Art in Herbert Marcuse: development and resistance towards one-dimensional society

This paper is the result of a theoretical research that aimed to analyze the contribution of Herbert Marcuse, author of the "Critical Theory of Society", to the understanding of the relation among art, selfhood and development to resistance towards one-dimensional society. The following texts, written between 1941 and 1977, were studied: Reason and Revolution (1941/1978); Eros and Civilization (1955/1969); One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964/1973), Towards a Critical Theory of Society (1969/1981) and The Aesthetic Dimension (1977/1999). To Marcuse, art is political, it has universality, alterity, transcendence, aesthetic form, denial and confirmation of reality. Art is objectification, not an alienated labor; it effects sublimation and induces sensibility, making itself different from merchandise, which appropriates culture, making it empty of its sense. When analyzing art, this author contributed to a critical social psychology that reveals art as a psychosocial mediation to an unsuitable subject.

critical social psychology; art; one-dimensional society; development