Daniel Louis Wyche is a Senior Fellow with the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. Wyche received his PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2020. His research centrally focuses on two broad areas: First, 19th and 20th century French, German, and American philosophies of religion, with emphasis on the idea of “spiritual exercises” as articulated by Pierre Hadot, or what Michel Foucault refers to as the ethics of the “care of the self,” among other articulations. Second, the role of religion in social movements, with a focus on the Civil Rights Era in the United States. Methodologically, his approach may be described as a kind of “history and philosophy of religions,” in which each of these general disciplinary areas works to challenge and develop the other.
As a fellow, Daniel will complete his first book, The Care of the Self and the Care of the Other, which will be published by Columbia University Press. The book investigates the underspecified political content and consequences of the class of practices generally called “spiritual exercises,” and seeks to understand the relationship between the care of the self and the care of the other, others, the community, and the city.
Daniel is also co-editor, with Niki Kasumi Clements, of Foucault’s Confessions, an interdisciplinary collection engages the recently published fourth volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, The Confessions of the Flesh, Foucault’s most extensive engagement with Christian sources and themes. This volume is currently in preparation for Columbia Press. The volume coincides with an ongoing five-year seminar on Foucault and Religious Studies, hosted annually by the American Academy of Religion, which began in the Fall of 2021, co-chaired with Dr. Clements. The seminar will ultimately produce a reader on Foucault and Religion.
Daniel is also an active musician, curator, programmer, and fundraiser within the world of experimental and improvised music. He has a strong interest in critical improvisation studies, and is currently developing new work that brings the study of religious practice (or other formally-similar practices) into dialogue with research on improvisation. This research dovetails with an interest in the politics of arts funding, representation, and the complex relationship between arts production and performance and the economic (and related) conditions under which artists are currently working.