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ralowe's review against another edition
4.0
experimenting right now with writing while emotionally affected by the subject, the undermining of class struggle at the level of consciousness. (i might re-write this later.) maybe i'm trying to access the relationship between marx and freud, the strains of analysis that are the go-to for a cultural critic, and a relationship marcuse attempts to explore here. it doesn't always work because what freud came up with hasn't had a century to be pored over rigorously and developed. freud's focus on interiority is still barely understood or elaborated upon meaningfully, because it's hard to track and study emotion. i'm working really hard on an anti-gentrification campaign, and please forgive the troublesome analogy, but my mind always goes directly to anzaldua's work with the figure of malinche, or a worldview based upon an unsustainable compromise. this compromise has looked like neoliberalism and in this moment the extensive infiltration of the fantasy of likeness and equality created by rendering struggle as parties wielding consumer power in the marketplace has fucked up so many things. people treat the market as so totalizing, it's impossible to think of what was before or will be after it. marcuse is writing at the dawn of neoliberalism, in the midst of what neoliberalism was contrived to counteract, counter-revolve. i think it was kevin floyd who said in *the reification of desire* that this was the book people actually read although they always confuse it with *one-dimensional man*. the book only bugs me around the nature and gender and sexuality stuff, but that's the wilderness freud opens us up to. i read *reason and revolution* a long time ago, and the frankfurt scene is so wallpaper to the worldview, reflecting on the extent is vital. marcuse reflections in this book on the relationship to art and revolution, as two separate entities, felt very specious, especially when he tiptoes into talking about blackness. lots of thinkers have approached and developed this relationship more thoroughly"_
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