Final  Repression:  Adorno  and  Marcuse  on  the  Antinomy  of  

Progress  
 
Ray  Brassier  
 
 
Introduction  
Capitalist  ideologues  equate  progress  with  technological  advancement.  
Anticapitalists  retort  that  this  advancement  serves  only  the  accumulation  of  
capital,  whose  cost  is  exploitation  and  immiseration.  The  identification  of  
progress  with  the  domination  of  nature  provokes  the  counter-­‐identification  of  
nature  with  non-­‐domination,  which  becomes  antithetical  to  progress.  At  one  
pole,  progressives  identify  civilization  with  freedom  from  nature;  at  the  other,  
primitivists  identify  nature  with  freedom  from  civilization.  Freedom  is  either  
progressing  independence;  or  the  regression  to  dependence.  In  either  case,  
freedom’s  negative  definition  vitiates  its  positive  substantiation.  Freud  subverts  
this  attempted  demarcation  of  positive  from  negative,  as  well  as  the  antithesis  of  
dependence  and  independence.  He  does  so  on  two  counts.  First,  through  his  
suggestion  that  hominization  is  repression.  Second,  with  his  discovery  of  the  
return  of  the  repressed.  Just  as  culture  can  never  rid  itself  of  nature,  nature  can  
never  be  purged  of  culture  –  not  because  both  share  a  common  ontological  
substance,  as  postmodern  monism  would  have  it,  but  because  each  can  only  be  
grasped  as  the  negation  of  the  other.  If  all  repression  entails  the  return  of  the  
repressed,  repression  is  what  makes  human  freedom  at  once  possible  and  
impossible.  Thus  the  progress  of  freedom  is  inseparable  from  the  progress  of  
repression.  This  antinomy  plays  a  fundamental  role  for  two  Marxist  thinkers  
heavily  indebted  to  Freud:  Theodor  Adorno  and  Herbert  Marcuse.  But  each  tries  
to  resolve  it  differently.  In  his  1961  essay  ‘Progress’,  Adorno  suggests  that  
progress  is  not  cumulative  advancement  but  the  perpetually  reiterated  
resistance  to  regression.  By  way  of  contrast,  in  ‘Progress  and  Freud’s  Theory  of  
Instincts’  (1968),  Marcuse  maintains  that  repressive  progress  culminates  in  the  
sublimation  of  repression,  releasing  creative  spontaneity  from  blind  compulsion.  
The  question  is  how,  in  the  case  of  Adorno,  resistance  breaks  with  repetition,  and  
how,  in  the  case  of  Marcuse,  repression  sublimates  itself.  These  are  the  two  
questions  we  propose  to  investigate.      
 
History  as  catastrophe  
The  image  of  history  as  a  cumulating  catastrophe,  made  famous  by  Walter  
Banjamin,  is  open  to  reactionary  as  well  as  revolutionary  interpretations.1  Those  
                                                                                                               
1  “There  is  a  picture  by  Klee  called  Angelus  Novus.  It  shows  an  angel  who  seems  about  to  move  
away  from  something  he  stares  at.  His  eyes  are  wide,  his  mouth  is  open,  his  wings  are  spread.  
This  is  how  the  angel  of  history  must  look.  His  face  is  turned  toward  the  past.  Where  a  chain  of  
events  appears  before  us,  he  sees  one  single  catastrophe,  which  keeps  piling  wreckage  upon  
wreckage  and  hurls  it  at  his  feet.  The  angel  would  like  to  stay,  awaken  the  dead,  and  make  whole  
what  has  been  smashed.  But  a  storm  is  blowing  from  Paradise  and  has  got  caught  in  his  wings;  it  
is  so  strong  that  the  angel  can  no  longer  close  them.  This  storm  drives  him  irresistibly  into  the  
future,  to  which  his  back  is  turned,  while  the  pile  of  debris  before  him  grows  toward  the  sky.  
What  we  call  progress  is  this  storm.”  

  1  
for  whom  history  is  nothing  but  the  accumulation  of  wreckage  perpetuate  the  
homogeneity  of  universal  history  in  a  negative  register.  Relentless  deterioration  
is  the  inverse  of  steady  amelioration;  the  continuity  of  destruction  is  as  linear  
and  homogeneous  as  the  continuity  of  construction.  Nor  can  the  homogeneity  
common  both  to  positive  and  negative  universal  histories  be  undone  simply  by  
pluralizing  history  and  fragmenting  it  into  a  manifold  of  particular  ‘histories’.  
This  would  be  to  multiply  the  unit  of  integration  while  leaving  its  integrity  
unchallenged.  If  it  is  history  as  narrative  that  is  in  question  (as  it  is  for  
Benjamin),  then  to  replace  one  dominant  narrative  with  other,  hitherto  
marginalised  alternatives  is  to  leave  the  authority  of  narrative  untouched  and  its  
possibility  unquestioned.  For  it  is  the  very  possibility  of  narrative  that  is  
targetted  in  Benjamin’s  critique  of  historicism.  It  is  not  just  through  the  writing  
but  through  the  telling  of  history  that  the  victors  raise  themselves  above  the  
vanquished.  To  the  extent  that  it  singles  out  heroes  and  villains,  or  distinguishes  
major  from  minor  events,  historical  narrative  relays  the  domination  inscribed  in  
myth.2  Once  integrated  into  narrative,  the  past  becomes  the  precondition  of  the  
present;  it  is  not  just  what  has  happened  but  what  had  to  happen.  Thus  the  past  
is  eternalised  as  fatality.  Benjamin  seeks  to  counter  historicist  fatality  by  
constructing  history.  The  present  is  no  longer  a  point  of  transition  but  of  
interruption,  in  which  time  is  brought  to  a  standstill  but  also  established  in  a  
unique  encounter  with  the  past.  This  encounter  wrests  the  past  from  what  has  
been  and  charges  it  with  a  ‘now-­‐time’  (Jetztzeit)  primed  to  blast  the  present  out  
of  the  continuum  of  history.  Benjamin’s  revolutionary  counter  to  historicist  
progressivism  does  not  consist  in  replacing  integration  with  disintegration,  or  
unity  with  multiplicity,  but  in  seizing  continuity  as  a  material  to  be  acted  upon  –  
a  fulcrum  for  constructing  a  discontinuity  that  is  not  already  given  as  the  absence  
of  continuity.  The  messianic  interval  is  the  determinate  negation  of  universal  
history,  not  its  wilful  disavowal.    
 
