The Freedom of Capital

The dissertation project inquires into the structure and the material conditions of the socially dominant liberal understanding of freedom. Drawing on contemporary feminist critiques of capitalist subjectivation (by Wendy Brown, Melinda Cooper, Nancy Fraser, and Silvia Federici, among others), the project examines the connection between the logic of capitalist production and a conception of freedom that implies the appearance of permanent change and of unlimited possibilities for transformation. At the methodological level, the work takes up Hegel’s and Marx’s analyses of bourgeois society, which reveal the genesis and inner logic of the liberal concept of freedom, and draws on them to show that the liberal state cannot conceive of the subjectivity-generating processes in political terms and thereby deprives itself of the possibility of shaping them. Contrary to this concept of freedom, which relies on the model of the freely choosing subject who is not restricted by any external conditions, the dissertation project will deal in the final part with practices of self-education as they were conceived by representatives of proletarian education and the women’s movement (especially Alexandra Kollontai, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and Clara Zetkin). Do changes in the organization of social production and reproduction also lead to changes in the modes of action and desire of the subject? Can we identify a changed concept of the free subject here, understood as one who freely gives him- or herself political determinations? To what extent do the processes of subjectivation taking place here point beyond the disciplining practices of subjectivation in capitalism, rather than merely founding another disciplinary system?

Mutable Nature

Frankfurt School Critical Theory is a theory of crises with a long history of critical interventions. Yet its voice is barely audible in the context of the climate crisis. Currently, therefore, the dynamics of the crisis of social relations to nature are increasingly being discussed in theoretical languages that exhibit only a meager social-theoretical and ideology-critical profile. The project assumes that conceptual problems of contemporary Critical Theory contribute to its disregard and that the theoretical elucidation of its own sources represents a starting point for its revision. The hitherto unsystematized reception of Schelling’s philosophy in Frankfurt School Critical Theory serves as a starting point for this undertaking.

On the Construction of Enemy Images: Populism and Authoritarianism in Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and the Frankfurt School

The question of antagonism is a constant in political theory. It has been at the center of major historical events, such as the French Revolution, and it is still at the core of contemporary debates. The much-discussed crisis of (liberal) democracy, for example, is closely related to the question of how to shape antagonistic oppositions.

In my study, I analyze the theories of Laclau, Mouffe, and the first generation of Critical Theory in terms of three dimensions that play a central role in the construction of antagonism: (1) the political, (2) the social, and (3) the psychological or psychoanalytic dimension. From this follows the thesis that a theory which aims to systematically grasp the complexity of antagonism must include all three of these aspects. On this basis, critical research can be conducted on the construction of productive and destructive antagonisms, such as in the context of the contemporary crisis of liberal democracy.

Speulative Epistemologies

Critique relies on speculation insofar as it must go beyond the immediately given in order to be able to think such constructs like society or "the social". Speculation thereby gains a moment of freedom from the existing order: it distances itself from the given and is at the same time a generative practice in which new concepts, connections, and theories may arise. In this sense, no critical theory can do without speculative elements. In my dissertation project, I develop these theses based on an examination of the theories of Theodor W. Adorno, Saidiya Hartman, and Donna J. Haraway. Despite their different contexts, all three exhibit a speculative element in their critique of society or sociality, which they also reflect upon. Speculation is not understood idealistically, but as a social force that gives voice to concrete and embodied experiences and pushes for specific forms of representation that mark the boundaries of philosophical discourse.

Forms of Dwelling and Forms of Thinking

This doctoral project explores the fundamental assumption that specific forms of dwelling enable specific forms of subjectivity, and that dwelling is a precondition for thought, a factor often abstracted from in social theory. The project therefore examines the reciprocal relationship between forms of dwelling and forms of thought and subjectivity, drawing on comparisons across different historical periods. The theoretical focal point of the project is an empirically open concept of habit.

Religious and Non-Religious Modes of Coping with Contingency in an Individualised Society

The humanities and social sciences tend to regard dealing with contingency as a primarily religious phenomenon. As a result of such a narrow view, non-religious forms of coping with contingency have not received the systematic examination they deserve. Moreover, the largely theoretical and intellectual-historical analyses of experiencing and dealing with contingency not only lack empirical foundation, but even the kind of conceptual precision necessary to adequately delineate the phenomenon. The present project addresses these desiderata: To this end, the project examines specifically modern experiences of contingency that are caused by current societal developments and which agents experience in the mode of a biographical conception of their lives. The aim is to develop an empirically founded theory to explain the formation, application and effects of religious and non-religious modes of coping with contingency.

The study’s results will serve, on the one hand, to expand our understanding of the functionality of religiousness and non-religiousness in processes of coping with contingency; on the other hand, they will contribute to bringing up to date sociology’s understanding of coping strategies under conditions of late modernity.

The Political Economy of Social Reproduction

The dissertation project examines the practice of nursing in hospitals and contributes to an understanding of the contradictory constellations of social reproduction and its reorganisation in contemporary capitalism as market-driven care work.

Starting from the premise that the orientation of the capitalist mode of production towards unlimited capital accumulation tends to destabilise the social reproduction of capitalist social formations, the research project examines this (crisis) tendency through the analytical prism of social-reproductive contradiction. The existing contradictions between care and capital, as currently experienced by nurses in public hospitals, form the starting point of the study. According to the guiding thesis, the deficits of public services in general can be identified in hospitals as an expression of this contradiction and, in particular, how it manifests itself in the daily work routines and work content of nurses can be examined.

