One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society by Herbert Marcuse (1964, 1991) is a book I find worth picking up again every so many years in order to check against current actualities. Reading Angela Davis' take on blues singers recently prompted me to do it again -- for in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1997), she noted how much Marcuse influenced her thinking and writing about the subject at hand.
One-Dimensional Man is both simple and complex; some of it is of historical interest but much is still also pertinent to the here and now of 2011. The original "Cold War" discussions can be updated by substituting "Drug War" or "War on Terror" or whatever it is that supposedly comes together as a unified narrative after the killing of bin Laden in Pakistan in our day. Wordplay and manipulation of "hearts and minds" continues, most certainly, just as it did fifty years ago, around the time Marcuse was working on the first edition of One-Dimensional Man. All one need do is listen (or read or watch or think) carefully: just about everything we need to know is right out in the open. Seek and ye shall find, indeed.
Der eindimensionale Mensch. Marcuse's discussions of language usage in advertising and the public sphere has gotten me over the years to pay more careful attention to phrasing and compressed concepts across languages. Examples might be "The American People" (what exactly is meant by that, so-often used by so many individuals to justify so much, yet meaning next to nothing?); and, in the USA, "Vietnam" as shorthand for the United States-Vietnam War, and "the Mexican War" as shorthand for the United States-Mexican War, American-Mexican War, or the US-Mexican War. Why the distinction? Because, because, because . . . the Devil is in the details, and so is history and so are cultural dynamics. If or when we accept concepts/images without weighing, considering and playing with them, we become spellbound or just plain unaware of the numerous "hypnotic-ritual formulas" used socially, clichés that tend to shut down further thinking about history and accepted reality.
L'homme unidimensionnel. Somehow "unidimensional" sounds cooler than "one-dimensional." But as we all know, 3D is better yet.
El hombre unidimensional. Man, homme, hombre, Mensch. A little outdated in a title for the 21st century, eh? Mensch is okay. People, humanity, society, civilization or culture might convey more universality today.
Today's Rune: Breakthrough.
1 comment:
I wonder if humans have ever been much more than one-dimensional?
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