15.09.2004

Frank Furedi and abstract

Marc Simpson gives his view on the new book of a former leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party - who has clearly rejected Marxism

Wednesday September 8 saw the book launch for Frank Furedi’s new work Where have all the intellectuals gone?, organised by the Spiked website in collaboration with Hill and Knowlton and the Continuum International Publishing Group. Furedi is of course a figure of great controversy, his perceived shifts of political stance (along with those of the now defunct Revolutionary Communist Party and Living Marxism/LM) often being cited as an example of dislocating party from class, theory from base.

The environment of the launch was discernibly bourgeois in character; I found myself in midst of a dapper, suited drinks party, provided with an opportunity to play ‘spot the financial adviser’ and its slight permutation, ‘speculate the stockbroker’. Sandy Starr, ticket organiser, deduced that I must be one of those “Marxist types” - a conclusion drawn with a markedly derogatory tone. How far these people have come.

The talk itself was interesting, though at times quite vague and generalised (more of a preface to thebook than anything else). Seeing Furedi speak in person, and having read some of his earlier works (The new imperialism, Culture of fear, Therapy culture), I was finally able to pinpoint the source of my previous ambivalence over his writings: his sociological approach.

Furedi’s works never seem to contextualise themselves, yet definitely make allusions to underlying social dynamics and trends. As a reader, one is left with a swirl of overly specific knowledge with that crucial element lacking - the vantage of totality. It is this contradiction that precludes the application of some of Furedi’s more coherent analyses. Disparate, fragmented snippets of insight are provided, pinches of incisive clarity; yet these are inchoate, and it is left to the student both to relate them to external social factors and develop them to a more satisfactory and tangible level. Overall, that is the crux of the Furedian canon: a sociological, rather than dialectical, approach. The old Marxist still makes himself known from time to time - hidden gems in the talk such as allusions to a historical “revolutionary dynamic”. Unfortunately, without developing these implications further, they become mere hollow and allusive (perhaps even illusory) categories.

Since Furedi is a controversial figure on both the left and right alike, it is hardly surprising that a proliferation of mixed reviews can be found on this, his latest offering. Two notable recent examples are from David Aaronovitch (The Observer) and Terry Eagleton (New Statesman).

Aaronovitch’s review fails to tackle both the substance and the problems that I considered to be at the heart of Furedi’s talk; nor does it recognise the validity of some of the more interesting and culturally critical aspects. One of the more coherent and interesting subjects that Furedi presented was that of the current climate of depoliticised democracy and its subsequent implications in terms of electronic voting. He made the point that, instead of questioning the basis for underlying apathy within the current system, problems are masked by suggesting alternative forms of engagement. Efforts are thus invested in attempting to boost participation on a purely statistical level (increase the ease of voting and thus increase the turnout) rather than addressing underlying issues of why politics is perceived as redundant in this, our allegedly post-industrial and post-ideological age.

Here is a prime example of alienated logic, symptomatic of capitalist ideological hegemony. Aaronovitch reflects this in his dubious subtitle: “A study attacks today’s intellectuals for being too willing to dumb down. Rubbish: it’s just a new style of democracy.”

Terry Eagleton takes a very different, and wholly more positive, approach to Furedi’s work. From the outset he addresses the notion of intellectualism from the vantage point of totalised thought (“one mark of the classical intellectual ... was that he or she refused to be pinned to a single discipline”). From this standpoint, Furedi is read as a re-injection of this polymathic approach into criticism and analysis. Eagleton describes Furedi as a “radical democrat” whose work might at first seem like “another rightwing jeremiad”, stressing the need for people’s self-transformation of their identities in contemporary culture.

This analysis can serve to elucidate a couple of things about Furedi, I think. Firstly, an apt political description would be that of the modern liberal, stressing the need for equality of opportunity and individual responsibility in the political and social realm - this approach of course has little room for the politics of class. Secondly, Eagleton’s depiction of Furedi as an enlightenment-value thinker illustrates the abstraction that has occurred in the latter’s works over recent years. Having divorced himself from proletarian politics, Furedi “does not see market forces ... as the chief villain” in the realm of pop-culture, but rather “the main factor is the politics of inclusion”. Furedi has substituted political economy for ‘purely’ social constructs.

This also contextualises the approach of the Spiked group in general: Furedi’s themes (culture of fear, therapy culture) are not presented as manifestations or tools of capitalist hegemony (as, for example, Jameson might do), but rather as something intrinsic to an abstract ‘culture’. Risk to a diminished self (or diminished intellectual) is therefore not seen in terms of the political and economic conditions that foster it, but instead in an idealised and independent form. This enables the Spiked team to follow this book launch up with ‘Risky business’ - a talk examining “the difference between genuine and exaggerated risks, in areas ranging from business and technology to food and finance”.

One must ask the question - is the central concern of the day something as abstract as intellectualism? Furedi seems to have dissolved hitherto concrete categories of social relations and totality into the abstract and philosophical. Aaronovitch raises the point that he seems to be conducting his critique within contradictory categories, criticising postmodern trends of relativism while beseeching the intellectual community to undertake any form of new search for their permutation of truth. Here, I feel, Aaronovitch is being unreasonable, for what Furedi is calling for is the progressive act of research and freedom and independence of criticism.

However, multiple truths or not, having renounced Marxism, Furedi appears to be locked in the realm of abstract ideal categories of capitalised ‘Truths'.