Department of Philosophy and Religion

Rick Elmore

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Biography

I am a Professor of Philosophy at Appalachian State University. I research and teach in 20th century French philosophy, critical theory, social political philosophy, ethics, and Cormac McCarthy studies. I am the co-editor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern University Press, 2022), The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy (LSU Press, 2024), and New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris (USC Press, 2026). My articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, and Mississippi Quarterly, among others. I am Senior Managing Editor of book reviews Symposium and a member of the Symposium Editorial Collective. I am a member of the editorial board The Cormac McCarthy Journal and Associate Director of The McCarthy Library Project.

One of the guiding questions of my work is how political, ethical, and environmental systems and institutions situate themselves in relation to issues of inclusion, exclusion, power, force, law, policing, and normativity. I've always been interested in how systems establish and enforce themselves. These are the kinds of questions that got me interested in studying philosophy.

I currently have several essays in process on various figures and issues in contemporary French philosophy and social and political philosophy. I am also working on a number of projects related to the work of the American novelist Cormac McCarthy, including The Oxford Handbook of Cormac McCarthy, a collection of essays to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Blood Meridian, and a monograph on McCarthy and Philosophy.

I am originally from North Carolina and did my undergraduate work here at App State. After transferring to App State from a community college, I explored several majors, including music, political science, and history before settling on philosophy. I did my graduate work at DePaul University in Chicago where I completed my PhD in 2012. In addition to my interests in philosophy, I'm also an avid gamer and runner.

Google scholar
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Education

  • Ph.D. Philosophy, DePaul University (2012)
  • M.A. Philosophy, DePaul University (2006)
  • B.A. Philosophy and Religion, Appalachian State University (2003)

Courses Taught

  • PHL 2000: Philosophy, Society, and Ethics
  • PHL 2010: Animal Ethics and Philosophy
  • PHL 2015: Environmental Ethics
  • PHL 3015: Medical Ethics
  • PHL 3020: Metaphysics
  • PHL 3040: Social and Political Philosophy
  • PHL 3530: Existentialism and Literature
  • PHL 3530: Philosophy and Mass Incarceration
  • PHL 3400: Contemporary Continental Philosophy
  • PHL 4549: Seminar: Critical Prison Studies
  • PHL 4549: Seminar: Political Economy

Publications

Edited Volumes

  • New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris. Co-edited with Jonathan Elmore, Columbia: University of South Carolina University Press, 2026.
  • The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy, Co-edited with Jonathan Elmore, Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2024.
  • The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault, Co-edited with Ege Selin Islekel, Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2022.
  • Journal Special Issues
  • "It Must be Done": Critical Reflections on Derrida's Theory and Practive. Symposium: Journal of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy. Vol 27, No. 1 - Spring 2023.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles 

  • “The Pessimism of Afropessimism: The Reactionary Politics of Ontological Social Death,” Co-authored with everet e. smith. Philosophy Today (Forthcoming 2026)
  • “The Kekulé Essays: Cormac McCarthy’s Theory of Language, the Human, and the Ecological Promises of the Posthuman.”Co-authored with Jonathan Elmose. The Cormac McCarthy Journal. 24, No. 1 (2026): 23–38.
  • “Meaninglessness, Indifference, Suicide, and Incest: The Philosophical Pessimism of Cormac McCarthy’s Stella Maris,” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. The Cormac McCarthy Journal. 22, No. 2 (2024): 142-160.
  • “The truth is what happened. It aint what come out of somebody’s mouth”: Truth, Realism, and Relativism in McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 21, No. 1 (2023): 34-53.
  • “The World as Tale: Ontological Dynamism and Metaphysical Unity in Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing.” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. Mississippi Quarterly 75. No. 1 (2022): 61-78.
  • “Life, Unity, and Suffering: The Moral of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree.” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 19, No. 2 (2021): 134-147.
  • “'I made a mistake. He wadn’t for sale': Resistance to Evil and the Positive Ethics of McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper.” Co-authored Jonathan Elmore. Mississippi Quarterly 72, No. 2 (2019): 253-272.
  • “'He wondered why a road should come to such a place': Community and Posthumanism in Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark” Co-authored Jonathan Elmore. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 17: 2 (2019): 116-133.
  • “You reckon there are just some places the good lord didn’t intend folks to live in?': The Absence of Community in McCarthy’s Child of God” Co-authored Jon Elmore. Cormac McCarthy Journal 17: 2 (2019): 134-147.
  • "'You can stay here with your papa and die or you can go with me': The Ethical Imperative of The Road," Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore, The Cormac McCarthy Journal (Fall 2018), pp. 133-48.
  • "Identity, Exchange, and Violence: The Importance of Marxism for Reconciling Adorno's Metaphysics and Politics" Symposium (Spring 2018), pp. 210-27.
  • “The Hybrid Turn: What the Figure of the Vampire Hunter Tells Us about the Humanities in the 21st Century,” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore, Readings: A Journal for Scholars and Readers, (January 25, 2017).
  • "Human Become Coin: Neoliberalism, Anthropology, and Human Possibilities in No Country for Old Men," Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2016), pp. 168-85.
  • “Revisiting Violence and Life in the Early Work of Jacques Derrida.” Symploke 20, no. 1-2 (2012): 35-52. 
  • “Simulation and Symbolic Exchange: Jean Baudrillard’s Augmentation of Marx’s Theory of Value.” Co-authored with Andrew Koch. Politics & Policy 34, no. 3 (2006): 556-75.

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

  • “Editors’ Introduction.” New Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy: Encountering The Passenger and Stella Maris. Co-edited with Jonathan Elmore, Columbia: University of South Carolina University Press, 2026: 1-11.
  • “Human Become Coin: Neoliberalism, Anthropology, and Human Possibilities in No Country for Old Men.” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. Reprint. Breakdown in Mercantile Ethics: Cormac McCarthy’s Neoliberalism, edited by Brian Schill. University of Tennessee Press, 2025: 109-127.
  • “McCarthy’s Foundational Critique of Individualism and the Western Mythos in the Epilogue of Cities of the Plain.” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy, co-edited with Jonathan Elmore, Baton Rouge: LSU University Press, 2024: 249-266.
  • “Introduction: McCarthy’s Positive Project.” C0o-authored with Jonathan Elmore. The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy, co-edited with Jonathan Elmore, Baton Rouge: LSU University Press, 2024: 1-19.
  • “Posthuman and Postanimal Futures or the Possibilities of a Deconstructive Biopolitics,” The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault. Edited by Rick Elmore and Ege Selin Islekel. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2022, 37-51.
  • “Grounds for Debate: Derrida and Foucault,” Co-authored Ege Selin Islekel. The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault. Edited by Rick Elmore and Ege Selin Islekel. Chicago: Northwestern University Press (Forthcoming).
  • “Posthuman and Postanimal Futures or the Possibilities of a Deconstructive Biopolitics,” The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault. Edited by Rick Elmore and Ege Selin Islekel. Chicago: Northwestern University Press (Forthcoming).
  • "The Danger of Ecological and Economic Interdependence in the Films of Cormac McCarthy,” Co-authored Jonathan Elmore, The Horror of Relations. Edited by Jonathan Beever. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020, 121-137. 
  • “Impossible Friends: Arendt and Critical Theory.” The Bloombury Companion to Hannah Arendt. Bloomsbury (2020).
  • "The Secret Fate of All Pessimism?: Time, Determinism, and Eternal Recurrence in True Detective Season One" in True Detective: Critical Essays on the HBO Series. Edited by Michael Samuel and Scott Stoddart. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (2018), pp. 85-101.
  • "Biopolitics," Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies. Edited by Lynn Turner, Undine Sellbach, and Ron Broglio. Edinburgh University Press (2018), pp. 80-93.
  • "Loving Rust's Pessimism: Rationalism and Emotion in True Detective Season One", Philosophy and True Detective. Edited by Tom Sparrow. New York: Routledge (2017, 31-41).
  • "Pessimism, or the Importance of Indifference, Time, and Violence in Realist Ontologies" in Marie Eve Morin, ed., Continental Realism and its Discontents, Edinburgh UP (2017), pp. 100-16.
  • “Ecological Experience: Aesthetics, Life, and the Shudder in Adorno’s Critical Theory” in The Aesthetic Ground of Critical Theory, edited by Nathan Ross, Rowman and Littlefield (2015), pp. 145-57.
  • “The bindings are there as a safeguard: Sovereignty and Political Decisions in BioShock Infinite," in BioShock and Philosophy. Edited by Luke Cuddy. Routledge (2015), pp. 97-106.

Dictionary Entries, Commentaries, Essays

  • “Introduction” for “It Must be Done”: Critical Reflections on Derrida’s Theory and Practice. Symposium: Journal of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy. Vol 27, No.1 - Spring 2023: 1-7
  • “McCarthy as Philosopher” Co-authored Jonathan Elmore. Orbit: A Journal of American Literature, 9, No. 1 (2021): 3–11.
  • “Troubling Lines: The Process of Addressing in Derrida’s The Post Card.” Going Postcard. Brooklyn: Punctum Books. (2017, 59-63).
  • “Katerina Kolozova’s Towards a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism: Introduction” Syndicate Philsoophy, Decmeber 16, 2016. “https://syndicate.network/symposia/philosophy/toward-a-radical-metaphysics-of-socialism/
  • “Object Oriented Ontology,” “Speculative Realism,” “OOO Critiques of Meillassoux,” and “Graham Harman,” Meillassoux Dictionary. Edited by Peter Gratton and Paul Ennis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2014). 
  • “Différance,” “Jacques Derrida,” “Deconstruction,”and “Post-Structuralism,” Jean-Luc Nancy Dictionary. Edited by Marie-Eve Morin and Peter Gratton. Edinburgh University Press (2015).

Book Reviews

  • “Marcel DeCoste, Professing Darkness: Cormac McCarthy’s Catholic Critique of American Enlightenment.” Co-authored with Jonthan Elmore. American Literary History 37, no. 4 (2025): 1198-1201.

  • “The Complex Anatomy of Books: A Review of Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. Mississippi Quarterly (Forthcoming)
  • “Manu Larcenet. The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation” Co-authored with Jonathan Elmore. The Cormac McCarthy Journal. Volume 23, no. 1, 2025: 89-94.
  • “Jacques Derrida’s Theory and Practice,” Derrida Today 12, no. 2 (2020): 254-261
  • David Wood, Deep Time, Dark Times: On Being Geologically Human,” in Environmental Values, 28, no. 6 (2019): 769-771.
  • Sina Kramer’s Excluded Within, in PhiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism 9, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 151-156.
  • “Jacques Derrida’s Theory and Practice,” Derrida Today 12, no. 2 (2020): 254-261.
  • Matthias Fritsch, Philippe Lynes and David Wood (eds), Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy, in Environmental Values, 28: 3 (2019): 391-393.
  • Peter Gordon’s Adorno and Existence. Adorno Studies, 1: 2 (July 2018): 1-6.
  • "A Compelling Ontology of Wildness for Conservation Ecology." A review of Jamie Lorimer, Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation after Nature." Postmodern Culture 26: 2, 2016.
  • Speculative Realism: Problems and Prospects. By Peter Gratton. Symposium. http://www.c-scp.org/en/2015/06/12/peter-gratton-speculative-realism.html, June 12, 2015.
  • Bestial Traces: Race, Sexuality, Animality. By Christopher Peterson. Oxford Literary Review 37: 1 (July 2015): 153-157.
  • Derrida and The Inheritance of Democracy. By Samir Haddad. International Philosophical Quarterly 55: 1 (March 2015): 130-132.
  • Derrida and Our Animal Others: Derrida’s Final Seminar, ‘The Beast and The Sovereign’. By David Ferrell Krell. Derrida Today 7: 2 (November 2014): 225-230.

Interviews

 

Online Academic Writings

Title: Professor of Philosophy
Department: Philosophy and Religion

Email address: Email me

Phone: (828) 262-2422

Office address
Sanford Hall 338