A Personal Email to Eric Kaufmann
Sad tales of modernity #4
Dear Professor Kaufmann,
It has been my intention to get in touch with you for some time. I haven’t done so up to this point because I was planning to introduce myself in person at the Centre of Heterodox Social Science inaugural conference taking place this week, having been kindly invited by Charlie Downes. Unfortunately, however, I am now unable to attend due to starting a new job (which I could not pass up due to my economic circumstances).
Very recently, I officially completed my doctoral research at the University of York, Department of Philosophy, which I started in September 2019, immediately after completing my Master’s at the same institution. Of course, it isn’t necessary to dive too deeply into the theoretical details of my research here, but I thought you may be interested to know why my findings are so significant (and especially relevant to the new Centre’s intended aims). There is not only an extraordinary lack of literature covering critical theory’s praxial development since the Frankfurt School set itself to the task of deconstructing “transcendent” and ultimately ideological structures of power using Hegel’s presuppositionless method; despite Adorno and Marcuse giving almost prophetic warnings in Negative Dialectics and One Dimensional Man respectively about the potential for capitalism to forcibly unify its opposites, very few if any academics working within critical theory and critical social theory today have expressed any concerns for the fact that critical theory is showing symptoms of the “hegemonic” form under capitalism that Adorno and particularly Marcuse anticipated.
What makes this all the more surprising, and perhaps even suspicious from a Marxist’s point of view, is that almost no mention of the possibility that what we understand as “woke” may be the product of capitalism’s dialectical unification with progressive politics, with the international enforcement of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion being the most advanced emanation (this is all, of course, without mentioning the fact that the most enthusiastic lobbyists for these changes appear to be from multinational financial institutions). One could thus interpret "woke" not as a symptom of critical theory succeeding (as seems to be the prevailing narrative), but emphatically failing.
After completing my PhD, I was hoping to extend my research into a post-doctoral project involving Habermas and the “public sphere”. However, nobody from contemporary academia will touch it because it involves using critical theory to demonstrate that intersectionality as a social model doesn't stand up on its own terms.
Due to being essentially ‘frozen out’ of both academia and the podcasting industry, I am now working in a different profession to financially recover from self-funding my research for the last seven years. I am saddened by this outcome, because my ambition was to defend the integrity of critical theory in the genuine belief that it has much to offer in its proper, dialectical form. From my perspective, the Centre for Heterodox Social Science is the only institution that looks like a conceivable host for such research. To get straight to the point: if this would be of any interest to anyone at the department at all (including you) at some point in the future, I’d be delighted to discuss the details further.
I have attached three documents for your consideration. One is my doctoral thesis, should you be interested in reading it (you can get the general ‘gist’ by reading the preliminary chapter). The others are my academic CV and the post-doctoral research proposal that I submitted to the British Academy last year.
In the meantime, I wish you all the best of luck with the conference. Needless to say, you have rounded up some outstanding speakers. I hope to be in touch with you again very soon.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Thomas William Dowling