Eli Minor specializes in Hegel, contemporary French thought (esp. Levinas, Nancy, Derrida, and Michel Henry), and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. He obtained his B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy from LSU. His academic background sits between Comparative Literature (poetics, 20th century English verse) and 20th century French philosophy. He is interested in phenomenological approaches to the concepts of life and self-consciousness and the idea of retroactivity of the Real in Lacan and Žižek. His current research rethinks the conceptual roles that affect and self-affection play in the constitution of selfhood and individuation, and what ethical insights can be gleaned from the consideration of the idea of passional life as pure auto-affection.