This  discontinuity  rearticulates  past  and  future:  the  springing  up  of  an  
unrecorded  past  releases  a  future  no  longer  projectible  from  the  present,  
irreducible  to  what  is  already  determined  as  not-­‐yet.  Neither  what  has  been  nor  
what  will  be  can  be  encompassed  within  the  bounds  of  actual  possibility  –  the  
possibility  coextensive  with  what  is.  Because  it  is  no  longer  exclusively  oriented  
towards  a  future  waiting  to  be  realized,  the  revolutionary  activation  of  the  
present  turns  towards  the  past  to  release  the  future  from  has  been.  This  is  the  
logic  of  redemption.  Revolution  is  the  reordering  of  time.  The  liberation  of  the  
unborn  cannot  be  won  at  the  expense  of  the  dead;  it  is  the  redemption  of  the  
dead  that  liberates  the  unborn.  In  Benjamin’s  words:  “Only  a  redeemed  mankind  
is  granted  the  fulness  of  its  past  –which  is  to  say,  only  for  a  redeemed  mankind  
has  its  past  become  citable  in  all  its  moments.  Each  moment  it  has  lived  becomes  
                                                                                                               
 Walter  Benjamin  ‘On  the  Concept  of  History’  (IX)  in  Selected  Writings.  Vol.  4:  1938-­1940,  392.  
 
2  “The  chronicler  who  narrates  events  without  distinguishing  between  major  and  minor  ones  
acts  in  accord  with  the  following  truth:  nothing  that  has  ever  happened  should  be  regarded  as  
lost  to  history.  Of  course  only  a  redeemed  mankind  is  granted  the  fullness  of  its  past    -­‐which  is  to  
say,  only  for  a  redeemed  mankind  has  its  past  become  citable  in  all  its  moments.  Each  moment  it  
has  lived  becomes  a  citation  a  l'ordre  du  jour.  And  that  day  is  Judgment  Day.”  
Walter  Benjamin    ‘On  the  Concept  of  History’  (III)  in  Selected  Writings.  Vol.  4:  1938-­1940,  390.  

  2  
a  citation  a  l’ordre  du  jour.  And  that  day  is  Judgement  Day.”3  The  revolutionary  
present  is  the  present  of  Judgement  Day,  when  the  dead  are  safeguarded  from  
future  oblivion.    
 
Two  points  need  to  be  emphasised  in  Benjamin’s  account.  First,  the  homogeneity  
of  history  is  shattered  in  the  name  of  a  humanity  whose  unification  is  yet  to  
come;  not  against  this  unity  as  such.  Thus  the  critique  of  bourgeois  
progressivism  is  undertaken  in  the  name  of  a  more  radical  progressivism;  one  
that  would  inaugurate  the  unity  of  humanity  beyond  the  historical  abyss  
arbitrarily  separating  those  damned  in  the  past  from  those  saved  in  the  future.  It  
is  this  unity  that  cannot  be  envisaged  from  the  vantage  of  the  capitalist  present,  
whose  premature  assertion  of  the  unity  of  humanity  masks  the  rift  not  only  
between  capitalists  and  proletarians  in  the  present,  but  between  present  victors  
and  past  victims.  Adorno,  glossing  Benjamin,  puts  this  point  as  follows:  “Progress  
would  be  the  very  establishment  of  humanity  in  the  first  place,  whose  prospect  
opens  up  in  the  face  of  extinction.”4  Second,  the  revolutionary  present  is  no  
longer  sequentially  articulated  with  an  antecedent  past  and  future  consequent;  it  
becomes  part  of  a  monadological  constellation,  each  fragment  of  which  is  
‘seeded’  with  time.  Thus,  historical  development  is  no  longer  a  condition  of  
revolutionary  possibility.  Revolutionary  opportunity  becomes  historically  
incalculable:  “Every  second  [is]  the  small  gateway  in  time  through  which  the  
Messiah  might  enter.”5    
 
If  every  second  is  a  gateway  opening  onto  the  possibility  of  redemption,  then  this  
possibility  transcends  the  order  of  possibility  inscribed  within  historical  time  
(for  example,  that  radiotransmission  was  not  possible  prior  to  the  discovery  of  
electricity).  Messianic  temporality  is  figured  as  vertically  transecting  the  
horizontal  immanence  of  linear  time.  Blasting  the  revolutionary  present  out  of  
the  continuum  of  history  renders  the  possibility  of  redemption  transcendent  vis-­‐
a-­‐vis  the  immanence  of  history.  Thus  the  messianic  interval  institutes  an  
antinomy  between  redemptive  transcendence  and  historical  immanence.  If  
progress  is  redemption  (i.e.  transcendence),  then  history  is  absurd  because  it  is  
unnecessary  –  the  Messiah  could  intervene  to  redeem  humanity  at  any  moment.  
But  if  progress  is  humanity’s  self-­‐empowerment,  it  can  only  unfold  through  
history  (i.e.  immanence),  and  historical  suffering  (repression,  colonialism,  
genocide)  is  the  condition  of  human  progress.  Adorno  formulates  this  antinomy  
as  follows:    
If  progress  is  equated  with  redemption  as  transcendental  intervention  per  
se,  then  it  forfeits,  along  with  the  temporal  dimension,  its  intelligible  
meaning  and  evaporates  into  ahistorical  theology.  But  if  progress  is  
mediatized  into  history,  then  the  idolization  of  history  threatens  and  with  
it,  both  in  the  reflection  of  the  concept  as  in  the  reality,  the  absurdity  that  
it  is  progress  itself  that  inhibits  progress.6  

                                                                                                               
3  Ibid.  
4  Adorno,  ‘Progress’,  145.    
5  Benjamin,  op  cit.,  XVIII  B,  397.    
6  Adorno,  ‘Progress’,  147.    

  3  
The  cost  of  severing  the  present’s  ties  to  historical  antecedents  and  consequents  
is  passivity  towards  transcendence:  messianic  advent  can  only  be  passively  
awaited,  not  actively  precipated.  But  then  progress  as  the  revolutionary  
inception  of  human  history  is  divinely  dispensed.  The  overturning  of  human  
subjection  requires  another  subjection  of  the  human.  This  is  the  price  of  
theologizing  human  liberation.  The  secular  alternative  to  this  premium  on  
transcendence  is  the  mediation  of  progress  through  history.  Transcendence  can  
only  be  achieved  through  immanence.  But  the  mediation  of  progress  in  and  
through  history  renders  the  ultimate  institution  of  humanity  consequent  upon  its  
prior  destitution:  the  progress  of  subjection  (Hegel’s  ‘slaughterbench  of  history’)  
is  necessary  for  the  progress  that  is  supposed  to  terminate  subjection  
(communism  as  kingdom  of  ends).  Once  the  possibility  of  redemption  is  
reinserted  into  the  nexus  of  historical  possibility,  its  advent  becomes  inextricable  
from  the  progress  of  perdition.  The  rejection  of  any  transcendent  measure  of  
progress  turns  history  into  its  only  measure,  but  the  reification  of  history  as  the  
sole  measure  of  progress  turns  history  into  the  transcendence  it  was  supposed  to  
abolish.  This  is  the  paradox  attendant  upon  the  ‘idolization  of  history’,  which  
Adorno  warns  against.            
 
