Radical Philosophy Review

Volume 20, Issue 1, 2017

Refusing One-Dimensionality, Part 2

Beyond the One-Dimensional Subject
Power, Sensibility, and Agency

This article engages a central argument of One-Dimensional Man: that a core register of power rests at the sensible level, within desires, needs and pleasures. Although this line of argument has been targeted by many readers as particularly problematic, this article proposes that it possesses significant resources for contemporary political thought. Where Marcuse has been described as a thinker of a bygone age, his reflections on power and sensibility possess vital resources to cognize power and agency in late modernity.