Herbert Marcuse

Negating that which Negates us: Marcuse, Critical Theory and the New Politics of Refusal

by Christian Garland

‘Negating that which Negates us: Marcuse, Critical Theory and the New Politics of Refusal’ (under review) in Radical Philosophy Review. Version of paper presented as part of Panel 24: ‘Looting, Refusing, Negating, Embodying’, 'Critical Refusals’ Fourth Biennal Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Society, University of Pennsylvania, 27-29 October 2011

Arte, experiencia estética y liberación, in « A. Rivera Garcia (ed.): Schiller, Arte y política, edit.um (ediciones de la universidad de Murcia), Murcia, 2010, pp. 109-124.

by Alessandro Bertinetto

La meditazione sulla tecnica di José Ortega y Gasset. Materiali per un dibattitto aperto. Saggi, riferimenti bibliografici, interventi. N.4. Luciano Espinosa Rubio.

by Pietro Piro

Luciano Espinosa Rubio, Razón, naturaleza y técnica en Ortega y la Escuela de Frankfurt, Localización: Isegoría: Revista de filosofía moral y política, ISSN 1130-2097, Nº 21, 1999 , págs. 101-129.

El ensayo contrasta dos grandes posturas ante el fenómeno omnipresente de la técnica, en estricta relación con las... more El ensayo contrasta dos grandes posturas ante el fenómeno omnipresente de la técnica, en estricta relación con las concepciones profundas de lo racional y lo natural que le subyacen. Ortega por un lado, y Adorno, Horkheimer y Marcuse por otro, son excelentes ejemplos de visiones muy diferentes pero complementarias, que además conjugan aspectos antropológicos, históricos y políticos de gran importancia para ofrecer una panorámica global en este campo, sin reduccionismo alguno, y ayudar así a repensar nuestro presente.

Marcuse Remade? Theory and Explanation in Hardt and Negri

by John Grant

Published in Science & Society

An unexpected confrontation involving Ernesto Laclau, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Herbert Marcuse serves as a... more An unexpected confrontation involving Ernesto Laclau, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Herbert Marcuse serves as a testing ground for one of political theory's most basic tasks: to determine the concepts that are used to theorize politics. Laclau claims that by relying on a concept of immanence, Hardt and Negri cannot account for the relational nature of politics. Defending Hardt and Negri by turning their work against itself reveals unacknowledged and unintended affinities with Marcuse's critical theory. Disclosing these affinities rescues a productive understanding of immanence from Laclau's critique. Moreover, the dialectical logic employed by Marcuse is notable for its ability to make sense of and articulate the politics of Empire and multitude. Following from Marcuse, the significant dialectical roots of Hardt and Negri's work display how a dialectical approach to contemporary politics can give an account of far more than just the labor movement.

Theodor W. Adorno, die Frankfurter Schule und ihre Rezeption durch die 68er Bewegung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

by Sebastian Levi

**published in German language** Verschriftliches Referat 2011

Skizziert grob Rezeption und Einfluß der Frankfurter Schule durch und von der bundesdeutschen Studentenbewegung 1968. Skizziert grob Rezeption und Einfluß der Frankfurter Schule durch und von der bundesdeutschen Studentenbewegung 1968.

Encyclopedia entry on Herbert Marcuse and Ethics

by Geoff Pfeifer

A draft of my entry on Marcuse forthcoming in the International Encyclopedia of Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell)

Counter-Learning Under Opression

by Ilhan Kucukaydin

My doctoral thesis

This qualitative study utilized narrative analysis to explore and better understand the counter-learning of an... more This qualitative study utilized narrative analysis to explore and better understand the counter-learning of an oppressed Kurdish woman, Zelo, from Turkey. The study looked specifically at the process of developing counter-learning under multilayered oppression from her childhood through the present. The theoretical frameworks of critical constructivism and Marcusian critical theory provided the lens which guided the study. Whereas critical constructivism was utilized to analyze adults’ counter-learning under extreme oppressive situations, Marcusian critical theory was used to analyze the socio-political context in a greater scale and its impact on the oppressed.

