Fan Xu

Fan Xu

First Name: 
Fan
Last Name: 
Xu
Title: 
Graduate PhD Student
Biography : 

After obtaining his degree in English Studies (BA) from Université de Tours, Fan Xu studied French Didactics (MA) at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and Modern Languages (MSt) at the University of Oxford. He completed another master’s program in Chinese Studies at Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, before moving to Toronto to pursue his PhD. 

Fan Xu is passionate about intellectual history (continental philosophy in particular). He has a penchant for metaphysical and ontological queries such as “Ultimately, what is/causes humans’ disquiet and sufferings?”, “Have human conditions become obsolete in a civilisation propelled by galloping artificial intelligence?”, “How to conceive of life, its origin, and finality?”, and engages with these questions through theories in philosophy and literature, but also observations from natural sciences.

Straddling different time periods and cultural spheres, his research interests mainly concern the oeuvres of Theodor Adorno, Georges Didi-Huberman, Marcel Proust, Walter Benjamin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Emil Cioran. He is also a keen reader of Zhuangzi, Fernando Pessoa, Giorgio Agamben, and Stefan Zweig.

Dissertation

Title: "Anti-Raison, ou Dialektik der Aufklärung, la Recherche au prisme du non-identique"

Committee: 

  • James Cahill (co-supervisor)
  • Willi Goetschel (co-supervisor)
  • Patrick Thériault

Publications

  • “Le malheur humain selon Emil Cioran, ou comment ne pas (ne pas) se désespérer”, Agapes francophones, 2026 (forthcoming).
  • “Éternité et un jour, ou le voyage dans le temps par la mémoire involontaire”, Quaderni Proustiani, 2025 (forthcoming).

Conference Presentations

  • ‘Beyond Enlightenment, the Reenchanting Merit of Poetry?’, ‘Reenchanting the World: Philosophy, Spirituality, Ecology, Arts’ Conference, Toronto Metropolitan University, October 2025
  • ‘Éternité et un jour, ou le voyage dans le temps par la mémoire involontaire”, Colloque international ‘De la madeleine au muffin. La mémoire involontaire (d’)après Proust’, Università di Padova, June 2025
  • ‘Le malheur humain selon Emil Cioran, ou comment ne pas (ne pas) être désespéré’, XVIIIe Colloque International d’Études Francophones de Timişoara CIEFT, Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara, March 2025

People Type:

Research Area:

Areas of Interest: 
  • Intellectual history, including critical theory (Frankfurter Schule), French theory, French Enlightenment, metaphysics, ancient Chinese philosophy
  • French literature from 18th to 20th century (especially Marcel Proust), comparative literature

Campus: