Over the course of the past few weeks, Jason Wakefield (left) has been on the receiving end of all manner of quite undeserved obloquy. Some say that his editorials and book reviews for the Avello Publishing Journal consist of a bewildering succession of non sequiturs. Others that his highfalutin high-theory allusions belie a cargo-cult like obliviousness to what actually constitutes rational argument and persuasion. Yet others, that his writing inexplicably crowbars in gratuitous, fawning references to the University of Cambridge and members of his journal’s editorial board at every turn, as if childishly basking in reflected glory. Some have even suggested Jason’s claim that he holds a Cambridge doctorate is a witting untruth.
Wrong, all wrong!
What, I ask you, do his detractors have in common? A trustafarian’s decadent disdain for entrepreneurial vision and sheer hard work, even where it is in the service of publishing world-class scholarship in continental philosophy from the likes of John Milbank or Catherine Malabou. Cowards to a man, do Jason’s detractors genuinely believe that editorial board members of the calibre of Professor Claire Colebrook, Professor Keith Ansell-Pearson, or indeed the aforementioned Professor Catherine Malabou would allow their names to be associated with the Avello Publishing Journal if Dr Wakefield’s work were anything other than exemplary? For that matter, would Oxford University Press have considered for an instant including Jason’s endorsement of Korsgaard’s The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology in its marketing material if it did not have complete confidence in this young Cambridge scholar’s judgement?
With a sense of quiet self-confidence proper to his intellect – Dr Wakefield disarmingly describes his interests as ‘diverse, much like the interests of a polymath (πολυμαθής) such as Leonardo Da Vinchi or Gottfried Leibniz’ – Jason is surely an example to us all, but where his Facebook calumniators laugh hyena-like at Jason’s efforts in the guise of DJ Luga Ayd, pointing impertinently to his work for the Playboy Girls of Hawaiian Tropic ‘Beach Party Booby Bus’ Yum Yum Models Party on behalf of Funky Bubblers Entertainment (of which Jason is the proud CEO, and Avello Publishing a wholly-owned subsidiary), Wakefield may nonetheless rest content that his unique project is the future face of peer reviewed open-access philosophy publishing.