Domination and freedom in Herbert Marcuse
Freedom, psychoanalysis, politics, technology, repression.
The main proposal of this work is to investigate in Eros And Civilization (1955) and in One-dimensional Man, both by Herbert Marcuse, the way technological and pretechnological society determined the boundaries of freedom through the mind control mechanisms. This analysis first begins with Eros And Civilization, Marcuse’s reading about Freud’s anthropological speculations. In that text, Marcuse uses psychoanalysis to problematize the connection between civilization an repression, as well as the way to think the remaining spaces of freedom, represented by the refusal elements. Next, an approach is taken about One-dimensional Man, related to the new elements which appear around a closer domination in the developed capitalist countries and mark the almost complete disappearance of freedom in the technological society. From this discussion, it was verified that Marcuse's arguments are relevant for understanding the context of unopposed society and for thinking about possible strategies of resistance and political action in contemporary times.