Mimi Michael Howard

Modern European intellectual history, history of political thought, political theory, critical theory, Marxism, feminist theory, and religion.

My PhD research focuses on the contributions of a group of German émigré thinkers —including Arendt, Adorno, Marcuse, Taubes, Voegelin, Schütz, Kelsen—to the 'renewal' of political philosophy in post-war universities. I am most interested in the way they both call upon and stage a critique of Western philosophical tradition in the project of broadening the remit of political thought—one that centered not so much the state, institutions, or notions of justice, but rather on a deep questioning of what constitutes a political subject. In so doing, and in contrast to movements in Anglo-American political philosophy, these thinkers appealed not to social scientific or psychological explanations of politics, but to phenomenological and genealogical method, centering experience and history in their attempts to carve out a non-positivist epistemology of politics and political life. Their riposte to liberalism's 'grand theory' is examined in terms of both its limitations and possibilities.