Repressed pleasure never disappears and keeps pressing its claim on civilization

Evidence

The fact that the reality principle has to be re-established continually in the development of man indicates that its triumph over the pleasure principle is never complete and never secure … What civilization masters and repressesthe claim of the pleasure principlecontinues to exist in civilization itself. The unconscious retains the objectives of the defeated pleasure principle … The return of the repressed makes up the tabooed and subterranean history of civilization … And the past continues to claim the future: it generates the wish that the paradise be re-created on the basis of the achievements of civilization. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 528

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the repressed continually returns as the subterranean history of civilization inverts the usual story of progress: culture is built not on the victory of the reality principle but on its permanent, insecure re-establishment.
• XREF: Connects directly to the earlier Horkheimer/Adorno notes on the dialectic of enlightenment and to Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents as the substrate Marcuse is working from. — connects to: The pleasure principle’s untriumph makes the return of the repressed civilization’s hidden history — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2142; The pleasure principle’s triumph over civilization is never complete or secure.; Repressed collective trauma always returns despite elaborate diversion — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America…, 176 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘return of the repressed’ as the tabooed, subterranean history of civilization rather than a clinical symptom.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The pleasure principle’s untriumph makes the return of the repressed civilization’s hidden history — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2142; The pleasure principle’s triumph over civilization is never complete or secure.; Repressed collective trauma always returns despite elaborate diversion — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America…, 176 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The pleasure principle’s triumph over civilization is never complete or secure. #corroborates (0.92)
• Innocuous everyday pleasures secretly affirm the damaged world they claim to escape #complicates (0.74) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 21