Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
How Marcuse and Bloch Contribute to a Critical Appalachian Utopianism
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Recent Appalachian scholarship calls for critical, political, and imaginative approaches to work and education in the region. In their essay “Developing Appalachia: The Impact of Limited Economic Imagination,” Fickey and Samers argue that Appalachian public development projects have failed to redress the region’s deep poverty and inequality because planners have carried out development schemes without adequate critical thinking, political vigor, and imagination. Reichert Powell similarly appeals to the imagination’s power for forging seditious and critical visions of Appalachia’s future. In this paper, I argue that the critical utopian school of thought is helpful for critical, imaginative, and political Appalachian regional studies. The critical utopian philosophers Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch are deeply concerned with two issues central to the field of Appalachian studies: changing patterns of work under advanced capitalism and the depoliticization of radical scholarship within the academy. My application of critical utopian thought to Appalachian labor and higher education issues, particularly controversies surrounding campus divestment/reinvestment campaigns and the Fight for Fifteen, reveals openings for transformation and illustrates how we can look to the visions of Marcuse and Bloch to locate the most urgent issues facing Appalachian scholarship and activism, imagine solutions to these issues, and instill hope for successfully confronting them.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Judson Abraham is a PhD student in Virginia Tech’s ASPECT program (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought). Judson’s research interests include globalization, social movements, political economy, and labor politics
How Marcuse and Bloch Contribute to a Critical Appalachian Utopianism
Recent Appalachian scholarship calls for critical, political, and imaginative approaches to work and education in the region. In their essay “Developing Appalachia: The Impact of Limited Economic Imagination,” Fickey and Samers argue that Appalachian public development projects have failed to redress the region’s deep poverty and inequality because planners have carried out development schemes without adequate critical thinking, political vigor, and imagination. Reichert Powell similarly appeals to the imagination’s power for forging seditious and critical visions of Appalachia’s future. In this paper, I argue that the critical utopian school of thought is helpful for critical, imaginative, and political Appalachian regional studies. The critical utopian philosophers Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch are deeply concerned with two issues central to the field of Appalachian studies: changing patterns of work under advanced capitalism and the depoliticization of radical scholarship within the academy. My application of critical utopian thought to Appalachian labor and higher education issues, particularly controversies surrounding campus divestment/reinvestment campaigns and the Fight for Fifteen, reveals openings for transformation and illustrates how we can look to the visions of Marcuse and Bloch to locate the most urgent issues facing Appalachian scholarship and activism, imagine solutions to these issues, and instill hope for successfully confronting them.
