After a post-doctorate at the SUM (Istituto Italiano di Science Umane) under the guidance of Roberto Esposito, she taught at the University of Frankfurt, subsequently joining the faculty of The New School for Social Research, where she has been teaching since 2010.

The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations follows the interdisciplinary spirit of the early Frankfurt school by combining philosophy, psychoanalysis, and empirical research to examine the roots of Islamophobia in contemporary societies, particularly in the post 9/11 Western world.

[23][24] The imaginal, defined as the space made of images, of representations that are also presences in themselves, acts both as the result of an individual faculty as well as the product of the social context.

[25][26][27][28][29] Political theorist John Grant compared Bottici's approach to the social imaginary to that of Charles Taylor and Michael Warner, arguing that, although her work is an improvement on Taylor's understanding of the social imaginary as a mere "background," Bottici fails through her dismissal of ideology in its negative form, resulting in "an abandonment of the very dialectical mode that could have reinvigorated her work.

[35][36][37] The philosophy of transindividuality, according to which individuals must be understood not as objects, but as continuous and contingent processes of association that happen at the inter-, infra-, and supra-individual level, is central to Bottici's feminist writings.

[38] Her recent work in this area elaborates a contemporary theory of anarcha-feminism,[39] which argues against a one single principle (or arché) that explains gender oppression, and emphasizes ongoing interrogations of specific intersections of class, race, empire, sexuality, hetero- and cis- normativity.

[45] An important part of her work in this area was devoted to retelling the myths of femininity from the point of view of contemporary time, transforming figures of the old patriarchal mythology, such as Sheherazade, Ariadne, and Europa, into feminist symbols.

[46] Bottici's retelling of the myth of the "city of women" recalls Monique Wittig's Les guerrilieres, as well as other works in the écriture féminine tradition.

[47] Bottici's creative practice has extended to Anglophone poetry and the art of the libretto, including her collaboration with composer and multimedia artist Jean-Baptiste Barriere.