Abject Nature. A theory of contemporary art after Georges Bataille

The doctoral project investigates how the capitalist relationship between spirit and nature is made experienceable in contemporary art. In art theory, such an investigation is usually reduced to the ecological question of flora and fauna, which aims to reconcile spirit and nature. Yet gender, body, race, and sexuality are also modulated as nature through this relationship. Nature is thus not only a precondition but also a determination of the capitalist spirit itself, from which this historical relationship to nature emerges. What does not serve the reproduction of the capitalist spirit is excluded from this determination as counter-natural; the modulations of the relationship to nature thus constitute corresponding exclusions of abject nature. Drawing on Georges Bataille's theory of art, the investigation is therefore based on works of contemporary art that, by the respective turning of abject natures against the very spirit that excludes them, render the fundamental irreconcilability of the capitalist relationship between spirit and nature experienceable. Indexing such inversions of abject nature in contemporary art and bringing them together in an overarching theory is the aim of this dissertation.

Negative Normativity: On the Actuality of Adorno’s Idea of Natural History for Critical Theory and Ecopolitics

Social theory has been a source of critical and normative tools for environmental thought, and the critical theory of society is no exception. This dissertation examines the enduring relevance of Adorno’s idea of natural history for contemporary critical theory of nature and ecopolitical debates. By reconstructing its materialist and normative dimensions, the dissertation demonstrates how this framework provides a crucial perspective for rethinking social theory in the context of ecological crisis, one that moves beyond narrowly intersubjective approaches to engage with the mediated relationship between humanity and nature. Furthermore, it explores the implications of this idea for current ecopolitical debates.

Frameworks of State Culturation

The doctoral project »Frameworks of State Culturation«, examines the orientations of central actors of the educational system in context of their daily work in authorities, schools, and extracurricular educational projects and with regard to migration-related discourses and experiences. The central research question of the project is: What are the orientations of actors in the school education system regarding the topic of migration? To address this question, semi-structured interviews and group discussions of educational actors in the education system from Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Saxony on the topics of migration are analysed by using the documentary method. The interviews were conducted with people from the school development institutes and state offices of the federal states, teachers, and actors from extracurricular educational institutions from 2020 to 2024.

Class Relations in Psychotherapy

This work begins with the observation that social class significantly influences the distribution of psychosocial distress in society, yet the specific social situation and position of those involved in psychotherapy far too often represent a blind spot. The project therefore aims to reconstruct the significance of class relations in therapy and focuses on the perspective of the practitioners. The study centers on their symbolic boundary-drawing and classification practices when dealing with patients from diverse social backgrounds. The study specifically inquires into which norms of competent self-management are employed by the practitioners, how they use these to address the situation of their patients—who are marked by current employment crises, acute threats of downward mobility, and denied aspirations of upward mobility—and in what ways the therapy contributes to the renegotiation or reproduction of class-related inequalities. The analysis is based on ethnographic observations and interviews with practitioners in eight psychosomatic clinics.

Consciousness and subjectification in the face of climate catastrophe

The project is situated in the field of psychoanalytic social psychology and investigates forms of consciousness and subjectification that have an effect on current reactions to the climate crisis. In particular, it examines the relationship between the capitalist exploitation of outer nature (climate & environment) and inner nature (body & psyche) and how it is reflected in psycho-social dynamics. Central to the project is the assumption that reactionary denial of the ecological crisis and individualised sustainability practices tend to have a conformist effect as far as they affirm the existing social conditions. The study is based on a depth -hermeneutical analysis of interviews with persons who exercise at the gym. The aim is to gain insights into the psychosocial dimensions of the climate crisis, the twofold relationship with nature, and the preconditions and obstructions to the necessary socio-ecological transformation.

Walter Benjamins »Arcades Project« as Theory of the Social Imaginary

The dissertation project pursues two interrelated goals. First, it develops a socio-philosophical reading of Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project as a theory of the social imaginary, thereby closing a gap in the research on Benjamin. It argues that Benjamin, although he does not use the term, operates with a concept of the social imaginary in the sense of an unconscious, collective, reflexive and constitutive image of society as well as the faculty of its production. Second, the dissertation project positions Benjamin in current debates about the social imaginary. It focuses on the question how the materiality of the imaginary, in the sense of its technical-medial mediation, can be conceived without denying the fundamental indeterminacy of social imagination and thus the possibility of social renewal. In this way, the close correspondence between imagination and the forces of production, and thus at the same time the historicity of the imaginary itself, becomes comprehensible.

Political talk shows as contested arenas for opinion-forming throughout German history

The starting point for this research is an empirical study of the shift in the sayability boundaries in political talk shows between 1980 and 2024. As an important arena for the media reenactment of political exchange, political talk shows are the subject of a wide variety of appeals, which are condensed here. Their research aims to provide information about which positions and statements are classified as legitimate and debatable at what point in time, and which are problematized, sanctioned, or completely excluded. The sociological reflection includes a reference back to the specificity of the field of research and its historical development. Only in this way can it be clarified which statements about social processes can be made through their analysis. In addition, it will be asked how the observed changes in the field of research relate to developments in society as a whole and how they are integrated into social power and domination structures.