Adler: Forces of the Self

Caroline Adler, M.A.: Forces of the Self. Esoteric Discourses on Force between Faith and Science

The research project investigates the emergence, transformation, and persistence of esoteric forms of knowledge at the intersection of modern science and symbolic interpretations of the world. The focus is on the question of how esoteric movements legitimize themselves epistemically, particularly through the semantics of “force” – especially in areas where modern (natural) science is increasingly devoted to the macro- or microscopic “beyond the senses”, reaching the limits of its comprehensibility. Based on a historical analysis of esoteric movements around 1900, the project asks how these discourses transform scientific concepts (such as “energy,” “frequency,” “field,” or “vibration”) in order to establish their own, supposedly scientifically based counter-epistemology. 

Informed by research in Cultural Studies on the nexus of science and esotericism, esotericism is understood here not as an irrational residue or “metaphysics of stupid people” (Adorno), but as an epistemic formation within modern knowledge cultures. The project highlights how esoteric discourses develop a contemporary appeal (for example, in current self-help and self-optimization literature or in the post-pandemic boom in alternative healing concepts), and how they deliberately attempt to distinguish themselves from religious or spiritual interpretations.

The project interprets the reactivation of esoteric concepts of force in current contexts as a reaction to the epistemological obscurity of modern natural sciences – an obscurity that began at the start of the 20th century with the revolutions in quantum physics, biochemistry, and radiology, and has shaped the relationship between knowledge, experience, and world view ever since.

Methodologically, the project combines historical discourse analyses with close readings of esoteric texts and a contextualization of ideas and the history of science. The aim is to open up a culturally and historically grounded perspective on the semantic, aesthetic, and political functions of the esoteric as a knowledge-forming practice – as a medium in which alternative, sometimes ambivalent notions of “forces of the self” are negotiated between meaning-making, knowledge critique, and market logic.