One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

This chapter title anticipates Marcuse’s 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance.” In this essay he argues that the modern emphasis on tolerance and free speech is actually a mask for a deeper repression that only tolerates free speech within a range that is easily integrated into the fabric of advanced industrial society. Thus, while we tend to think of tolerance as a good thing, Marcuse insists that in advanced industrial society it is repressive.

Chapter 3 takes a similar tack, only Marcuse presents what he calls “repressive desublimation” rather than repressive tolerance, focusing on sexuality and the arts. Desublimation references Freud’s theory of sublimation. With sublimation, desires that cannot be easily integrated into society are channeled into desires and activities that, instead, can be easily integrated into society. For example, the desire to have an affair might be sublimated into the desire to write a novel. Desublimation, then, is the refusal to repress and sublimate desires, a refusal to repress that is generally perceived as liberating. If the desire to have an affair is desublimated, for example, then there is no reason to write a novel instead, and the desire to have an affair can be directly fulfilled. Marcuse argues, however, that desublimation is itself repressive.