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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   28602 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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I'd like to draw attention to a specific passage from Marcuse's The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man (the full essay begins on page 44):

Now there is, in the advanced technological societies of the West, indeed a large desublimation (compared with the preceding stages) in sexual mores and behavior, in the better living, in the accessibility of culture (mass culture is desublimated higher culture). Sexual morality has been greatly liberalized; moreover, sexuality is operative as commercial stimulus, business asset, status symbol. But does this mode of desublimation signify the ascendancy of the life-preserving and life-enhancing Eros over its fatal adversary? Freud's concept of sexuality may provide a cue for the answer.

Central in this concept is the conflict between sexuality (as the force of the pleasure principle) and society (the institution of the reality principle) as necessarily repressive of the uncompromised claims of the primary life instincts. By its innermost force, Eros becomes "demonstration against the herd instinct," "rejection of the group's influence." In the technological desublimation today, the all but opposite tendency seems to prevail. The conflict between pleasure and the reality principle is managed by a controlled liberalization which increases satisfaction with the offerings of society. But in this form of release, libidinal energy changes its social function: to the degree to which sexuality is sanctioned and even encouraged by society (not "officially," of course, but by the mores and behavior considered as "regular"), it loses the quality which, according to Freud, is its essentially erotic quality, that of freedom from social control. In this sphere was the surreptitious freedom, the dangerous autonomy of the individual under the pleasure principle; its authoritarian restriction by the society bore witness to the depth of the conflict between individual and society, that is, to the extent of the repression of freedom. Now, with the integration of this sphere into the realm of business and entertainment, the repression itself is repressed: society has enlarged, not individual freedom, but its control over the individual. And this growth of social control is achieved, not by terror but by the more or less beneficial productivity and efficiency of the apparatus.

TL;DR - "It was more fun when we were in the closet."

The suggestion here is that as sexuality (outside the context of reproduction in a heterosexual marriage) becomes more socially acceptable, it begins to lose the creative and rebellious aspects that made it so distinctive in the first place. As a Marxist, Marcuse's overriding concern here would have been with the political dimension of sexuality, specifically with how societal views on sex relate to the hypothetical future proletarian revolution. Dreaming dangerously in the bedroom leads to dreaming dangerously in the political realm as well - that's the hope, anyway. But if the bedroom simply isn't dangerous anymore, because our liberal tolerant society has declared that everything is acceptable now, then this opportunity for political agitation is lost.

It was suggested in last week's thread by certain posters of a more traditionalist bent that a libertine attitude towards sexuality destroys the "magic special soul-bonding" that is proper to an authentic sexual connection. It is quite ironic to see the arch-Marxists of the Frankfurt school arguing for much the same position; although admittedly, in different terms, and for different ends. Maybe Hlynka was right after all??

Of course, our current political situation throws a bit of a wrench in Marcuse's account of things, because there's plenty of old-style repression to go around; likely more than at any other time prior to the sexual revolution, despite superficial indications to the contrary. The global e-commerce market is not friendly to sexualized media, and is mostly getting more stringent over time (pornhub can't even take credit cards!). #MeToo can be seen as a spontaneous regeneration of older, more strictly codified standards surrounding courtship and interactions between men and women; although it has been purged of overtly religious content, it seems to me to derive from the same impulse as the more familiar religious style of moralism, because humanity clearly abhors a vacuum in this domain.

Mercuse is such a fascinating figure to me. I can never tell whether he's so brilliant that I can't understand him, or deliberately obfuscating with his crazy word choices and meandering sentences. It's like every sentence from him is some sort of motte and bailey.

Still, even though he frustrates me, I do often get a feeling from his words that I find myself agreeing with. In this case I think he's onto something. It's sort of like going to a "punk rock" concert, where the band is all middle-aged millionaires, performing in a stadium with corporate sponsors, and the audience is also middle-aged begging to hear the same songs they've heard their entire lives. Or a "school of rock" where adults teach teenagers exactly how to pose, dress, and perform. Technically there's nothing with these things, and people seem to enjoy them, but still you get the sense that something ineffable has been lost. The traditional music scenes where young people made up stuff themselves and performed live in front of other youth with no rules seems to be disappearing.

Maybe an analogy would be a "soft" martial art, like Judo. As I understand it, Judo works by trying to redirect the opponents force, instead of directly opposing it. So while an old-school oppressive society would say "don't have sex outside of marriage! sex is bad and evil and illegal!" and that leads to young people directly opposing it, with crazy chaotic energy. A modern liberal society says "yes, have sex, it's perfectly fine, we won't stop you. But here are the recommended, socially-approved ways to do it." it channels you into just a few specific venues and styles, which have long sense been mined out of any sort of new ideas. "Go on tinder, then go to get coffee, then go for a walk in a public park, then get affirmative consent, then engage in at least 1 hour of female-centric foreplay, then wash and use a condom, then discuss what happened." It turns sex into some sort of bizarre job-hunting process, and manages to make sex unsexy.

Meanwhile internet porn just gets wilder and wilder, because it's one of the few places left that's explicitly outside the control of mainstream American media, and young people feel free to do and ask for whatever they want. I wonder how much longer that will last.

Mercuse is such a fascinating figure to me. I can never tell whether he's so brilliant that I can't understand him, or deliberately obfuscating with his crazy word choices and meandering sentences. It's like every sentence from him is some sort of motte and bailey.

I think on a word-by-word level, Marcuse is pretty clear and straightforward. He's more straightforward than Adorno, at any rate. Can you provide an example of a sentence or paragraph that you thought was deliberately obfuscated? It's possible that you're just missing some necessary context for what he's saying.

It's sort of like going to a "punk rock" concert, where the band is all middle-aged millionaires, performing in a stadium with corporate sponsors, and the audience is also middle-aged begging to hear the same songs they've heard their entire lives.

Everyone wants to think that they're more punk than they actually are.

One time I was at a concert to see Slipknot and their singer said "this is a big fuck you to all the corporate suits who want to keep this music down!" And I'm like, dude. You are literally a corporate and mainstream band. Your songs are in Guitar Hero. Chill dude.

Phrases like "desublimated higher culture", "the pleasure principle," "the institution of the reality principle," or "demonstration against the herd instinct" are not part of my normal vocabulary. Maybe they're common in marxist/freudian writings, and maybe people who have spent enough time reading that stuff know exactly what he means. But for me, I have to guess, and I'm never quite sure if I really know what he's talking about.

But yeah, fell you 100% about going to a modern day big-budget "punk" concert. It's still fun but it's weird. I assume the band is in on the joke though and it's all kayfabe.

Those are all more or less well-defined terms you could bump into depending on your social circles. It might be beneficial to just read up on them a bit

if your social circle is full of people still discussing 100-year old pseudoscience as if it's something to take for granted, you might wante to reconsider your life choices.

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