dr. R.A. Aumiller (Rachel) PhD

Dr. Aumiller (Rae) engages the ethical and political dimensions of emotions, sensations, and desire. They specifically analyze touch as the site of disorientation and crisis. The crisis of touch ranges from ethical ambiguities surrounding sexual intimacy, to the tension between experiences of pleasure and cultural norms, to the politics of proximity and distance in response to epidemics. In A Touch of Doubt: On Haptic Scepticism (De Gruyter 2021), Aumiller articulates a queer feminist ethic of intimacy in the disruption of beliefs embodied in practices and cultures of touching.

Aumiller’s analysis of sensation and emotion in contemporary society is oriented in their training in ancient philosophy and 19th- and 20th-century European and American philosophy, literature, and psychoanalysis. Their forthcoming book, The Laughing Matter of Spirit (Northwestern University Press), highlights the politics of laughter within a Hegelian-Marxist tradition. Aumiller argues that revolution erupts from a historical stage that can no longer look upon its own contradictions with a straight face. Revolution is history’s laughter or the laughing matter of Spirit.

Aumiller recieved a PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University in 2016. They previously taught philosophy at Columbia University and the University of Hamburg.