This  antinomy  between  the  immanence  and  transcendence  of  progress  points  to  
a  contradictoriness  in  its  concept,  a  contradiction  whose  historical  condition  
Adorno  seeks  to  draw  out.  The  content  of  the  concept  of  progress  is  social  and  
historical:    
Without  society  the  notion  of  progress  would  be  completely  empty;  all  its  
elements  are  abstracted  from  society.  If  society  had  not  passed  from  a  
hunting  and  gathering  horde  to  agriculture,  from  slavery  to  the  formal  
freedom  of  subjects,  from  the  fear  of  demons  to  reason,  from  deprivation  
to  provisions  against  epidemics  and  famine  and  to  the  overall  
improvement  of  living  conditions,  if  one  thus  sought  more  philosophico  to  
keep  the  idea  of  progress  pure,  say,  to  spin  it  out  of  the  essence  of  time,  
then  it  would  not  have  any  content  at  all.7  
But  the  realization  of  progress  is  stymied  by  the  same  social  and  historical  
conditions  that  give  it  content  because  those  conditions  harbour  a  regressive  
element.  Agriculture,  emancipation,  enlightenment,  medicine,  sanitation,  and  
material  abundance  are  made  possible  by  an  expanding  domination  of  nature  
ramifying  into  increasing  social  domination.  Historical  progress  is  conditioned  
by  an  antagonism  between  humanity  and  nature,  as  well  as  between  clans,  tribes,  
and  nations;  an  antagonism  whose  perpetuation  renders  the  fulfilment  of  
progress  impossible,  and  whose  dissolution  threatens  to  undo  all  its  concrete  
achievements.  Fulfilling  the  concept  of  progress  without  cancelling  its  concrete  
social  gains  requires  the  reconciliation  of  this  antagonism.  But  reconciliation  
only  becomes  possible  through  this  antagonism,  by  traversing  what  is  
unreconciled  not  only  in  the  concept  but  also  between  the  concept  and  reality:  
Once  the  meaning  of  a  concept  [i.e.  progress]  necessitates  moving  to  
facticity,  this  movement  cannot  be  stopped  arbitrarily.  The  idea  of  
reconciliation  itself—the  transcendent  telos  of  all  progress,  measured  by  
finite  criteria—cannot  be  broken  loose  from  the  immanent  process  of  
                                                                                                               
7  Ibid.,  148.  

  4  
 enlightenment  that  removes  fear  and,  by  erecting  the  human  being  as  an  
answer  to  human  beings’  questions,  wins  the  concept  of  humanitarianism  
that  alone  rises  above  the  immanence  of  the  world.8  
It  is  not  a  matter  of  reconciling  humanity  to  nature,  as  if  nature  in-­‐itself  were  free  
of  domination  (a  beneficent  myth  mirroring  that  of  maleficent  nature),  but  of  
seeing  through  enlightenment,  both  as  concept  and  social  processs,  to  achieve  a  
society  in  which  the  domination  of  inner  and  outer  nature  would  no  longer  be  a  
condition  of  existence.  Thus  overcoming  the  antinomic  structure  of  progress  is  
inseparable  from  the  dialectic  of  enlightenment.  Enlightenment  is  the  
empowerment  of  humanity  through  the  disempowerment  of  the  superhuman,  
understood  as  divinized  nature  or  naturalized  divinity.  But  the  reason  that  
culminates  in  self-­‐conscious  Spirit  endows  itself  with  the  transcendence  it  
withdraws  from  nature.  The  disenchantenment  of  the  object,  its  recognition  as  
immanently  posited  rather  than  transcendently  given,  is  also  an  enchantment  of  
the  subject  that  arrogates  to  itself  the  power  of  transcendence.  Transcendent  
power  accrues  to  the  subject  that  disempowers  the  object.  This  is  why  reflective  
self-­‐consciousness  is  not  immune  to  the  compulsiveness  of  nature,  the  drive  to  
self-­‐preservation:  “Something  compulsive  distinguishes  animal  conduct  from  
human  conduct.  The  animal  species  homo  may  have  inherited  it,  but  in  the  
species  it  turned  into  something  qualitatively  different.  And  it  did  so  precisely  
due  to  the  reflective  faculty  that  might  break  the  spell  and  did  enter  into  its  
service.”9  The  spell  is  the  aura  of  transcendence.  It  converts  the  subjectively  
constituted  object  into  a  thing-­‐in-­‐itself.  Self-­‐consciousness  is  reified  by  being  
rendered  absolute,  which  is  to  say,  wholly  un-­‐thinged.  Nature  recurs  in  the  
reason  that  dominates  it  insofar  as  the  latter  is  compelled  to  dominate  
domination.  This  is  the  compulsion  of  the  spell,  relayed  in  the  dialectic  of  
enlightenment.  It  is  what  underlies  the  antinomy  of  progress.  But  for  Adorno  it  is  
precisely  the  autarky  of  Spirit  that  prevents  reconciliation.  Progress  requires  
domination  (identifying  what  is  non-­‐identical),  but  domination  blocs  the  
reconciliation  of  identity  and  non-­‐identity  (humanity  and  nature)  that  should  be  
the  rational  telos  of  progress:  
The  model  of  progress,  even  if  displaced  onto  the  godhead,  is  the  control  
of  external  and  internal,  or  human,  nature.  The  oppression  exercised  by  
such  control,  which  has  its  highest  form  of  intellectual  reflection  in  the  
identity  principle  of  reason,  reproduces  this  antagonism.  The  more  
identity  is  posited  by  imperious  spirit,  the  more  injustice  is  done  to  the  
nonidentical.  The  injustice  is  passed  on  through  the  resistance  of  the  
nonidentical  [the  return  of  the  repressed  –RB].  The  resistance  in  turn  
reinforces  the  oppressing  principle,  while  at  the  same  time  what  is  
oppressed,  poisoned,  limps  along  further.  Everything  within  the  whole  
progresses:  only  the  whole  itself  to  this  day  does  not  progress.10    
This  is  the  fundamental  contradiction  inherent  in  the  concept  of  progress:  
antagonism  is  the  condition  for  reconciliation;  unfreedom  is  the  condition  for  
freedom;  or  as  Adorno  puts  it  while  crediting  Kant  for  having  prefigured  Hegel’s  
cunning  of  history,  “the  conditions  for  the  possibility  of  reconciliation  are  its  
                                                                                                               
8  Ibid.  
9  Adorno  Negative  Dialectics  Tr.  E.  B.  Ashton  (London  and  New  York:  Routledge  1973),  345.  
10  Ibid.,  148-­‐9.  

  5  
contradiction  and  [...]  the  conditions  for  the  possibility  of  freedom  are  
unfreedom.”11  Adorno’s  use  of  “conditions  of  possibility”  is  significant  here.  
Conditions  of  possibility  are  in  us,  not  in  things  themselves.  They  are  subjective  
conditions  for  phenomena,  not  objective  properties  of  noumena.  Thus  when  
Adorno  paraphrases  Kant  to  the  effect  that  antagonism  is  the  condition  for  the  
possibility  of  reconciliation,  and  that  unfreedom  is  the  condition  for  the  
possibility  of  freedom,  he  situates  this  antagonism  and  this  unfreedom  in  us,  not  
in  things  themselves.  They  are  man-­‐made  social  phenomena,  not  God-­‐given  
transcendent  realities.  The  coercive  and  antagonistic  nature  of  capitalist  society  
is  of  our  own  doing.  Part  of  Adorno’s  point  is  that  recognizing  this  facticity  allows  
us  to  see  that  it  could  be  changed.  Allowance  here  is  a  minimal  condition:  it  is  at  
least  possible  to  change  these  phenomena.  But  of  course  knowing  that  something  
could  be  otherwise  does  not  suffice  for  us  to  make  it  otherwise;  it  does  not  
compel  us  to  act.  Thus  the  self-­‐reflection  through  which  reason  recognizes  that  
what  it  took  to  be  given  has  been  made  by  it,  that  nature  continues  to  dominate  it  
through  the  domination  which  it  exerts  against  nature,  perpetuates  the  autarky  
of  spirit  unless  it  is  supplemented  by  a  practical  act:  
The  beneficial  self-­‐reflection  of  reason,  however,  would  be  its  transition  
to  praxis:  reason  would  see  through  itself  as  a  moment  of  praxis  and  
would  recognize,  instead  of  mistaking  itself  for  the  absolute,  that  it  is  a  
mode  of  behavior.  The  anti-­‐mythological  element  in  progress  cannot  be  
conceived  without  the  practical  act  that  reins  in  the  delusion  of  spirit’s  
autarky.    
Reason  sees  through  itself,  i.e.,  disenchants  its  own  pretention  to  autonomy,  by  
understanding  itself  as  a  ‘moment  of  praxis’  and  a  ‘mode  of  social  behaviour’.  But  
this  insight  can  only  succeed  in  curbing  Spirit’s  drive  for  sovereignty  if  it  sparks  a  
practical  act.  However,  this  act  is  neither  programmed  nor  determined  by  
reflection.  On  Adorno’s  account,  the  relation  between  theory  and  praxis  is  both  
polar  and  contradictory:  it  is  precisely  the  autonomy  of  theory  that  endows  it  
with  the  potential  for  transformative  potency,  while  theory  geared  to  praxis  is  
condemned  to  impotently  ratifying  actuality.12  ‘Pure’  theory  registers  the  
contradictoriness  of  the  social  totality  within  which  it  is  embedded  in  a  way  that  
exposes  its  facticity  and  thereby  its  precarity;  while  voluntaristic  praxis  mirrors  
this  contradictory  totality  in  a  way  that  ends  up  blindly  reinforcing  it.  Through  
this  polarity  of  theory  and  practice,  Adorno  dereifies  the  diremption  between  
transcendent  redemption  and  historical  immanence,  disqualifying  the  resort  to  
theolological  transcendence.  Yet  the  polarity  preserves  enough  of  the  gap  
between  immanent  and  transcendent  possibility  to  prevent  the  closure  of  
immanence  that  converts  history  back  into  transcendence.  The  possibility  of  
transcendence  is  secularized  by  being  reconfigured  as  the  gap  between  reflexion  
and  action.  Yet  Adorno  echoes  Benjamin’s  suggestion  that  this  gap  
desynchronizes  the  realization  of  progress  from  the  historical  order  of  
possibility.  In  doing  so,  he  desynchronizes  the  content  of  the  concept  from  its  
realization.  Progress  is  reason’s  awakening  from  the  spell  of  its  own  sovereignty.  
And  while  the  social  content  of  the  concept  of  progress  depends  upon  a  

                                                                                                               
11  Ibid.,  149.  
12  See  ‘Marginalia  to  Theory  and  Praxis’  in  Critical  Models:  Interventions  and  Watchwords  (New  
York:  Columbia  University  Press)  259-­‐278.    

  6  
historically  unfolding  domination  of  nature  (without  which  the  concept  remains  
empty),  the  realization  of  the  concept  is  figured  as  an  interruption  of  compulsive  
domination  not  ordained  by  history.  Crucially,  Adorno  insists  that  this  
interruption  is  possible  at  every  moment:    
 
 
While  the  perpetual  oppression  that  unleashed  progress  at  the  same  time  
always  arrested  it,  this  oppression—as  the  emancipation  of  
consciousness—first  made  the  antagonism  and  the  whole  extent  of  the  
deception  recognizable  at  all,  the  prerequisite  for  settling  the  antagonism.  
The  progress,  which  the  eternal  invariant  brought  forth,  is  that  finally  
progress  can  begin,  at  any  moment.  Should  the  image  of  progressing  
humanity  remind  one  of  a  giant  who,  after  sleeping  from  time  
immemorial,  slowly  stirs  himself  awake  and  then  storms  forth  and  
tramples  everything  that  gets  in  his  way,  nonetheless  his  unwieldy  
awakening  is  the  sole  potential  for  attaining  political  maturity—that  
nature’s  tenacity,  into  which  even  progress  integrates  itself,  will  not  have  
the  final  word  [….]  Progress  means:  to  step  out  of  the  magic  spell,  even  
out  of  the  spell  of  progress  that  is  itself  nature,  in  that  humanity  becomes  
aware  of  its  own  inbred  nature  and  brings  to  a  halt  the  domination  it  
exacts  upon  nature  and  through  which  domination  by  nature  continues.  
In  this  way  it  could  be  said  that  progress  [as  emancipation]  occurs  where  
it  [progress  as  domination]  ends.13  
Reconciliation  is  made  possible  by  the  impossibility  of  absolute  domination;  it  is  
the  self-­‐interruption  of  domination.  Only  the  power  of  the  storm  can  salve  the  
devastation  it  has  wrought.  The  salvation  of  destruction  is  not  history’s  
completion  but  its  incompletion.  Progress  is  not  the  abolition  of  regression,  but  
the  resistance  to  the  compulsion  to  abolish  it:  “Progress  is  this  resistance  at  all  
stages,  not  the  surrender  to  their  steady  ascent.”14  It  is  the  historically  mediated  
resistance  to  the  absolute  mediation  of  history.      
 
