Abstract

Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man was a critique of late capitalist society in the 1960s, with its “one-dimensional” culture and consumer-based subjectivity shaped by the political economy. Such subjectivity constituted one of the foundations upon which the “administered society” rested. The nature of character structure, as historically instantiated, provided motivation to work, motivation to consume, modes of consciousness, and the disposition toward certain modes of social relatedness. Since the publication of One-Dimensional Man, the contradictions of capitalism have become glaring. At the same time, there are crises of subjectivity, as the traditional forms of selfhood and identity are ever less able to adapt to current circumstances. In Marcuse’s work, we saw major changes as the Freudian Self became obsolescent with the rise of the post-Freudian, Consuming Self. We now again see major transformations, with the rise of a new form of contemporary selfhood—multiple, contradictory, mutable, flexible, liquid, Protean.