Russ Leo studies early modern literature and philosophy as well as theory since the 1960s, paying particular attention to the long histories of Spinozism in Marxism, psychoanalysis, and other theoretical traditions. He is currently at work on two books: first, an account of the diverse strains of antipsychiatry that emerged in the Post-War period, from Thomas Szasz and L. Ron Hubbard to R. D. Laing to Félix Guattari; and, second, a book on nascent liberal theses on labor and the origins of political economy, tracing how Spinozan reflections on ethics and affects were integral to the study of desire, laboring bodies, and (anthropological) notions of interest and agency between 1650 and 1750.