We  might  say  that  for  Adorno,  non-­‐identity  saves  identity  from  itself.  But  while  
this  salvatory  potency  is  harboured  by  the  non-­‐identity  between  theory  and  
praxis,  its  actualization  is  indeterminable.  Although  non-­‐identity  is  the  source  of  
resistance,  it  cannot  be  positivized  as  an  autonomous  force  without  reinstating  
the  spell  of  transcendence.  It  is  not  the  ontological  remainder  left  over  by  
subtracting  conceptual  identification  (Adorno’s  is  not  a  philosophy  of  
difference).  Rather,  it  is  generated  in  and  through  identification  as  its  
ineliminable  underside.  In  this  regard  (and  speaking  loosely),  non-­‐identity  
stands  to  identity  rather  like  the  un-­‐conscious  stands  to  the  conscious.  Just  as  the  
drive  does  not  pre-­‐exist  repression,  non-­‐identity  does  not  pre-­‐exist  
identification.  Thus  the  conceptual  problem  is  that  of  accounting  for  the  
possibility  of  resistance  in  terms  of  repression,  since  it  is  precisely  identity’s  
repression  of  non-­‐identity  that  fuels  the  dialectic  of  enlightenment.    What  is  
unclear  in  Adorno’s  account  is  the  source  of  the  resistance  to  repression,  the  
condition  for  the  interruption  of  domination.  Adorno  presents  us  with  a  
                                                                                                               
13  “Progress’,  150  
14  Ibid.,  160  

  7  
quandary:  on  one  hand,  reflection  cannot  disenchant  itself:  critical  self-­‐reflection,  
the  apex  of  enlightenment  from  the  vantage  of  idealism,  cannot  suffice  to  break  
the  spell  of  enlightenment.  The  self-­‐sufficiency  of  rational  reflection  perpetuates  
the  spell  of  transcendence.  Hence  Adorno’s  insistence  that  reason  must  
transition  to  praxis  by  seeing  itself  as  a  mode  of  social  behaviour.  But  on  the  
other  hand,  this  transition  cannot  be  ordained  through  reason’s  comprehension  
of  its  relation  to  social  practice:  to  seal  the  gap  between  theory  and  praxis  is  to  
reinstate  the  identification  of  subject  and  object  that  perpetuates  domination.  
Nor  can  resistance  stem  from  activism,  whose  spontaneity  colludes  with  the  
totality  against  which  it  is  protesting.  It  is  precisely  the  non-­‐identity  of  theory  
and  practical  activity  that  allows  for  resistance  as  the  interruption  of  domination.  
If  domination  is  repression,  then  resistance  is  the  negation  of  repression,  which  
is  the  primary  negation.  But  if  resistance  just  is  the  non-­‐identity  of  reason  and  
praxis,  then  its  negation  of  repression  is  left  dialectically  indeterminate.  And  this  
indeterminacy  threatens  to  reinstate  the  spell  of  transcendence  by  reifying  the  
possibility  of  resistance  as  an  abstract  negation  of  history  understood  as  the  
concrete  progress  of  repression.    
 
It  is  with  regard  to  this  dialectic  of  repression  and  resistance  that  Marcuse’s  
alternative  account  of  progress  becomes  especially  significant.  Adorno  seems  to  
disconnect  redemptive  progress  from  repressive  progress  by  not  explaining  how  
repression  yields  resistance.  By  way  of  contrast,  Marcuse  proposes  an  account  in  
which  the  progress  of  repression  culminates  in  its  historically  conditioned  
sublimation.  Where  for  Adorno,  the  resistance  to  repression  is  utopian  to  the  
extent  that  it  cannot  be  aligned  with  concrete  social  and  historical  conditions  –  
doing  so  would  reinstate  the  unity  of  theory  and  praxis  as  bad  totality  –  for  
Marcuse,  the  overcoming  of  repression  is  made  possible  by  a  specific  historical  
conjunction  of  the  forces  and  relations  of  production.  Indeed,  Marcuse  refuses  to  
oppose  utopian  to  historical  possibility  because  he  insists  that  the  the  realm  of  
freedom  (redemptive  progress)  is  immanent  to  the  realm  of  necessity  
(repressive  progress).15  History  is  not  transcendent,  but  it  makes  transcendence  
possible.    
 
Sublimating  repression  
Marcuse’s  starting  point  is  the  contrast  between  what  he  calls  a  ‘quantitative-­‐
technical’  conception  of  progress  and  a  ‘qualitative-­‐humanitarian’  one.  The  
former  is  a  necessary  but  not  sufficient  condition  for  the  latter:  there  can  be  no  
human  freedom  worthy  of  the  name  without  freedom  from  natural  strictures.  
But  capitalist  civilization  reifies  this  negative  freedom  and  turns  it  into  a  
transcendent  value.  Negative  freedom  –  the  domination  of  outer  and  inner  
nature  –  becomes  the  telos  of  progress  in  the  form  of  compulsive  productivity.  
Freedom  from  libidinal  gratification  is  not  only  transcendence,  but  the  autonomy  
                                                                                                               
15  “I  believe  that  one  of  the  new  possibilities,  which  gives  an  indication  of  the  qualitative  
difference  between  the  free  and  the  unfree  society,  is  that  of  letting  the  realm  of  freedom  appear  
within  the  realm  of  necessity  -­‐in  labor  and  not  only  beyond  labor.  To  put  this  speculative  idea  in  a  
provocative  form,  I  would  say  that  we  must  face  the  possibility  that  the  path  to  socialism  may  
proceed  from  science  to  utopia  and  not  from  utopia  to  science.”  Marcuse,  ‘The  End  of  Utopia’  in  
Five  Lectures:  Psychoanalysis,  Politics,  and  Utopia,  Tr.  Jeremy  J.  Shapiro  and  Shierry  M.  Weber  
(London:  Allen  Lane  The  Penguin  Press,  1970)  63.  

  8  
of  transcendence:  “Just  like  the  productivity  to  which  it  belongs,  this  
transcendence  that  is  essential  to  freedom  finally  appears  as  an  end  in  itself.”16    
The  autonomy  of  production  (i.e.  capital)  becomes  a  transcendent  end  to  which  
every  human  goal  must  be  sacrificed.  Thus  the  autonomy  of  Kantian  reason,  
which  demands  the  sacrifice  of  inclination  to  duty,  aligns  with  the  sovereignty  of  
capital,  which  requires  the  subordination  of  use-­‐value  to  exchange.  Just  as  
alienated  labour  is  the  substance  of  value,  alienated  reason  is  the  substance  of  
duty.  Progress  requires  productive  renunciation,  the  repression  of  satisfaction  
that  transforms  individuals  from  ‘bearers  of  the  pleasure  principle’  into  bearers  
of  labour-­‐power.  It  is  through  this  repression  that  libidinal  energy  is  released  for  
unpleasurable  but  socially  productive  labour.  But  the  social  sublimation  of  
pleasure  presupposes  a  prior  interiorization  of  repression:  it  is  the  introjection  
of  external  sanction,  in  the  form  of  the  super-­‐ego,  that  enables  the  divestment  of  
individual  satisfaction  for  the  sake  of  collective  gratification,  and  hence  the  
productive  sublimation  of  libido.  Collective  repression  enforces  the  self-­‐
repression  of  the  individual,  which  in  turn  consolidates  collective  repression,  
which  then  further  intensifies  individual  repression.  This  circuit  of  self-­‐
reinforcing  repression  underlies  what  Marcuse  describes  as  ‘the  automation  of  
progress’.    But  this  automation  is  driven  by  negation:  the  repression  of  individual  
satisfaction  that  enables  collective  satisfaction  is  seconded  by  a  repression  of  
collective  satisfaction;  the  repression  of  satisfaction,  whether  individual  or  
collective,  serves  only  the  limitless  expansion  of  capital.  Thus,  the  progress  of  the  
means  to  satisfy  human  needs  must  negate  this  satisfaction  to  perpetuate  the  
progress  of  those  means:  “Just  as  progress  becomes  automatic  through  the  
repressive  modification  of  instincts,  so  it  cancels  itself  and  negates  itself.  For  it  
prohibits  the  enjoyment  of  its  own  fruits  and  in  turn,  precisely  through  this  
prohibition,  it  augments  productivity  and  thus  promotes  progress.”17    
Individual  enjoyment  is  sublimated  to  ensure  social  productivity,  but  collective  
enjoyment  is  sublimated  to  enforce  individual  productivity.  Marcuse  calls  this  
‘the  vicious  circle  of  progress’:      
Progress  must  continually  negate  itself  in  order  to  remain  progress.  
Inclination  must  continually  be  sacrificed  to  reason,  happiness  to  
transcendental  freedom,  in  order  that  through  the  promise  of  happiness  
men  can  be  maintained  in  alienated  labor,  remain  productive,  keep  
themselves  from  the  full  enjoyment  of  their  productivity,  and  thereby  
perpetuate  productivity  itself.18  
 
Yet  this  circle  is  a  function  of  historically  specific  relations  production  and  thus  is  
bounded  by  an  internal  limit.  This  limit  is  the  point  at  which  the  progress  of  
repression  generates  such  an  abundance  of  means  that  they  negate  the  needs  
which  made  repression  necessary.  Or,  as  Marcuse  puts  it:  “the  technification  of  
domination  undermines  the  foundation  of  domination.”19  The  quantitative  
increase  of  repressive  means  yields  a  qualitative  decrease  in  the  need  to  repress.  
In  other  words,  renunciation  yields  such  an  abundance  of  means  for  satisfaction  
                                                                                                               
16  Marcuse  ‘Progress  and  Freud’s  Theory  of  Instincts’,  op.  cit.,  31.      
17  Ibid.,  36  
18  Ibid.,  36-­‐37.    
19  ‘The  End  of  Utopia’,  66.    

  9  
that  these  cancel  the  need  for  renunciation.  The  dialectical  crux  of  Marcuse’s  
argument  is  the  claim  that  repression  produces  a  surplus  of  satisfaction  that  
negates  the  satisfaction  of  productive  repression:    
The  achievements  of  repressive  progress  herald  the  abolition  of  the  
repressive  principle  of  progress  itself.  It  becomes  possible  to  envisage  a  
state  in  which  there  is  no  productivity  resulting  from  and  conditioning  
renunciation  and  no  alienated  labor:  a  state  in  which  the  growing  
mechanization  of  labor  enables  an  ever  larger  part  of  the  instinctual  
energy  that  had  to  be  withdrawn  for  alienated  labor  to  return  to  its  
original  form,  in  other  words,  to  be  changed  back  into  energy  of  the  life  
instincts  [...]  Alienated  labor  time  would  not  only  be  reduced  to  a  
minimum  but  would  disappear  and  life  would  consist  of  free  time  [...]  A  
qualitatively  different  reality  principle  would  replace  the  repressive  one,  
transmuting  the  entire  human-­‐psychic  as  well  as  socio-­‐historical  
structure  […]  Sublimation  would  not  cease  but  instead,  as  erotic  energy,  
would  surge  up  in  new  forces  of  cultural  creation.20    
The  contradiction  between  individual  and  collective  gratification  conditions  
capitalism’s  reality  principle:  renunciation  is  the  condition  for  reconciling  
individual  and  collective  interests.  The  abolition  of  this  contradiction  together  
with  the  capital  relation  would  entail  a  new  reality  principle  –  which  could  be  
called  ‘communist’  –  in  which  the  libidinal  surplus  released  by  mechanized  
labour  would  no  longer  be  repressed  for  the  purposes  of  social  production  but  
would  instead  create  new  forms  of  individual  and  collective  gratification.  This  
would  be  to  reintegrate  what  capitalism  has  separated,  productive  sublimation  
and  unproductive  gratification,  or  work  and  play.  Where  capitalism  autonomizes  
production  as  contentless  transcendence  –  a  contentlessness  echoed  by  purely  
formal  freedom  –  the  transformation  of  work  into  gratifying  play  reimbues  
transcendence  –  and  thereby  freedom  –  with  content.  The  freedom  from  want  
consequent  upon  the  abolition  of  scarcity  becomes  the  freedom  to  satisfy  new  
desires,  untethered  from  the  demands  of  capital  accumulation.    
 
Ultimately,  Marcuse’s  vision  is  of  existential  transformation.  The  division  
between  productive  work  and  unproductive  play  gives  way  to  a  new  synthesis  of  
activity  and  passivity  wherein  the  absence  of  predetermined  purpose  in  human  
existence  is  no  longer  experienced  as  the  perpetual  deferral  of  gratification,  but  
as  the  gratifying  coincidence  of  actuality  and  potency:        
Alienated  labor  would  be  transformed  into  the  free  play  of  human  
faculties  and  forces.  In  consequence  all  contentless  transcendence  would  
come  to  a  close,  and  freedom  would  no  longer  be  an  eternally  failing  
project.  Productivity  would  define  itself  in  relation  to  receptivity,  
existence  would  be  experienced  not  as  continually  expanding  and  
unfulfilled  becoming  but  as  existence  or  being  with  what  is  and  can  be.21    
Existence  would  no  longer  be  corroded  by  the  imperative  to  defer  gratification  
for  the  sake  of  survival.  Instead  of  being  deferred  to  the  not-­‐yet,  satisfaction  
achieves  actuality  in  the  ‘perpetuity  of  pleasure’  through  the  ‘balancing,  
stabilization  and  reproduction’  of  conditions  in  which  “all  needs  can  be  gratified  
                                                                                                               
