Paula García Cherep is an Assistant Professor at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral and a postdoctoral fellow at CONICET. She was a visiting fellow at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt in 2023 and 2024. In her doctoral thesis, she examined the relationship between the concepts of reason and nature in the philosophy of Max Horkheimer. Her current research focuses on problems of aesthetics and politics within the context of Critical Theory and its contemporary receptions. She also works on university extension projects that explore the connections between cinema and philosophy.
Dr. Paula García Cherep
Conicet Post-Doctoral Fellow
Period at the center: June 2026
Research Project: Aesthetic Subjectivity and Spontaneity in the Critique of Freedom as Autonomy
Email: paulagcherep@gmail.com
WebsiteResearch Project
Aesthetic Subjectivity and Spontaneity in the Critique of Freedom as Autonomy
My project seeks to reevaluate the concept of aesthetic subjectivity in the context of the discussion of freedom as autonomy. I pursue the discussion of freedom from the perspective of aesthetic subjectivity in the writings of Karl-Heinz Bohrer, Werner Hamacher, and Christoph Menke. These authors, albeit in different ways, agree on the need to incorporate into the notion of freedom a moment of spontaneity of experience, understood as an element that cannot be reduced to a series of rational mediations. I trace this notion back to Horkheimer and Adorno, for whom spontaneity also refers to the notion of unsubjugated nature. My central argument is that for Horkheimer and Adorno this spontaneous element is not reducible to reason, but also indispensable for the exercise of thought and freedom.
Selected publications
Edited Volumes
Galfione, Juárez, Bisigniano, & García Cherep (eds), La libertad más allá de la autodeterminación. Ensayos de Teoría Crítica (Santa Fe: UNL, 2024).
Articles
“La libertad pensada en su conexión con la espontaneidad estética”. In: Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía 41:3 (2024)
“Max Horkheimer y el proyecto de una dialéctica no cerrada”. In: Verifiche Rivista di scienze umane. 22:1 (2023), 149-172.
“Sobre el sometimiento de la naturaleza extra-humana”. In: Avatares comunicación/cultura, dossier temático Comunicación, arte, poder y crítica cultural: Cien años de la Escuela de Frankfurt, 25 (2023).
“Los impulsos en la concepción materialista de la razón de Max Horkheimer”. In: Griot. Revista de filosofía 21:2 (2021), 177-190.