Gavin Arnall

Languages: English, Spanish, French; working knowledge of Quechua, Portuguese, Italian, German

Affiliations: Romance Languages and Literatures; Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Research and Teaching interests:  

My research and teaching interests converge at the intersection of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. With a background in Comparative Literature, I specialize in modern and contemporary Latin American literature and culture. Other areas of expertise include Marxism and psychoanalysis; critical, literary, postcolonial, and translation theory; francophone Caribbean and continental European philosophy; and Black and Indigenous Studies. 

I am Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and - along with Comparative Literature - I am appointed in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. Additionally, I lead the Marxism Lab, an international team of scholars producing collaborative research on the history and actuality of Marxist theory and practice.

My first book, Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change (Columbia University Press, 2020), sheds light on a persistent but often latent division in Frantz Fanon's writings, a subtle internal struggle between two modes of thinking about change. I argue that, along with the dominant and well-known Fanon who conceives of change as a dialectical process, there is a subterranean Fanon who experiments with an even more explosive conception of transformation. To develop this argument, I offer a close and symptomatic reading of Fanon's entire oeuvre, from cannonical texts like Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth to his psychiatric papers and recently published materials, including his play, Parallel Hands.

My next book, Translating Universality: Marxism and Indigenous Radicalisms in Latin America, explores past and present (missed) encounters between Marxist and Indigenous worldviews and practices. Key figures for this study include José Carlos Mariátegui, José María Arguedas, Álvaro García Linera, Raquel Gutiérrez, Fernanda Navarro, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, and Subcomandante Marcos.

I am the co-editor of Universality and Translation: Sites of Struggle in Philosophy and Politics (Fordham University Press, 2025) and Between Revolution and Democracy: José Aricó, Marxism, and Latin America (Brill’s Historical Materialism Book Series, forthcoming). I am the translator of Emilio de Ípola’s Althusser, the Infinite Farewell (Duke University Press, 2018). 

I have received fellowships in support of my research from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, UM’s University Musical Society, and Princeton University’s Center for Human Values. I have served on the Executive Committee for the Modern Language Association’s Forum on Marxism, Literature, and Society (2017-2022) and as the faculty mentor of the Marxisms Collective (2016-2023) a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop.