Sexual liberalization in consumer society can function repressively, not liberatory

Evidence

In repressive desublimation (a formulation similar to Marcuse’s subsequent formulation of ”repressive tolerance”), which, again, undoes the foundation of higher culture, a foundation that resides in sublimation of thwarted desire, ”the Pleasure Principle absorbs the Reality Principle; sexuality is liberated (or rather liberalized) in socially constructive forms” (72). This argument, first developed in e&c, sounds to postmodern ears like a description of a desirable state of liberation, but it is the kernel of Marcuse’s condemnation of popular culture: ”socially constructive” means affirmative, nonoppositional. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 159

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral-panic reading of ‘immodesty’ — apparent sexual freeness deployed as social control is the same inversion available there. — connects to: Vegas-era machismo defeated the androgynous gender-utopian sixties male ideal — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 341; Sexual liberation has produced de-sexualized sex reduced to physiological function — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 180; Socialized sex and de-erotized environment are complementary, not opposed. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 332 (+4 more)
• SEED: Article angle: why ‘liberated’ sexuality and apparent permissiveness can reinforce rather than subvert power — a Marcuse lens on the present.

Broader Connections

• Socialized sex and de-erotized environment are complementary, not opposed. #corroborates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 332
• Sexual liberation has produced de-sexualized sex reduced to physiological function #corroborates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 180
• Freedom of pleasures independent of sexual development stripped sexuality’s explanatory power. #corroborates (0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 4203
• Prostitution reduces sex to species-generic content matched by money #expands (0.70) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 360