20  ‘Progress  and  Freud’s  Theory  of  Instincts’,  39  
21  Ibid.,  41  

  10  
and  new  wants  only  appear  if  their  pleasurable  gratification  is  also  possible.”22  
Work  oriented  towards  existential  gratification  becomes  the  exercise  of  freedom:  
“If  work  itself  becomes  the  free  play  of  human  abilities,  then  no  suffering  is  
needed  to  compel  men  to  work.  Of  themselves,  and  only  because  it  fulfills  their  
own  needs,  they  will  work  at  shaping  a  better  world  in  which  existence  fulfills  
itself.”23  This  vision  of  existence  fulfilling  itself  through  the  free  play  of  human  
capacities  is  one  in  which  the  negative  compulsion  of  want  is  supplanted  by  the  
positive  compulsion  of  desire;  the  renunciation  exacted  by  a  pleasure  that  can  
never  be  made  wholly  present  is  replaced  by  the  desire  for  a  pleasure  whose  
presence  is  completed  through  repetition.    
 
It  would  be  too  quick  to  charge  Marcuse  with  resorting  to  the  metaphysics  of  
presence  to  substantiate  his  account  of  positive  freedom.  Marcuse  was  a  student  
of  Heidegger,  but  certainly  not  a  disciple.  Thus  he  is  well  aware  of  presence’s  
irreducibility  to  the  present.  He  makes  repetition  constitutive  of  the  movement  
of  presencing:  existence  involves  cycles  of  repetition  that  curve  and  deepen  
temporality,  expanding  it  depthwise  into  superposed  layers.  What  Marcuse  
describes  as  ‘the  perpetuity  of  pleasure’  is  not  a  permanent  bloc  coextensive  
with  the  present,  but  the  recurrence  of  a  presence  spanning  superposed  
presents.  Ultimately,  however  questionable  the  positive  characteristics  of  the  
existential  transformation  sketched  by  Marcuse,  their  importance  is  secondary.  
More  significant  is  the  way  Marcuse  renders  utopian  possibility  immanent  to  
history  –  not  as  the  historical  realization  of  utopian  possibility;  a  realizability  
that  reifies  utopian  possibility  as  the  transcendent  telos  of  history  –  but  rather  as  
the  re-­‐inscription  of  utopian  possibility  within  historical  possibility.  
 
Primal  repression  
Nevertheless,  what  is  more  dubitable  in  Marcuse’s  hypothesis  is  the  line  he  
wishes  to  draw  from  primal  to  sublimated  repression.  Following  Freud,  Marcuse  
aligns  phylogenesis  with  ontogenesis,  the  psychic  development  of  humankind  
with  the  psychic  development  of  the  individual.  On  Marcuse’s  reading,  primal  
repression  de-­‐libidinizes  (disinvests)  the  organism  by  sexualizing  (investing)  the  
genital  organs,  fragmenting  the  libidinalized  whole  into  a  multiplicity  of  partial  
drives.  Thus  the  segmentation  and  specification  of  libido  are  consequences  of  
repression.  Because  primal  repression  negates  an  originary  organic  integrity,  the  
sublimation  of  repression,  configured  as  negation  of  negation,  re-­‐establishes  
organic  cohesion  at  both  the  individual  and  the  collective  level.  The  primal  
repression  that  condemns  humanity  to  labor  for  its  enjoyment,  coordinating  
work  and  play  as  means  and  end,  must  be  sublimated  for  labor  to  fuse  with  
enjoyment  as  an  end  in  itself.  For  Marcuse,  the  ‘decisive  modification’  at  the  
origin  of  hominization  is  the  bridling  of  Eros  by  the  reality  principle  and  the  
conversion  of  libido  into  reproductive  sexuality:          
Eros  is  originally  more  than  sexuality  in  the  sense  that  it  is  not  a  partial  
instinct  but  rather  a  force  that  governs  the  entire  organism  and  that  only  
later  is  put  into  the  service  of  reproduction  and  localized  as  sexuality.  
This  decisive  modification  of  Eros  means  a  desexualization  of  the  
                                                                                                               
22  Ibid.  
23  Ibid.,  40-­‐41  

  11  
 organism,  and  only  this  change  can  make  the  organism  as  bearer  of  the  
pleasure  principle  into  an  organism  that  is  a  possible  instrument  of  labor.  
The  body  becomes  free  for  the  expenditure  of  energy  that  otherwise  
would  only  have  been  erotic  energy.  It  becomes,  so  to  speak,  free  of  the  
integral  Eros  that  originally  governed  it  and  thereby  free  for  
unpleasurable  labor  as  the  content  of  life.24  
The  logic  of  Marcuse’s  account  entails  that  the  originary  disintegration  of  libido,  
entailed  by  the  social  antagonism  between  individual  and  collective  gratification,  
be  superceded  by  an  ultimate  re-­‐integration  –  a  relibidinalization  of  social  
relations  –once  this  antagonism  has  been  overcome.  If  primal  repression  is  the  
originary  disintegration  of  organic  libido  into  genital  (organized)  sexuality,  and  
the  separation  of  individual  gratification  from  social  productivity,  then  final  
repression  is  the  sublimation  that  reintegrates  what  capitalism  has  separated:  
individual  and  collective,  pleasure  and  production,  work  and  play.    What  is  
especially  significant  is  Marcuse’s  claim  that  libidinal  disintegration  is  brought  
about  in  response  to  the  reality  principle  (which  Freud  also  calls  ‘Ananké’,  or  
necessity  principle).  Freud’s  entire  construction  in  Civilization  and  its  Discontents  
unfolds  through  the  articulation  of  three  ‘principles’  whose  initial  reification  is  
steadily  undermined  as  we  come  appreciate  their  interdependence.  Eros,  the  life  
principle,  binds  organic  substance  into  ‘ever  larger  units’,  which  Thanatos,  the  
death-­‐drive,  seeks  to  unbind  and  dissolve  back  into  their  ‘primordial  inorganic  
state.’25  But  in  order  to  preserve  its  living  substance,  Eros  must  accomodate  itself  
to  Ananké,  or  necessity,  since  self-­‐preservation  requires  adaptation  to  the  
environment.26  Thus  Eros  and  Ananké  are  related  as  organic  interiority  to  
inorganic  exteriority.  Binding  activity  becomes  constrained  by  inert  material  
structures.  What  role  then  is  reserved  for  Thanatos?  It  is  neither  inside  nor  
outside,  neither  organic  nor  inorganic,  but  rather  the  boundary  simultaneously  
connecting  and  separating  them.  Thus,  in  Freud’s  account,  it  is  Ananké  that  is  

