PhD Oral Exam - Carlos Velásquez, Social and Cultural Analysis

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Karl Marx is often considered to be an anti-utopian thinker on the grounds of his and Friedrich Engels’s critique of the “utopian socialists” in the Communist Manifesto. However, Marx’s opposition to these early socialist thinkers stems from the lack of utopian aspiration that their projections profess. For Marx, the “phalanesters” that these thinkers envision are constrained by bourgeois aspirations; rather than putting forward effective transformative plans, they reinforce reactionary social arrangements. In an effort to reaffirm the utopian valence of Marx’s critique, this thesis presents a re-reading of Capital Volume 1 to consider the formulation of the “negation of the negation” as a methodological proposition of utopian character. By defining the utopian essence of Marx’s dialectical critique as negative utopia, I argue that, in negating the absolute character of capitalist forms of appearance, Marx uncovers the postcapitalist possibilities that exist within capitalist mechanisms of abstraction, equation, and alienation.

To underscore the utopian character of Marx’s critical method, this thesis also traces the development of this form of analysis, of a negative utopia, in the works of Marxist thinkers, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Herbert Marcuse, and Fredric Jameson. The genealogy presented here demonstrates the prevalence of this utopian impulse in the progression of Marxist theory, particularly in works which consider ideological critique as central to Marxian thought. This review of the ideas of these thinkers highlights the developments and expansions they introduced, incorporating elements of non-identity, desire, and consciousness into the conception of utopia, thereby enriching both the speculative and utopian dimensions.