A series of semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted. The focus of the data gathering was Zelo’s past and present experiences under various layers of oppression to explore the phenomenon and gain more insights.

The major findings are related to two key inseparable phenomena: the nature of oppression and the dynamics of counter-learning. This study revealed that oppression is not only multi-layered, it is also multi-dimensional. In addition, oppression creates its own vital cultural components that play a crucial role in both feeding back the system of oppression and maintaining it, and also creating subjective and material conditions to resist the given ways of knowing, learning, sensing, feeling, and being. Some of the components are culture of creating a caretaker, culture of silence, culture of objectification, culture of double bind, and culture of learned-hopelessness. This study provided many insights into counter-learning. Zelo’s narrative revealed that through her daily struggle and circumstances, she learned to conceptualize, problematize, and politicize daily oppressive occurrences. She usually did this without deliberate articulation of it. Engaging with counter-learning, Zelo also learned to make meaning out of seemingly innocent and apolitical experiences. For example, motherhood, in her hands, became subversive rather than submissive; collective rather than individual; and it has become empowering rather than empowered by third parties. Zelo also saw and felt the power of words and concepts. She began distinguishing words and giving them socio-political meaning. In addition, engaging counter-learning not only restored her self image that was derogated and damaged by the oppression but also increased her self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-respect. Furthermore, she experienced transformation, which manifested itself morally, spiritually, and politically. Finally, the data indicated counter-learning was emotional, symbolic and imaginative. Based on these findings, implications for adult education theory and practice are discussed. Included are suggestions for future research on counter-learning under oppression.

Reactionary Liberalism: Mortimer J. Adler’s Post-Sixties Faith in the ‘American Testament’

by Tim Lacy

This paper will be presented Thursday, November 17, 2011, in New York City at The Graduate Center (CUNY) for the Fourth Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference (USIH 4.0).

Herbert Marcuse's Critique of Technological Rationality: An Exegetical Reading

by Marcelo Vieta

(2006, March). Unpublished paper.

In this paper I set out to exegetically work through Marcuse’s dialectically enfolded and historically-materialist... more In this paper I set out to exegetically work through Marcuse’s dialectically enfolded and historically-materialist concept of “technological rationality” as it is presented in his 1964 book, One-Dimensional Man. In the process, I first outline what Marcuse means by “technological rationality” and clarify how he situates the concept within his broader critique of the ideology and practices of advanced industrial society. Second, I sketch out Marcuse’s complex dialectical sojourns that diagnose how we have become “preconditioned” to think one-dimensionally (Marcuse, 1964, p. 8) and how this technologically rationalized preconditioning both differs from its roots in “pre-technological rationality” and yet is presupposed by this genealogical inheritance. And lastly, I attempt to articulate how Marcuse’s “post-technological rationality” envisions civilizational change not only depending on redirecting the goals and ends of technological systems but, more vitally, on transforming the very rationality that permeates technology’s logic and advanced industrial society’s technological base.

Hope for Our Technological Inheritance? From Substantive Critiques of Technology to Marcuse’s Post-Technological Rationality

by Marcelo Vieta

(2010). Strategies of Critique. 1(2), pp. 1-20.

In this paper I seek to revisit Herbert Marcuse’s radical, dialectical, and materialist critique of technology in... more In this paper I seek to revisit Herbert Marcuse’s radical, dialectical, and materialist critique of technology in light of the other, more utopian side to his critiques of technological rationality. My principle aim in doing so is to begin to reclaim his vision of a “post-technological rationality” for contemporary radical left politics. Specifically, in this paper I first very briefly present the substantivist view of technology exemplified by the negative side of Marcuse’s technology critique, and Heidegger’s, Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s related critiques of technology (Marcuse’s main philosophical reference points on the theme). I then explore Marcuse’s “other side” to his two-folded theory of technological rationality. This other, more positive view of technology is rooted in Marcuse's “ambivalence theory of technology,” laying out the more efficacious possibilities it offers us for re-valuing the technological base of advanced capitalist society within rematerialized values of love, joy, refusal, and sensuousness. I will ultimately make the argument that as a conceptual framework for diagnosing and moving beyond today’s conjuncture of free market triumphalism, Marcuse helps us fundamentally see that our technology does not have to be guided by the values of productivism, ecological domination, total control, or profit. Underscoring the continued relevance of Marcuse’s analysis for today’s radical left, I conclude the paper by presenting six key historical conjunctural moments in Marcuse’s writings on technology that prefigure some contemporary examples of technological liberation within the newest global social justice movements, examples that in many ways illustrate Marcusean-like re-rationalized technological re-appropriations by those struggling against global capital from below.

