Repressive Desublimation Movement Analysis

‘One brick thrown in Paris... and its crash was heard around the world.’ 1968, an epoch enthralled with multifarious activities and tumultuous events, it is now labelled as the ‘year of the barricades’ . In this time a myriad of social movements erupted across the globe, the majority of which were across westernised civilisations – countries where work and mass consumption had eroded the space for creative expression. Social movements ‘are amorphous entities which resist neat classification.’ In essence, social movements cannot simply be categorised into a single meaning, it is this mantra that empowers the progress of the collectives involved in a single movement. The heart of this essay lies within understanding the new preface of politics,
Essentially, it is formed as a result of the two dimensions existence and the distance between them separates the possible from the present. Critical thought is able to thrive within the gap and liberty serves a key role in allowing this flourishing contemporary analysis. An elimination of the gap would make it impossible to imagine a society beyond the framework of one’s surroundings. ‘Repressive desublimation’ was a term coined by Marcuse that offers valuable insight into potential reasons as to why protests may have broken out during the year of 1968. ‘The Pleasure Principle absorbs the Reality Principle; sexuality is liberated (or rather liberalized) in socially constructive forms. This notion implies that there are repressive modes of desublimation.’ These types of insights not only highlighted the protests for anti-war, but also the establishment of new wave social movements such as Feminism and African
‘In short: liquid life is a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty’ . Like Marcuse, Bauman stress’s the use of advertisement in the creation of the ideal consumer. Interestingly, Bauman, extends these thoughts: the idea of advertisements promising absolute consumer satisfaction, when in actuality the product has a pre-empted date for that promise to be broken – the cycle then continues and the next lien of products can then be sold on. ‘Each single promise must be deceitful, or at least exaggerated, if the search is to go on’ . If these systems of deceit proved to be lucrative, it could in turn cause a lasting damaging effect on consumer emotional creativity. Desensitising the individual, in this case post-war adult citizens, lowering expectations of happiness and mentality blocking the individual from realising this paradigm shift. ‘The morality rate of expectations is high’ . Although Bauman displayed many valuable themes, relating to both human nature and the potential of a liquefied lifestyle, there are still many reasons to question his approach to the topic. Much like Marcuse, Bauman seems to underestimate the ability of the consumer to make a rational decision, categorising societies of people under a single method of living. Further to this point, live examples such as the power of radical artist Banksy and his