Graduate Student Directory

Research Interests

I study the function of discursive practices in forming political subjectivities and in the transmission and reproduction of political ideologies. My dissertation, Truth, Ideology, and Practice, argues that political ideologies form through discursive practices that organize political groups in terms of collective commitments to methodological truths: premises that adherents of the ideology share in common and in terms of which they evaluate what further candidate facts will be taken as true. A central claim of the dissertation is that truth is in no way extrinsic to or part of a contrastive pair with ideology, but is in fact the paradigm (Kuhn) or ideologeme (Jameson) within which modern political ideologies are formed and opposed to one another. The dissertation makes several additional doxological and epistemological claims. First, the reasoning processes characteristic of discrete political ideologies (liberalism, fascism, etc.) become unconscious and habitual to the adherent by and through the same features that make ordinary discourse intelligible to the thinker generally; ideologies are, in this sense, not so much degenerate as classifiable forms of reasoning. Second, while reasoning practices characteristic of discrete ideologies operate largely unconsciously, they can be brought to light via ritual, whose function is to make embedded aspects of social practices explicit to the participant. To corroborate these claims, the research draws primarily on resources from the pragmatist tradition in the philosophy of language (Sellars, Brandom) and Wittgenstein, the semiotics of C.S. Peirce and its reception in the sociolinguistic “metapragmatics” of Michael Silverstein, and theories of political subjectivity derived from Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault.

Committee: Robert Meister (Chair), Raymond Brassier, Massimiliano Tomba, Rasmus Winther

Biography, Education and Training

Matt received a BA in History from Columbia University, and JD and LLM degrees from Duke Law School. Before beginning his Ph.D. studies, Matt was a plaintiff's attorney specializing in federal class action litigation, and served as a judicial law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals. 

Honors, Awards and Grants

Awards:

2011. Order of the Coif. Duke University School of Law Chapter.

2011. Outstanding Achievement Award, International and Comparative Law. Duke University School of Law.

Grants:

2024. Summer Research Fellowship. Tribeca Endowment, University of California, Santa Cruz. 

2020. Summer Research Fellowship. The Humanities Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz. 

2020. Summer Research Grant. History of Consciousness Department, University of California, Santa Cruz. 

2019-2020. Regents Fellowship. Division of Graduate Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz.

2008-2011. Ida and Edward B. Silberstein Memorial Scholarship. Duke University School of Law. 

Selected Publications

2013. “Delegating Away the Unitary Executive: The INA § 287(g) Agreements Through the Lens of the Unitary Executive Theory.” Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy, vol. 81.

2011. “Reasons Behind the Rules: From Description to Normativity in International Criminal Procedure.” North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation, vol. 35 (with N. Weisbord).

2010. Note, “Advice and Complicity.” Duke Law Journal, vol. 60.

Selected Presentations

2013. “State and Local Immigration Enforcement under INA 287(g) Agreements.” Perspectives of Migration, Governance, and Citizenship. Duke Law School, Durham, North Carolina.

2011. “State Action and the Original Understanding of Section 5.” J.D. Capstone Project Presentation, Duke Law School.

2010. “The Road From Kampala: An Analysis of the First ICC Review Conference.” Duke Law School. Conference Organizer.

Teaching Interests

Philosophy of language, semiotic theory, Continental philosophy, Marxism, Pragmatism and Neo-Pragmatism, Wittgenstein, political theory