Dissolving the inner-outer split erases the structure of revolutionary opposition itself

Evidence

Though the split is unnecessary, according to Laing-it represents the violation of the deeper truth of the unity of inner and outer-it also marks the necessity of the Marcusean Great Refusal: if ”inner” and ”outer” constitute a false dualism, deformed and ideal reality do not. Yet the commitment to the indifferentiability of inner and outer underlying Laing’s vision is different in its implications from his fully modern notion of an authentic inner world of fantasy, the dream, the child, and eros, corrupted by an alienated, violent, exploitative external social order. This indifferentiability of inner and outer undoes the revolutionary dialectical structure of opposition, resistance, refusal- Marcuse’s terms. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 684

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely counterintuitive hinge: the critique of dualism that empowered sixties opposition thinking, taken to its end, dismantles the very dialectic that made refusal possible. This is a payoff worth sitting with.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the sacrifice essay’s interest in how structural positions (‘the authentic inner world’) uphold the possibility of meaningful oppositional action.
• XREF: connects to: The utopian attack on dualism pivoted into postmodern philosophy — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 685; Laing’s attack on inner-outer dualism still operated within a modern paradigm — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 682; Absorbing rival elites into the ruling bloc decapitates and neutralizes opposition

Broader Connections

• Absorbing rival elites into the ruling bloc decapitates and neutralizes opposition #complicates (0.80)