Profile

Aukje van Rooden's area of expertise is contemporary continental, particularly French, philosophy and its applications within literary and cultural studies. Inspired by the philosophical tradition starting with German Romanticism and Nietzsche, but especially including the post-Heideggerian French philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot, she takes language, and more specifically literary uses of language, as the defining characteristic of human being, especially in its modern condition. In (re)thinking the modern human condition, she has developed a line of research that focuses particularly on issues of relationality, community and engagement. She has investigated the important role of the literary, in relation to the political and the social, in the work of amongst others Sartre, Blanchot, Bataille, Lyotard, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, Foucault, Badiou and Rancière. Van Rooden has published the following books: 

• L'Intrigue dénouée. Mythe, littérature et communauté dans la pensée de Jean-Luc Nancy (Brill 2022) 
• Literatuur, autonomie en engagement: Pleidooi voor een nieuw paradigma (AUP 2015), translated into English: Literature, Autonomy and Commitment (Bloomsbury 2019)
• Re-treating Religion: Deconstructing Christianity with Jean-Luc Nancy (Fordham 2012, co-edited)
• Maurice Blanchot: De stem en het schrift (Klement 2012, co-authored)
• De nieuwe Franse Filosofie: Denkers en thema's voor de 21e eeuw (Boom 2011, co-edited)

Van Rooden was research fellow at at Utrecht University (2010-2012), Radboud University (2006-2009), Université Paris VIII-Vincennes-Saint-Denis (2008) and Université Paris IV-Sorbonne (2004-2005), and lecturer at Art Academy Avans-St Joost (2005). She is member of the scientific advisory boards of the journals Tijdschrift voor Filosofie and of the Maurice Blanchot Archives in Paris. Van Rooden is also translator from the French (of works by Blanchot, Nancy and Rancière) and one of the chief editors of Dutch publishing house Parresia (publising works by Blanchot, Foucault, Cixous, Irigaray, Duras, Badiou a.o.).

In the University of Amsterdam's Philosophy Department, she was deputy chair of Philosophy Department's Critical Cultural Theory capacity group (2017-2021), and programme coordinator of the Philosophy Research Master (2014-2021).    

Aukje van Rooden has degrees in Philosophy and in Literary and Culture Studies (both with highest distinction). In 2010, she received her Ph.D from Tilburg University (also with highest distinction).