Eros & Urban Society (conference paper)

by Keith Harris

toward a marcusean critique of postmodern consumer culture and the built environment

by Keith Harris

modified version of a term paper from a course on the rhetoric of consumerism.  writing it has helped me orient myself toward what i hope will be some major themes for my research: consumerism as a form of social control/containment force and the importance of 'strong subjectivity' in postmodernism.

"La autonomía, como el ser, se dice de muchas maneras"en VV.AA, Nuevos territorios de la literatura latinoamericana, Instituto de Literatura Hispanoamericana, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Oficina de Publicaciones del CBC, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1997, pp. 131-139. ISBN: 950-29-0477-X 66-01-01-998-21.

by Claudia Gilman

teoría literaria en acción

The Spectacular Father and the Internalized Gaze as Commodified Perversion: Reading Lacan’s Paternal Function and Foucault’s Panopticon in the History of Punk

by Christopher Criswell

Herbert Marcuse: Social Critique, Haecker and Kierkegaardian Individualism

by J Michael Tilley

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Social-Political Thought, v. 14, ed. Jon Stewart. Ashgate, 2011, pp. 137-146. This manuscript was my final submission for the book. The entire book will likely be available on GoogleBooks in the near future.

This paper describes and critically assesses Marcuse's two significant treatments of Kierkegaard. Marcuse's earlier... more This paper describes and critically assesses Marcuse's two significant treatments of Kierkegaard. Marcuse's earlier work saw in Kierkegaard potential for radical social critique, but his more mature work rejects the view. Marcuse claims, first, that Kierkegaard is concerned primarily with the individual and inwardness, and second, that the Kierkegaardian individual is fundamentally at odds with the Hegelian image of a socially-constituted self. According to Marcuse, then, Hegel allows for and suggests a valuable social critique, while Kierkegaard only presents a weak and impotent social critique problematically grounded in a religious world- and life-view. I argue that Marcuse's reading of Kierkegaard is suspect because it is based on a single text filtered through a specific ideological translation.

‘Marcuse, Aesthetics, & the Logic of Modernity,’ Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, vol. 14, n.2, (2010), p.383-398.

by Gavin Rae

Herbert Marcuse is a thinker associated with one of the most radical and totalizing critiques of modernity ever... more Herbert Marcuse is a thinker associated with one of the most radical and totalizing critiques of modernity ever produced. Marcuse maintains that contemporary capitalist society is a one-dimensional prison that is capable of perpetuating itself by incorporating any criticism into its logic. Despite this totalization, Marcuse insists the realm of aesthetics is capable of escaping the logic of modern capitalism and establishing an alternative society that is grounded in an alternative non-repressive logic. However, it is argued that not only does Marcuse ground this transformation in a specific economic formation thereby ensuring that it is economics not aesthetics that grounds this social transformation, but his argument is based on a simplistic understanding of the relation between the aesthetic as a means of effecting individual transformation and the aesthetic affecting social transformation.

Onde está minha vassoura?

by Imaculada Kangussu

Herbert Marcuse e a dimensao estetica no Brasil

by Imaculada Kangussu

Thomas Kuhn e Herbert Marcuse.A estrutura das revoluções científicas e uma nova determinação do real

by Imaculada Kangussu

Memoria e esquecimento, em Nietzsche e Marcuse

by Imaculada Kangussu