Daniel Wagnon

After operating a non-profit offering services to the homeless and underprivileged in the Bay Area, Daniel came to the New School to complete his PhD in Philosophy. His research aims to uncover and bring to light the tradition of Phenomenological Marxism which until now remains an obfuscated, under-appreciated, and largely forgotten movement within 20th century Marxism and socio-political theory. His dissertation attempts to rectify this through the pursuit of three lines of analysis. The first task seeks to unearth and explicate the principle features of this tradition along with the major figures who make up this movement. The second focus attempts to demonstrate the virtues of this tradition in juxtaposition to the more dominate interpretations and forms of Marxist thought – namely, structuralism, critical theory, economism, and orthodox Marxism – where Phenomenological Marxism can be understood as both avoiding, and responding to, the set of problems which undermine these other approaches. Finally, it is argued that by utilizing the conceptual resources found in Phenomenological Marxism, primarily we-subjectivity, lived-history, groups-in-fusion, group-intentionality, etc., we can find the resources for offering a re-interpretation of Marxist Praxis that provides new avenues for understanding the dynamics which sustain effective collective social-political action, while avoiding the problematic binary between a praxis rooted in either an over-centralized vanguard party, or a disperse network of de-centralized, though ineffective, affinity-groups.