VL page 77 Sasha & Turn.2

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2003-09-28 at 21:11, Terrance wrote:
> 
> 
> To be sure. these characters have not disappeared from the
> literature of advanced industrial society. but they survive
> essentially transformed. The vamp, the national hero, the
> beatnik. the neurotic housewife, the gangster, the star, the
> charismatic tycoon perform a function very different from and
> even contrary to that of their cultural predecessors. They are
> no longer images of another way of life but rather freaks or
> types of the same life. serving as an affirmation rather than
> negation of the established order. 
> 
> http://cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/marcuse/odm3.html

Not to mention that a self described sexually licentious person (not to
say robotic terminator) is well on the way to becoming the next governor
of California, an event that will be easily absorbed into our
consciousness as a step toward diversity.  

Chapter 3 of One-Dimensional Man (source of quote) takes up the concept
of Repressive Desublimation, which more or less means that the free and
easy ways of American civilization and culture--particularly in the area
of sexuality--that began accelerating exponentially in the 60s is not
liberating as might have been expected but is actually being put to work
in the service of the established order. (the way I read this is that if
eventually everything is allowed there will be no room left for freely
pursuing the forbidden but I'm not a philosopher)

Marcuse is not new to turning concepts on their head. In his 50s book on
Freud he promoted the possibility of nonrepressive sublimation.

That H.M. is some Orwellian dude.

P.