Chronolibidinal Reading: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov (near completion)
This book engages anew with classical questions concerning the aim of desire, the nature of temporal experience, and why we are moved by a work of art. Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Vladimir Nabokov all sought to transform the art of the novel to convey the complexities of temporal experience and the vulnerability of mortal life. Nevertheless, their works have persistently been read in terms of a desire to transcend mortal life. In contrast, Hägglund develops a theory of “chronolibido” that calls into question the very desire for immortality. The fear of time (chronophobia) does not stem from a desire to transcend time. On the contrary, it is generated by the investment in a life that will be lost. It is because one desires a temporal being (chronophilia) that one fears losing it (chronophobia). Through a series of close readings, Hägglund shows how the notion of chronolibido holds the key to reassessing the major works of Proust, Woolf, and Nabokov. Their aesthetics, he contends, do not seek to transcend time but to render the radical temporality of life and engage the pathos of chronolibidinal being in the experience of the reader. Finally, Hägglund systematizes the logic of chronolibido through a critical engagement with psychoanalysis. Contesting Freud and Lacan’s notion of the death drive, Hägglund argues that temporal finitude is not a lack of being that one desires to overcome. Rather, the investment in a life that may be lost gives rise to every positive and every negative affective response. It is because lives can be lost, because they have not always been and will not always be, that one cares about them but also may be driven to destroy them. Temporal finitude is thus the source of both the desirable and the undesirable. The theory of chronolibido provides the framework for thinking this double bind and thereby opens a new way of reading the dramas of desire as they are staged in philosophy, in literature, and, indeed, in life itself.

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Chronolibidinal Aesthetics: Proust
2. Chronolibidinal Trauma: Woolf
3. Chronolibidinal Writing: Nabokov
4. Chronolibidinal Reading: Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction

Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life (Stanford University Press, 2008)
Hägglund here offers a novel account of Jacques Derrida’s thinking of time and space, life and death, good and evil, self and other. Against the prevalent notion that there was an ethical or religious “turn” in Derrida’s thinking, Hägglund argues that a radical atheism informs his work from beginning to end. Atheism has traditionally limited itself to denying the existence of God and immortality, without questioning the desire for God and immortality. In contrast, radical atheism seeks to demonstrate that the so-called desire for immortality dissimulates a desire for survival that precedes it and contradicts it from within. Rather than being dependent on a transcendent ideal, all our commitments presuppose an investment in and care for the finite. Developing a deconstructive account of time, Hägglund shows how Derrida rethinks the constitution of identity, the violence of ethics, the desire of religion, and political emancipation in accordance with the condition of temporal finitude. Hägglund not only explicates Derrida’s position but also develops his arguments, fortifies his logic, and pursues its implications. The result is a deconstruction of the perennial philosophical themes of time and desire as well as pressing contemporary issues of sovereignty and democracy.

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Autoimmunity of Time: Derrida and Kant
2. Arche-Writing: Derrida and Husserl
3. Arche-Violence: Derrida and Levinas
4. Autoimmunity of Life: Derrida’s Radical Atheism
5. Autoimmunity of Democracy: Derrida and Laclau

Hägglund is also at work on a sequel to Radical Atheism, entitled The Negativity of Time: Critique of Bergson and Deleuze. Turning from a critique of transcendence to a critique of immanence, Hägglund engages Bergson and Deleuze on fundamental questions of time, life, and desire.