Tommaso Caprotti
I am a PhD Candidate (2021-2025) in PAIS working in political theory/political philosophy. I hold a BA (Liberal Arts: Humanities) from Amsterdam University College, an MA (Religious Studies) from SOAS, an MSc (Political Theory) from the LSE, and an MPhil (Political Thought and Intellectual History) from the University of Cambridge.
My project is supervised by Professor Matthew Watson, and Professor Stuart Elden.
Research Project
Throughout my PhD project, I aim to recuperate Marx’s concept of alienation and tie it into his mature critique of Political Economy, in particular via the concept of abstract labour. In formulating this reconstruction, I engage with a particular current of Marxist value-theory, which I term ‘hyper-Hegelian’: unlike forms of Hegelian Marxism which transpose the dialectic within material reality proper; and against currents which attempt to reduce Marxism to an objective “science”, or to straitjacket the critique of political economy within a crude analytical framework — this form of Marxism locates the dialectic exclusively at the mediating frontier where private labour becomes social, via abstraction. I counter contemporary rejections of Marx’s critique of alienation as “essentialist” by contending that, for Marx, alienation refers to the estrangement of a process rather than of an essence.
By connecting this “reconstructed” concept of alienation to a coextensive positive conception of labour, I intend to intervene into contemporary debates concerning freedom and self-realization by positively engaging with the thought of, amongst others, thinkers such as Rahel Jaeggi and Martin Hägglund. At the same time, I aim to critique the recent theoretical trend which imagines futures of post-work and accelerated automation.
More generally, my (still limited) expertise lies in subject areas ranging from political philosophy to the history of political thought. Broader interests include the history of economic thought, feminist theory, the history of Marxism.
Teaching
I am currently (2022-2023) teaching seminar groups for the module ‘Political Research in the 21st Century’ (PO102), a core component for the undergraduate degrees in Politics and in Politics and International Studies.
Advice and Feedback Hours
I am based in London: contact me via email and we can arrange to meet in person when I’m on campus, usually Mondays and Tuesdays.