The Critical theory of Herbert Marcuse : imagining the possible
Date
2000
Authors
Campbell, Colin John Benjamin
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Abstract
This thesis attempts to outline and develop feature of the critical theory of Herbert Marcuse which are salient to a theory of radical democracy, by comparing his theory with the work of Judith Butler. It investigates Marcuse's readings of Hegel, Marx and Freud, and the goal of attainment of the concrete that animates his theory throughout these readings. Relating Marcuse's development of the concrete necessity to his conception of praxis, it reads the theory of Judith Butler and her conceptualization of radical democratic praxis as running obliquely against the thought of Marcuse and his unorthodox version of socialist praxis. Specifically, it holds that Butler's writing must itself be understood as a form of praxis in a way that Marcuse never considered his texts to be, and that the performativity of her writing indicates a difference from Marcuse (and between Butler's radical democracy and Marcuse's erotic civilization) not so much in spirit as in approach.