In this paper, Tyson E. Lewis theorizes an alternative genealogy of biopolitics that enables us to historicize three distinct phases of the dialectic of life and death within overall transformations of the social and material relations of production. Freud, Marcuse, and Agamben each signal decisive transformations from death to life, life to death, and now the indistinction of death and life in a state of exception. In conclusion, Lewis argues for a new politics that does not simply champion one concept over the other but rather dwells precariously in their mutual exhaustion.

Marcuse’s brief comments on the “defense society,” if suitably elaborated with selected works by Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler, offers an unparalleled analysis of the current social and political dilemmas confronting the United States. Marcuse’s notion of a “defense society” implies a provocative framework from which to understand the way in which the “society of total mobilization” works via increased neoliberal emplacements in which all citizens’ lives are determined to be not worth living in the eyes of capitalism and in which all life needs to be framed within contexts of violence and aggression.

I will address Axel Honneth’s critique of the early Frankfurt School and his apparent omission of Marcuse. I will defend Marcuse against some of the criticisms of early Frankfurt School critical theory made by Honneth. I will then argue that Marcuse was always in search of radical subjectivity, even as he warned against the ongoing one-dimensional mechanisms of subject production. Finally, I will show that Honneth also builds his project around the search for radical subjectivity but approaches the problem through a theory of intersubjectivity which complements Marcuse’s project.

Herbert Marcuse noted early on in his writings on social theory the importance of both Hegel’s and Marx’s development of the dialectic of necessity and freedom to conceptualize the possibility of a postcapitalist society of freedom emerging from the actually existing capitalist societies. Marcuse was not only the first Marxist to analyze all of Hegel’s philosophic works, he also recognized the significance of and provided analyses of lasting importance of previously unpublished works of Marx, principally the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Grundrisse. We reexamine Marcuse’s work guided by the dialectical concepts of freedom and necessity, capitalist and postcapitalist society.

Originally delivered to mark the fiftieth anniversary of both Frantz Fanon’s death and the publication of his seminal discourse on decolonization, The Wretched of the Earth, these remarks seek to offer a preliminary outline of Fanon’s continuing relevance to the present. Conceptually spanning such touchstone elements of Fanon’s thought as sociogeny, race, violence, the human, and the relation between decolonial ethics and decolonial politics, the authors turn our attention to diagnosing the neoliberal face of contemporary coloniality/modernity and contributing to movements from the Arab (or North African) Spring to the Occupy movement, from Philadelphia’s “flash mobs” to the new Latin American Left.

In his pathbreaking analysis of the formation of an ideological “white” self-consciousness among American workers in the nineteenth century, David Roediger relies on a theoretical synthesis of historical materialism and psychoanalysis. This paper explores the parallels in methodology and content between Roediger’s work and the critical theory of Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse, which was also based on a synthesis of Marx and Freud. The paper seeks to place Roediger’s arguments in a broader theoretical context and to highlight the ongoing relevance of early Frankfurt School critical theory to contemporary discussions in critical race theory.

This brief response to John Abromeit’s “Whiteness as a Form of Bourgeois Anthropology?” takes up the ways in which, beyond Horkheimer, the Frankfurt School and psychoanalysis have shaped Roediger’s historical writings on whiteness. In particular, it considers as inspirations for those writings the work of Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, George Rawick, and the surrealist tradition.

“Great refusals,” the progressive movements that shattered the status quo, can be best understood through the prism of critical theory that sees these mobilizations as responses to the legitimation crises of advanced capitalism that migrated into the realms of subjectivity, rendering identity a contested terrain while eliciting powerful emotions that impelled social mobilizations. Among these emotions, rooted in the Freudo-Marxist philosophical anthropology that enabled the critique of alienated labor, is the capacity for hope. And central to that notion of hope is a vision of utopian possibility in which membership in democratic, identity granting/recognizing communities of meaning allows for the creative self-realization of all.

Marcuse’s thought is significant for the renewal of a critical theory with a basis in radical praxis or what can be defined as a politics of refusal: the negation of that which negates us. To be sure, refusal and resistance should not be mistaken as simply passive withdrawal or retreat but the active form of a radically different mode-of-being and mode-of-doing: Marcuse’s own definition of “the Great Refusal.” It is thus possible to speak of a negative ontology, and this paper—with extensive reference to Marcuse’s thought—will aim to be a small contribution to that project.

This paper elucidates the role of phantasy in comprehending the “real world.” Drawing on Marcuse’s synthesis of the Freudian definition of phantasia—an intellectual capacity and psychic activity that maintains the highest degree of autonomy from reality—and the Kantian concept of imagination (Einbildungskraft), it uses the name “Brazil” to illustrate the phantasy of an earthly paradise.