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W. C. Hackett
Born	William Christian Hackett (1979-02-10) February 10, 1979 Memphis, Tennessee
Occupation	Novelist, Philosopher
Language	English
Citizenship	United States of America
Alma mater	University of Virginia
Genre	Catholic fiction
Notable works	Outside the Gates, 2021 Philosophy in Word and Name, 2021
Website
hackettwrites.com

William Christian Hackett (1979 - present), is a philosopher, novelist, and translator. He is currently a professor of philosophy at St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology. He was Lecturer in Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University (2012-2017) and has held visiting positions at the University of Notre Dame, Nassa Theological College(Tanzania), Insitut catholique de Paris, Harvard University(Center for the Study of World Religions), and Boston College. He is an Ancien pensionnaire etranger de l'Ecole normale superieure (rue d'Ulm).

Personal Life

Hackett was born in Memphis, TN. He attended Germantown and Houston High Schools, lettering in cross country and baseball. He attended Samford University, where he continued to play baseball and graduated with a degree in Religion. He is a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He holds higher degrees from Reformed Theological Seminary (MA, Christian Thought), University of Nottingham (MPhil, Theology), and the University of Virginia (PhD, Religious Studies). Notably, at Nottingham his principal advisor was the founder of Radical Orthodoxy, John Milbank. At Virginia his doctoral supervisor was Australian-American poet and theologian, Kevin Hart.

Hackett is a practicing Christian. He was raised Presbyterian and spent three years studying for the Presbyterian ministry. At the seminary, he changed course, determining to pursue further academic study and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. He and his wife have been Roman Catholic since 2010.

Published Works

Books

• Quiet Powers of the Possible: Interviews in Contemporary French Phenomenology (with Tarek Dika). NY: Fordham University Press, 2016.
• Philosophy in Word and Name: Myth, Wisdom, Apocalypse. NY: Angelico Press, 2021.
• Outside the Gates (novel). NY: Angelico Press, 2021. Honorable Mention, CMA Book Awards.

Translations

• From Theology to Theological Thinking, Jean-Yves Lacoste. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2014.
• God, the Flesh and the Other: from Irenaeus to Duns Scotus, Emmanuel Falque. Bloomington, IN: Northwestern University Press, 2014.
• Human Existence and Transcendence (1944), Jean Wahl. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016.
• Saint Bonaventure and the Entrance of God into Theology (with Brian Lapsa and Sarah Horton), Emmanuel Falque. Bonaventure, NY: Saint Bonaventure Institute Press, 2018.
• The Expansion of Metaphysics, Miklos Veto. Eugene, OR: Cascade Press, 2018.

References

Theory-fiction or theory fiction, also know as theoretical fiction, is a type of writing marked by the merger of theoretical and narrative modes of communication wherein fiction is not a mere vehicle or expression of theory nor theory the culminating terminus of narrative which subsequently passes away. Theory fiction is storytelling reflectivlely aware of itself as a discorse generative of meaning. As such, it remains along the borderlands between theory and fiction. Relatively amorphous and overlapping several established genres (such as sci-phi, philosophical fiction, hysterical realism (or recherché postmodernism), and autofiction) it has been described as a style, a genre, or an attitude. Theory-fiction can involve “fiction as theory,” or the “becoming-fiction of theory” (wherein the theorist eschews academic expectations of style for the sake of an expansion of understanding by the embrace of narrative elements). Or it can involve “theory as fiction,” or the “becoming-theory of fiction” (wherein story passes into theoretical territory by, for example, narrator reflection or character musings).

Examples

One of the founding modern exponents of theory-fiction is Iranian-Italian philosopher, Reza Negarestani, whose 2008 work, Cyclonopedia is an instantiation of the genre.According to Negarestani, philosophy must presuppose the reality of fiction as a primary disclosure of worlds within which philosophy becomes aware of itself and the problems of inarticulacy to which it applies concept and theory. Similarly, the three-volume Time and Narrative (1983-1985) of French hermeneutical phenomenologist,Paul Ricoeur, is governed by the hypothesis that “in every narrative configuration” there is “an effort of thinking at work” which is “completed in a refiguration of temporal experience.” In this respect, narrative is an attempt to make human life more livable by articulating a temporal plot as comprehensively meaningful. This “fictionalization” of temporality makes humanity appear to itself in a world. Out of this context, theoretical questioning arises as a response to that which, within it, appears as in excess of its coherence. Also of importance is the Cybernetics Cultural Research Unit (1995-2003), a para-academic collective of cultural theorists loosely based at Warwick University, which developed a highly-specified use of the term, “hyperstitional theory-fiction” to describe both its fundamental intellectual claim (that ideas can inform social systems to instantiate their reality) and syncretistic form(s) of writing that combined the occult, surreal, psychoanalytic, critical-theoretical, cyberpunk and horror genres. This viewpoint develops the reciprocal co-emergence of theory and fiction in a contemporary setting based on the recognition that the real and illusory are no longer separable in a hyper-technologized society. The most consequential presentation of theory-fiction for Western letters was Plato’s corpus, which, written in dramatic and dialogical florm, draws together narrative and theoretical modes of understanding in a blended manner that permits protological and eschatological storytelling (the generation of new, or renewed myths) to frame and delimit conceptual argumentation on analogy to the way that, within time, the body fundamentally conditions the mind.

Classic modern examples of theory-fiction often relate to Romantic and post-Romantic intellectual trends in Europe: Kierkegaard, , Fear and Trembling (1843), Schelling, Clara (1862), Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1891), and even Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum (1988). A recent example of theory-fiction is philosopher W. C. Hackett’s 2021 novella, Outside the Gates’',which tells the story of existentialist philosopher and poet, Jean Wahl’s escape from Drancy Internment Campand underground flight to the free zone during the Occupation. Hackett, a specialist in modern French philosophy,and translator of Wahl’s 1944 Existence humaine et trascendance,explores the common territories of theory and narrative by appeal to Wahl’s philosophy and his biography, exploring the meaning of universal and perennial human-defining themes: time, death, humanity, evil, justice, friendship, love, God. The novel is articulated within a highly developed referential structure in which the protagonist, “outside the gates” of the Camp and, at the meta level, of the Body, becomes “Everyman” in dialogue with an interlocutor-companion and on a return journey to his beginnings, in search of a spiritual awakening that promises a final shattering of existential illusion.