Rikus van Eeden

Rikus van Eeden (PhD KU Leuven 2024) is a philosopher by training. His research interests include twentieth century continental philosophy; particularly, philosophical anthropology, critical theory, and postcolonial thought. 

Lately, his research has increasingly focused on “philosophical practices,” the pragmatic, habitual, and often overlooked things that philosophers do - archiving, translating, editing, teaching, performing, etc. - as well as the diversity of more marginal and mundane forms and genres in which they think - reviews, funding applications, anecdotes, notes, etc. He is interested in how, in these practices, often considered marginal to the actual ‘doing’ of philosophy, it sometimes appears to be most itself - a creative practice of generating new concepts - while, at the same time, being most unlike itself and shading into other practices.  

In the context of the AFROPRESS project his research focuses on theories of the periodical form, with a particular interest in their temporality. What underlying theory of the periodical form informs the actions of various actors? His research starts from the distinction drawn between "editorial administration" and "editorial metaphysics" by Rajat Neogy, editor of Uganda-based Transition. Through this lens, he will study editors' self-understanding in their reflective and editorial writing as well as clues that can be gleaned from formal and editorial decisions. He is also interested in how relative outsiders, even antagonists, understood the periodical form. He will specifically be looking at how government officials (in Uganda) and censors (in South Africa) engaged with periodicals (contrasting this with their engagements with the book form). His research seeks to understand these 'antagonistic' readers without assuming that their reading of periodicals is distinct from that of the 'intended' readers. To explore possible intersections between antagonistic and intended readers, he will look at their engagement with periodicals through the lens of "petty reading" - a focus on small and seemingly insignificant details - evidence of which appears in the letters pages, in personal letters to editors, and in censorship reports. The working hypothesis is that "petty reading" is a distinct form of reading, for which the periodical provides specific affordances, that is potentially shared by these diverse readers.