tragic in Greek and Arabic Drama: the Case of Oedipus. University of Ghent, December 2003
'Iraqi Kurdistan: A Model for a Future Iraq?' Seminar The Future of Iraq, SOAS/Birckbeck College, London, January 2002
'Greek Tragedy as Impolite Conversation', Conferentie Converging Trends in Linguistics for the 21st Century. Athens, Greece, May 2002
'Economy and society in Iraqi Kurdistan.' Annual MESA Conference, Washington, D.C., November 2002
'Political Islam among the Kurds'. Conference Kurdistan: The unwanted state. Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland, March 2001
'Political Islam, Pastoral Power, and the Public Sphere'. Conference Political Theologies, Amsterdam, June 2001
'New Registers in Northern Kurdish: The Case of Med-TV'. Conference on Kurdish linguistics, Kiel, May 2000
'Intentionality, Communication, and Power'. 7th International Pragmatics Conference, Budapest,July 2000
'Ergativity in Kurdish: Morphological or Syntactic, Semantic or Pragmatic?' Second Conference on Contrastive Linguistics, Cambridge, September 2000
'Symbolic Power, Illocutionary Force, and Impoliteness: A Critical Look at the Foundations of Speech Act Theory'. Symposium Amstelogue, Amsterdam, May 1999
'Evidencefor Areal Convergence in Southeastern Anatolia.' International conference of the Societas Iranologica Europea, Paris, September 1999
'Genocide and responsibility'. Conference The Anfal 10 years later. Universiy of Amsterdam, April 1998
'Violence and Legitimacy among the Kurds'. Conference The Kurds as Subjects and Objects in History. Freie Universität Berlin, May 1998
'A Language is born'. 6th International Pragmatics Conference, Reims, July 1998
'From Freiburg to Isfahan: Heidegger and the Wisdom of the East' International Conference on  Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, University of Amsterdam, April 1997

Some recent papers (all in pdf format):

Journalistic work and Op-eds (in Dutch)

Project The Sacred and the Secular

This is the project site of the NWO-funded program The Sacred and the Secular: Genealogies of Self, State, and Society in the Modernizing Islamic World .

The site is still under construction; please return for future updates.

Participants: