Assoc. Prof. Dr. Simon Hajdini

Simon Hajdini is Associate Professor and Senior Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, where he teaches social and political philosophy. He is a Fulbright alumnus and regular Visiting Faculty at The University of Chicago.

He specializes in critical theory, political economy, hyperstructuralism and psychoanalysis. His latest book is What's That Smell? A Philosophy of the Olfactory (MIT Press, 2024). His present book project, Hungry Mouths, Idle Hands, argues for an interpretation in which hunger can be taken as a philosophical opening with wide-ranging consequences for understanding modern capitalist society, the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality, and the fate of the aesthetically sublime in the age of the trivial.

RECENT & UPCOMING TALKS

"Hunger: Kafka's Cookbook," University of Pennsylvania (4 May 2026)

"Lakota kot funkcija in ornament," University of Ljubljana (24 March 2026)

"Spectral Haptics: On Touch in the Age of the Untouchable," University of Ljubljana (4 December 2025)

"Pasti dobrobiti," University of Ljubljana (20 November 2025)

"A Lamellar Ecology of Breastfeeding: The Curious Case of the Hungry Nose," Uncommon Senses V, Concordia University, Montreal (10 May 2025)

"Biohybrid Enjoyments: On Freud and Biotechnology," University of Ljubljana (7 December 2024)

"Kafka's Martyrdom of Ridicule: On Hunger as Function and Ornament," University of Chicago (21 November 2024)

"Sense & Sensation," University of Illinois Chicago (12 November 2024)

"A Scentimental Education: Freud on Smell and the Origins of Culture," Concordia University, Montreal (3 April 2024)

"What's That Smell?" book launch, Freud Museum London (18 March 2024)

VISITING APPOINTMENTS

2025  (May-June) Visiting Scholar, Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Montreal

2024  (Spring-Summer) Visiting Scholar, Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Chicago

2024  (Winter) Visiting Scholar, Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Montreal

2021  (Spring) Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, The University of Chicago

2017–2020  Visiting Scholar, Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Chicago

2016–2017  Fulbright Postdoctoral Visiting Scholar, The University of Chicago

RESEARCH GRANTS

The Tripwire of Modernity: Hunger as Function and Ornament

TYPE: basic research project. FUNDING SOURCE: Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS). DURATION: 3/1/2026 – 2/28/2029. ROLE: PI with research team. STATUS: ongoing.

Hunger is an issue of greatest consequence. This project approaches it as an expressly modern phenomenon, drawing from its role in capitalism, where hunger serves as the main extra-economic driver of the subject’s entry into the realm of productive labor. By exploring the interrelated political-economic, psychoanalytic, and aesthetic aspects of hunger in modernity, the project aims to develop a coherent theoretical framework, with the goal of grasping hunger’s multifaceted, yet unified concept. The first comprehensive philosophical study of its kind, this project advances a threefold objective, arguing for an interpretation in which hunger can be taken as a philosophical opening with wide-ranging consequences for understanding modern capitalist society, the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality, and the fate of the aesthetically sublime in the age of the trivial.

Names at the Tip of the Nose: Naming, Smell, and Truth

TYPE: basic research project. FUNDING SOURCE: ARIS. DURATION: 10/1/2022 – 9/30/2026. ROLE: PI with research team. STATUS: ongoing.

This project addresses the relationship between names and smells, taking its cue from the tip-of-the-nose phenomenon, indicating a well-documented human inability of odor-identification. The project relates this impossibility to the fact that, in Indo-European languages at least, smells altogether lack proper names. We name smells either eponymously by relating them to their sources or synesthetically by borrowing their names from the other senses. Smells stand for lexical voids and represent the singular site of a universal linguistic disturbance: a universal olfactory anomia. The primary objective of the project is to examine the relationship between naming and the nameless realm of smells.

Structure and Genealogy of Indifference: Logic - Epistemology - Ideology

TYPE: basic research project. FUNDING SOURCE: ARIS. DURATION: 5/1/2017 – 4/30/2021. ROLE: PI with research team. STATUS: completed.

This project is devoted to the philosophical analysis of the structure of indifference with special emphasis on its conceptual genesis. The project addresses the 1) logical, 2) epistemological, 3) philosophical-genealogical, and 4) ideological-theological status of indifference in modernity. The scientific background consists of two basic hypotheses: first, indifference, far from being reducible to the inertia of the undistinguished, is the bearer of a paradoxical difference that escapes the opposition between the distinguished and the undistinguished; second, as the bearer of negativity, indifference implies not the spontaneity or arbitrariness of choice but the irreducible impossibility of choice, which emerges in the modality of the contingent encounter.

Varieties of Negation: Philosophy - Psychoanalysis - Literature

TYPE: bilateral research project. FUNDING SOURCE: ARIS. DURATION: 1/1/2018 – 12/31/2019. ROLE: co-PI (with Eric L. Santner) with research team. STATUS: completed.

This bilateral research project between Slovenia and USA addresses the notions of negation and negativity in German idealism and psychoanalysis. Its aim is to analyze the forms of negativity with the goal of critically reassessing the conceptions of subjectivity in the two above-mentioned traditions. The project follows four key objectives: 1) to explicate the forms of negation in German idealism and psychoanalysis and to analyze their conceptual relationships; 2) to demonstrate the structural role of negativity as the agent of the constitution of subjectivity; 3) to conduct a comparative philosophical analysis of the negativity of the subjects of self-consciousness and the unconscious; and 4) to illustrate the modes of negativity and subjectivity with examples from German literature from the 19th through the early 20th centuries.

Antinomies of Rest: A Philosophical Investigation into the Political-Theological and Ontological Status of Rest in Modernity

TYPE: postdoc. FUNDING SOURCE: Fulbright Program. DURATION: 11/1/2016 – 5/31/2017. ROLE: PI. STATUS: completed.

This project aims to deliver a philosophical analysis of the notion of rest in modernity by way of focusing on its double meaning in the English language. On the one hand, it focuses on the actual (Germanic) meaning of rest in the sense of repose, while on the other hand, theorizing on the reflected (Romanic) meaning of rest as remainder, that is, on the concepts of residuality in philosophy, political theology, and psychoanalysis.

The (Mis)uses of Laziness: The Figure of the Idler in Philosophy, Theology, and Political Economy

TYPE: postdoc. FUNDINING SOURCE: ARIS. DURATION: 7/1/2014 – 6/30/2016. ROLE: PI. STATUS: completed.

This project pursues a philosophical analysis of the notion of laziness, focusing primarily on its historical and contemporary figures. The project intervenes in the conceptions of laziness in 1) early­-Christian ascetic tradition, high scholasticism, and Protestantism, 2) German idealism (Kant, Fichte, Hegel), 3) the discourse of classical political economy, and 4) contemporary political and economic discourse.

MEMBERSHIPS & SERVICE

Vice-Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana (2025–)

Head of the Chair for Social Philosophy, Philosophy of History and Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana (2024–)

Affiliate Member, Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Montreal (2024–)

PhD Coordinator, Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana (2023–)

Consultant, Data and Evidence for Justice Reform (DE JURE), World Bank (2020–2022)

External Expert, European Research Executive Agency (2019–)

Editorial Board: Problemi, Borec

Manuscript Reviewer: The Senses and Society, Cultural Critique, Open Philosophy, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Culture and Dialogue, Ars & Humanitas

Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana

Central European Research Institute of Søren Kierkegaard

THESIS SUPERVISION

3 current PhDs, 3 completed MAs, 7 completed BAs