Marcuse’s realism rests on the acknowledged possibility of utopia’s failure

Evidence

To be sure, there is always the possibility that such a society is precisely impossible: and this final alternative, which the a priori model leaves open for us, is itself the source of Marcuse’s realism, of his insistent reminder that salvation is by no means historically inevitable, that we do not even find ourselves in a prerevolutionary, let alone a revolutionary, situation, and that the total system may yet ultimately succeed in effacing the very memory of the negative, and with it of freedom, from the face of the earth. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 231

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The dialectical insight that an a priori model gains realism precisely by leaving the failure alternative open — a general discipline for transformative thinking.
• XREF: connects to: Utopian visions reveal a system’s limits only through failed attempts at transcendence — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 470; Realism both critiques and reinforces the status quo’s exclusions — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 438; Marcuse used Freud’s metapsychology to argue a non-repressive civilization is conceivable — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2132 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Utopian visions reveal a system’s limits only through failed attempts at transcendence #corroborates (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 470
• Realism both critiques and reinforces the status quo’s exclusions #expands (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 438