Thomas Keenan

Thomas Keenan teaches Media Theory, Comparative Literature, and Human Rights at Bard College New York, where he heads the Human Rights Project and also helped to create the first undergraduate programme in Human Rights in the United States. In this latter field, he has worked with the Soros Documentary Fund, WITNESS and The Journal of Human Rights, where he is a member of the editorial board. He also co-directs International Justice Watch, an online discussion forum on human rights, war crimes, and international tribunals for crimes against humanity and genocide.

He has written numerous books, notable amongst which are Fables of Responsibility (Stanford University Press, 1997), an essay where he reflects on different ethical-political concepts like responsibility, rights, freedom, equality, and justice. With Eyal Weizman, he co-authored Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of a Forensic Aesthetics (2012 – in Spanish, La calavera de Mengele. El advenimiento de una estética forense, Sans Soleil, 2015), presenting an understanding of war and crimes against humanity from a new model for interpreting reality with forensic roots. His articles have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Wired, Aperture, Political Theory, Grey Room, PMLA, South Atlantic Quarterly and Cabinet. He has also edited such outstanding words as (together with Wendy Chun), New Media, Old Media (2006), which brings together original and classical essays exploring the old and the new in digital culture. Moreover, he has co-edited The Flood of Rights (Sternberg Press, 2017) and The End(s) of the Museum (Fundació Antoni Tàpies 1995). In the domain of exhibitions, he co-curated (with Carles Guerra) the exhibition Antifotoperiodisme in Barcelona and Amsterdam (2010), and later participated in the exhibition Forensic Architecture. Towards an Investigative Aesthetics (MACBA, 2017).