Simon Hajdini is Senior Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, where he teaches social and political philosophy. He is a Fulbright alumnus and regular Visiting Faculty at The University of Chicago.
He specializes in critical theory, political economy, hyperstructuralism and psychoanalysis. At present, he is researching and writing on the sensorial politics of social divisions. His latest book is What's That Smell? A Philosophy of the Olfactory (MIT Press, 2024).
RECENT & UPCOMING TALKS
"Biohybrid Enjoyments: On Freud and Biotechnology," University of Ljubljana (7 December 2024)
"Kafka's Martyrdom of Ridicule: On Hunger as Function and Ornament," University of Chicago (21 November 2024)
"Sense & Sensation," University of Illinois Chicago (12 November 2024)
2024 (Spring-Summer) Visiting Scholar, Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Chicago
2024 (Winter) Visiting Scholar, Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Montreal
2021–Senior Research Associate (tenured since 2022), Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana
2021 (Spring) Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, The University of Chicago
2017–2020 Visiting Scholar, Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Chicago
2016–2017 Fulbright Postdoctoral Visiting Scholar, The University of Chicago
2016–2021 Research Associate, Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana
2016–Assistant Professor (tenured since 2022), Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana
2014–2016 Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana
EDUCATION
PhD University of Ljubljana (Philosophy), 2012
BA University of Ljubljana (Philosophy), 2004
BA University of Ljubljana (Comp. Lit.), 2004
RESEARCH GRANTS
Names at the Tip of the Nose: Naming, Smell, and Truth
TYPE: basic research project. FUNDING SOURCE: Slovenian Research Agency. DURATION: 10/1/2022 – 9/30/2025. ROLE: PI with research team. STATUS: ongoing.
This project addresses the relationship between names and smells, taking its cue from the tip-of-the-nose phenomenon, indicating a well-documented human inability of odor-identification. The project relates this impossibility to the fact that, in Indo-European languages at least, smells altogether lack proper names. We name smells either eponymously by relating them to their sources or synesthetically by borrowing their names from the other senses. Smells stand for lexical voids and represent the singular site of a universal linguistic disturbance: a universal olfactory anomia. The primary objective of the project is to examine the relationship between naming and the nameless realm of smells.
Structure and Genealogy of Indifference: Logic - Epistemology - Ideology
TYPE: basic research project. FUNDING SOURCE: Slovenian Research Agency. DURATION: 5/1/2017 – 4/30/2021. ROLE: PI with research team. STATUS: completed.
This project is devoted to the philosophical analysis of the structure of indifference with special emphasis on its conceptual genesis. The project addresses the 1) logical, 2) epistemological, 3) philosophical-genealogical, and 4) ideological-theological status of indifference in modernity. The scientific background consists of two basic hypotheses: first, indifference, far from being reducible to the inertia of the undistinguished, is the bearer of a paradoxical difference that escapes the opposition between the distinguished and the undistinguished; second, as the bearer of negativity, indifference implies not the spontaneity or arbitrariness of choice but the irreducible impossibility of choice, which emerges in the modality of the contingent encounter.
Varieties of Negation: Philosophy - Psychoanalysis - Literature
TYPE: bilateral research project. FUNDING SOURCE: Slovenian Research Agency. DURATION: 1/1/2018 – 12/31/2019. ROLE: co-PI (with Eric L. Santner) with research team. STATUS: completed.
This bilateral research project between Slovenia and USA addresses the notions of negation and negativity in German idealism and psychoanalysis. Its aim is to analyze the forms of negativity with the goal of critically reassessing the conceptions of subjectivity in the two above-mentioned traditions. The project follows four key objectives: 1) to explicate the forms of negation in German idealism and psychoanalysis and to analyze their conceptual relationships; 2) to demonstrate the structural role of negativity as the agent of the constitution of subjectivity; 3) to conduct a comparative philosophical analysis of the negativity of the subjects of self-consciousness and the unconscious; and 4) to illustrate the modes of negativity and subjectivity with examples from German literature from the 19th through the early 20th centuries.
Antinomies of Rest: A Philosophical Investigation into the Political-Theological and Ontological Status of Rest in Modernity
This project aims to deliver a philosophical analysis of the notion of rest in modernity by way of focusing on its double meaning in the English language. On the one hand, it focuses on the actual (Germanic) meaning of rest in the sense of repose, while on the other hand, theorizing on the reflected (Romanic) meaning of rest as remainder, that is, on the concepts of residuality in philosophy, political theology, and psychoanalysis.
The (Mis)uses of Laziness: The Figure of the Idler in Philosophy, Theology, and Political Economy
TYPE: postdoc. FUNDINING SOURCE: Slovenian Research Agency. DURATION: 7/1/2014 – 6/30/2016. ROLE: PI. STATUS: completed.
This project pursues a philosophical analysis of the notion of laziness, focusing primarily on its historical and contemporary figures. The project intervenes in the conceptions of laziness in 1) early-Christian ascetic tradition, high scholasticism, and Protestantism, 2) German idealism (Kant, Fichte, Hegel), 3) the discourse of classical political economy, and 4) contemporary political and economic discourse.
Head of the Chair for Social Philosophy, Philosophy of History and Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana (2024–)
Affiliate Member, Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Montreal (2024–)
PhD Coordinator, Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana (2023–)
Consultant, Data and Evidence for Justice Reform (DE JURE), World Bank (2020–2022)
External Expert, European Research Executive Agency (2019–)
Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana
Central European Research Institute of Søren Kierkegaard
THESIS SUPERVISION
PhD: Haron Zeriali (Philosophy 2024–), Nejc Kralj (Philosophy, 2023–), Sara Svati Sharan (Philosophy, 2023–)
MA: Marko Miočić (Philosophy & Sociology, 2023–2024), Katja Gornik (Philosophy, 2022–2023), Sara Svati Sharan (Philosophy, 2022–2023)
Kaj je ta duh? K filozofiji voha (Ljubljana: Analecta, 2016)
Na kratko o dolgčasu, lenobi in počitku (Ljubljana: Analecta, 2012)
SELECTED ARTICLES
"Topologie und logische Zeit: Žižeks Ästhetik des Signifikanten" (with Andrew Cutrofello), Žižek-Handbuch, ed. Dominik Finkelde (Metzler Verlag, forthcoming in 2025). English edition: "Topology and Logical Time: Žižek's Aesthetic of the Signifier," The Bloomsbury Handbook to Slavoj Žižek, ed. Dominik Finkelde (Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2025).
"The Tripwire of Modernism: Hunger as Function and Ornament," in Understanding Lacan, Understanding Modernism, ed. Thomas Waller (Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2024).
"Gaps of Rest: Toward a Political Economy of Laziness," in Political Theology and Its Discontents: Psychoanalysis, Politics, Religion, eds. Boštjan Nedoh and K. Daniel Cho (Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2025).
"'Pnevmatska blaženost': kako so novejše empirične študije voha in dojenja dale Freudu prav," Problemi 62, 7-8 (2024): 33-54.
"El olor del capitalismo: sobre la tendencia universal al envilecimiento en la esfera de la economía capitalista," trans. Matheus Calderon, Hueso Húmero 79 (2024): 211-216.
"Parazit," trans. Marko Miočić, Problemi 62, 3-4 (2024): 151-164.
"Dialectic at Its Impurest," in Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism, eds. Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda (Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave, 2016), 85-99.
"I, Ideology, Speak," in (Mis)readings of Marx in Continental Philosophy, eds. Jernej Habjan and Jessica Whyte (Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave, 2014), 162-177.