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Between the Topoi and Hope: On Ben Agger, Social Ontology, and Disciplinary Sociology

2017; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.32855/fcapital.201701.008

1930-014X

Mark P. Worrell,

Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice

As a graduate student in the early 90s I spent many days rummaging through the library at the University of Kansas trying to get a handle on the world of Critical Social Theory.One author I repeatedly encountered was Ben Agger.I asked Bob Antonio about "this Ben Agger guy" who seemed to me to be doing pretty interesting work, and a lot of it, too.As my imaginary map of critical theory developed over time, Ben Agger was one of the "big time" figures who populated that constellation; and he always remained, for me, one of the "big time" theorists.Years later, after I had landed a tenure track job at SUNY Cortland, I submitted a paper on 'The Other Frankfurt School' to a session organized by Ben at the annual ASA meeting.I hoped for little more than a polite rejection but, surprisingly, not only was my paper accepted but it eventually became my entrée into the journal Fast Capitalism.Wow, I thought, somebody up there likes me.Over the years, about a half dozen of my articles were published in Fast Capitalism with Ben and Tim Luke at the helm and I ended up writing a couple of small books for Ben's Routledge series.The last book is notable because it was, basically, the one that marked his departure as editor from his own series and the way he left it says a lot about the generosity, loyalty and heterodox nature of Ben Agger's vision of intellectual community.My little book on terrorism was a broad and critical examination of American foreign and domestic policy centered around terror as a kind of 'bow wave' generated by imperial motion.I liked the book, Ben was pleased, one reviewer thought it was just peachy, but another, one of those stuffed-shirt positivistic law and order types that the editor at Routledge selected to review the manuscript, was "horrified" and it looked like the book would be trashed on the basis of that single reaction.Ben fought intensely to get that book into print, and I gather the fight was somewhat brutal.Ultimately, Ben prevailed and as soon as Routledge capitulated, he resigned from his own series.He sent me two messages that day: your book will be published, and, about a minute later he sent another that said, by the way, I just resigned as editor.Obviously, I felt terrible over 'killing the series' --though it persists today under new editorship.I felt doubly bad because I know that while Ben might not literally wince in pain while reading my work, he could not have agreed with a lot of what I had to say.Indeed, I suspect that he viewed my whole theoretical project, synthesizing Marx with Durkheimian sociology with a degree of consternation --probably a great deal of consternation.My work toward a 'Marxheimian Sociology' could only look like a fool's errand to the vast and overwhelming majority of folks in the Critical Social Theory business, yet, that was Ben in a nutshell: supportive, generous and open-minded.His lack of dogmatism as well as his organizing energy made all the difference in my professional life and many scholars can say the same thing about the impact that Ben had on their careers and how he shaped their thinking.Ben Agger, in short, cultivated intellectual freedom, open-mindedness, and provided a space for a diverse group of scholars to stretch out and see what they could accomplish.And while many of us who circulate in and around Fast Capitalism will accomplish much in their scholarly lives, few will accomplish as much as Ben Agger did.Ben's scholarly record is, by any measure, astonishing but what separates him from most other prolific writers was his knack for being years ahead of everybody else.For example, social ontology is all the rage at the moment, yet, at a time when virtually nobody had the foresight to tackle the problem, Ben was all over it.His 1989 book,