Jacques Lezra

Distinguished Professor of Hispanic Studies & English
University of California, Riverside

About

Jacques Lezra

Jacques Lezra (Madrid, 1960) is Distinguished Professor of Hispanic Studies and English at the University of California, Riverside, where he chaired the Department of Hispanic Studies from 2017 to 2021. He grew up in Spain, Venezuela, and Morocco before coming to the United States. He is also Chercheur International Associé at the Laboratoire d'Études et de Recherches sur les Logiques Contemporaines de la Philosophie (LLCP), Université Paris-8, where he held the International Chair in Contemporary Philosophy in 2022 and was Visiting Professor in Philosophy in 2025. In 2023–24 he was Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. His work moves among comparative literature, translation theory, early modern studies, and political philosophy, with particular attention to the relations among materialism, translation, and republican political thought.

Before coming to Riverside he was Professor of Spanish, English, German, and Comparative Literature at New York University, where he chaired the Department of Comparative Literature, and Professor of English and Spanish at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received his B.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University, and has taught since 1991 on the literature faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English.

With Emily Apter and Michael Wood, he edited the Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton, 2014), the English edition of Barbara Cassin's Vocabulaire européen des philosophies. He is editor of Political Concepts, co-editor (with Paul North) of the IDIOM book series at Fordham University Press, and co-director of Ediciones Macul (Santiago, Chile). His books have been translated into Spanish and Chinese, and his articles appear in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Hebrew. He writes on translation in theory and practice; the materialist tradition from Lucretius to Malabou; Marx; psychoanalytic and deconstructive criticism; contemporary political philosophy; Cervantes and Shakespeare; and early modern comparative literature. He is also a painter, whose canvases appear as cover images for books from Fordham, Penn, and other presses.

Research Groups

Books

Cover of Dictionary of Untranslatables
featured
Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon
Edited with Emily Apter and Michael Wood. Princeton University Press, 2014. The English edition of Barbara Cassin's Vocabulaire européen des philosophies.
An encyclopedic dictionary of some four hundred philosophical, literary, and political terms that resist easy — or any — translation between languages. Widely reviewed, including in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the TLS; winner of a 2015 Outstanding Reference Sources Award (American Library Association); one of the Guardian's Best Books of 2015 and the TLS and Times Higher Education Books of the Year 2014.
Princeton University Press · "How to Translate an Untranslatable Book" (Washington Post)
El Cíclope: De la deconstrucción del fascismo
Ediciones Macul, forthcoming 2026
Cover of Disciplina moriendi
Disciplina moriendi: Derrida, la mediación 'Hispana'
Editorial Grapho, 2024
Cover of Defective Institutions
Defective Institutions: A Protocol for the Republic
Fordham University Press, 2024
Cover of República salvaje
República salvaje: De la naturaleza de las cosas
Ediciones Macul, 2020
Cover of On the Nature of Marx's Things
On the Nature of Marx's Things: Translation as Necrophilology
Fordham University Press, 2018 · Spanish translation, De la Naturaleza de las Cosas de Marx, Metales Pesados, 2022 — named one of the best books of 2023 in translation studies by La Vanguardia
Cover of Untranslating Machines
Untranslating Machines: A Genealogy for the Ends of Global Thought
Rowman & Littlefield, 2017 · Spanish translation, Máquinas Intraductoras, Palinodia, 2023
Cover of Contra todos los fueros de la muerte
«Contra todos los fueros de la muerte»: El suceso cervantino
Editorial La Cebra, 2016
Cover of Wild Materialism
Wild Materialism: The Ethic of Terror and the Modern Republic
Fordham University Press, 2010 · Spanish translation, Materialismo salvaje, Siglo XXI/Biblioteca Nueva, 2012, with an introduction by Étienne Balibar · Chinese translation, Beijing University Press, 2013
Cover of Unspeakable Subjects
Unspeakable Subjects: The Genealogy of the Event in Early Modern Europe
Stanford University Press, 1997

In preparation: The Politics of Little Words; Accidental Modernity: The Drama of Translation Between Spain and England, 1499–1625; and, with Georgina Dopico, Sebastián de Covarrubias: Biografía documental y crítica (under contract, Polifemo).

Edited Volumes

Translations

Selected Articles & Chapters

A selection from some one hundred articles and chapters, in English, Spanish, French, and German. For the full bibliography, see the complete curriculum vitae.

Further papers and uploads are available on my Academia.edu page.

Selected Talks & Lectures

Talks Online

"Atomic Sex: Lucretius's Material Republic"
Shulman Lecture in Science and the Humanities, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, 2017 · Whitney Humanities Center video page
Presentación de República salvaje: De la naturaleza de las cosas
Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación (UMCE), Santiago de Chile, 2020 — with Erin Graff Zivin, Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott, Vanessa Gubbins, and Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier
"Marx's Objects"
Lecture series, International Center for Critical Theory, Peking University · video on YouTube
"La institución como objeto psicoanalítico"
Yoica, Ciudad de México, 2020
"Translating the Untranslatable"
A conversation with Jane Tylus, NYU-Florence, 2014
"The Cosmopolitan Idea and Translation"
A conversation with Tahar ben Jelloun and David Damrosch, NYU-Abu Dhabi Center, 2010

Recent Lectures

"Fascismos"
Invited lecture, Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades, UNAM, Mexico City, 2025
"Alien Values"
"Alienation in History, Estrangement in Language," Università di Firenze, 2025
"Paleo-resistances" (with Emily Apter)
"Resistance and its Futures: Translating the (Untranslatable) Wartime Poetry of René Char," Princeton University, 2025
"Magna parens terra est: The Logic of Catastrophism"
"Thinking with Wendy Brown: Democracy in Nihilistic Times," University of Brighton, 2025
"Machines à fragments"
Invited lecture, LLCP, Département de Philosophie, Université Paris-8, 2025
"Now"
"The End(s) of Democracy? Political Concepts," Brown University, 2025
"Can There Be 'Populist' Institutions?"
Keynote, "Populist Movements and Democratic Leadership," Karl Jaspers Centre, Heidelberg University, 2024
"Being Definitive: Early Modern Lexical Culture and the Politics of Conversion in Covarrubias's Tesoro"
Masterclass, Centre for Early Modern Studies, Oxford University, 2024
"Disciplina moriendi: Derrida's Hispanism"
Spanish Research Seminar, Oxford University, 2024
"Vers l'institution du non-commun"
Plenary lecture, with a response by Étienne Balibar, Maison de l'Amérique Latine, Paris, 2022
"Qualified Immunity or Conditional Sovereignty"
Inaugural lecture, Global Studies Initiative, University of Tokyo, 2021

CV & Contact

The complete curriculum vitae (August 2026) is available here: read online download pdf

Departments of Hispanic Studies and English
2401 HMNSS Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, California 92521
jacques.lezra@ucr.edu

Profiles: ORCID · UCR · Academia.edu · Google Scholar · PhilPeople