Bill Hamlett

Position
Graduate Student
Bio/Description

Profile

My work brings contemporary literary theory and deconstruction into conversation with 16th century literature and philosophy. I strive to show the relevance of early modern thought to the political and ethical questions of the present, seeking insights from a chaotic era not so distant as we might imagine.

My dissertation, "The Matter of Books: Montaigne as a Materialist Reader" studies the annotations, marks, and other, heterogeneous matter (flowers, flies, food stains, etc.) in the books that survive from Montaigne's library. This work of book history and critical bibliography reconstructs scenes of reading that shed light on how Montaigne used and read his sources. This knowledge, in turn, offers new ways to read the Essais.

A radical Montaigne emerges from these traces: a pivotal thinker in the history of materialist philosophy in the lineage of Lucretius. By studying the matter of books, I draw out Montaigne's recurrent inclination toward Epicurean materialism in his critiques of power, custom, imaginary thinking, and superstition. This reading, drawn from the traces of Montaigne's own readings, reveals the diversity and vulnerability of the human imagination, anticipating the future materialisms of Spinoza, Marx, Althusser, and Macherey.