                                                                                                               
24  Ibid.,  34-­‐35.  
25  “Starting  from  speculations  about  the  beginning  of  life  and  from  biological  parallels,  I  reached  
the  conclusion  that,  in  addition  to  the  drive  to  preserve  the  living  substance  and  bring  it  together  
in  ever  larger  units,  there  must  be  another,  opposed  to  it,  which  sought  to  break  down  these  units  
and  restore  them  to  their  primordial  inorganic  state.  Beside  Eros,  then,  there  was  a  death  drive,  
and  the  interaction  and  counteraction  of  these  two  could  explain  the  phenomena  of  life.  Now,  it  
was  not  easy  to  demonstrate  the  activity  of  this  supposed  death  drive.  The  manifestations  of  Eros  
were  plain  enough  to  see  and  hear;  one  might  presume  that  the  death  drive  operated  silently  
inside  the  living  being,  working  towards  its  dissolution,  but  this  of  course  did  not  amount  to  a  
proof.  A  more  fruitful  idea  was  that  a  portion  of  the  drive  was  directed  against  the  external  world  
and  then  appeared  as  a  drive  that  aimed  at  aggression  and  destruction.  In  this  way  the  drive  was  
itself  pressed  into  the  service  of  Eros,  inasmuch  as  the  organism  destroyed  other  things,  both  
animate  and  inanimate,  instead  of  itself.  Conversely,  any  restriction  of  this  outward-­‐directed  
aggression  would  be  bound  to  increase  the  degree  of  self-­‐destruction,  which  in  any  case  
continued.  At  the  same  time  one  could  surmise,  on  the  basis  of  this  example,  that  the  two  kinds  of  
drive  seldom  –  perhaps  never  –  appeared  in  isolation,  but  alloyed  with  one  another  in  different  
and  highly  varying  proportions  and  so  became  unrecognizable  to  our  judgement.”  
Sigmund  Freud,  Civilization  and  its  Discontents,  Tr.  David  McLintock  (London  and  New  York:  
Penguin,  2002)  114-­‐115.    
26  “The  process  of  civilization  is  a  special  modification  of  the  life  process  that  is  undergone  by  the  
latter  under  the  influence  of  a  task  that  is  set  by  Eros  at  the  instigation  of  Ananke  (the  exigency  of  
reality)  –  the  task  of  uniting  discrete  individuals  in  a  community  bound  together  by  libidinal  ties.”  
Ibid.,  155.  

  12  
juxtaposed  to  Eros  as  its  obstacle;  not  Thanatos.  Freud  even  describes  the  latter  
as  “a  residue  left  behind  by  Eros”;  one  which  “escapes  our  notice  unless  it  is  
revealed  through  being  alloyed  with  Eros.”  27  The  death-­‐drive  is  not  opposed  to  
Eros;  it  is  the  unbound  residue  of  its  binding  activity.  So  Eros  and  Thanatos  are  
not  metaphysical  opposites  but  rather  double  aspects  of  the  same  phenomenon:  
the  coincidence  of  binding  and  unbinding,  of  synthesizing  division  and  dividing  
synthesis  in  the  process  of  civilization.  If  libidinal  synthesis  is  constrained  by  
necessity,  then  Thanatos  is  the  unbound  surplus  resulting  from  pleasure’s  
accomodation  to  survival.  This  unbound  surplus  sticks  to  repression  as  its  
residue,  just  as  it  fuels  the  re-­‐libidinization  of  production.  Thus,  if  disintegration  
is  not  simply  the  opposite  of  integration,  then  the  line  from  primal  to  sublimated  
repression,  or  from  negative  to  positive  freedom,  cannot  be  drawn  through  the  
negation  of  negation.  Repression  generates  a  surplus  that  is  not  just  the  simple  
negation  of  necessity;  a  residue  that  complicates  any  straightforward  
demarcation  between  surplus  and  necessary  or  ‘basic’  repression.  Marcuse  
defines  basic  repression  as  “the  modifications  of  the  instincts  necessary  for  the  
perpetuation  of  the  human  race  in  civilization.”  He  defines  surplus  repression  as  
“the  restrictions  necessitated  by  social  domination.”28  Basic  repression  is  
imposed  by  conditions  of  natural  scarcity  impeding  the  perpetuation  of  civilized  
humanity:  it  indexes  the  domination  of  nature.  Surplus  repression  is  the  means  
by  which  a  caste  or  class  perpetuates  its  privilege  at  the  expense  of  another:  it  
indexes  social  domination.  While  basic  repression  is  a  function  of  the  reality  
principle  –  scarcity  or  natural  necessity  –  surplus  repression  is  a  function  of  the  
social  distribution  of  scarcity.  Thus  it  persists  even  in  societies  whose  mode  of  
production  has  otherwise  eliminated  scarcity  as  a  natural  constraint.  The  social  
distribution  of  scarcity  determines  what  Marcuse  calls    ‘the  performance  
principle’:  the  historical  specification  of  the  reality  principle  proper  to  “an  
acquisitive  and  antagonistic  society  in  the  process  of  constant  expansion”.29  Thus  
capitalism’s  performance  principle  indexes  the  surplus  of  repression  incurred  by  
the  subordination  of  human  needs  to  the  autonomization  of  social  production  as  
an  end  in  itself.    
 
Yet  having  distinguished  surplus  from  basic  repression,  Marcuse  quickly  points  
out  that  “in  the  history  of  civilization,  basic  repression  and  surplus-­‐repression  
have  been  inextricably  intertwined.”30  This  is  to  say  that  while  the  domination  of  
nature  conditions  social  domination,  social  domination  also  conditions  the  
domination  of  nature.  But  this  interdependence  of  basic  and  surplus  repression  
creates  a  difficulty.  It  is  not  nature  that  determines  ‘the  modification  of  the  
instincts’  required  by  civilization;  this  modification  already  presupposes  the  
existence  of  civilization,  or  culture  in  the  broadest  sense.  In  other  words,  nature,  
understood  as  the  principle  of  necessity  or  scarcity,  does  not  fix  basic  repression;  
                                                                                                               
27  “The  name  ‘libido’  can  once  more  be  applied  to  manifestations  of  the  power  of  Eros,  in  order  
to  distinguish  them  from  the  energy  of  the  death  drive.  It  has  to  be  admitted  that  the  latter  is  
much  harder  to  grasp  and  can  to  some  extent  be  discerned  only  as  a  residue  left  behind  by  Eros,  
and  that  it  escapes  our  notice  unless  it  is  revealed  through  being  alloyed  with  Eros.”  Ibid.,  118.  
28  Herbert  Marcuse,  Eros  and  Cvilization:  A  Philosophical  Investigation  into  Freud  (Boston:  Beacon  
Press,  1955)  35.  
29  Ibid.,  45.  
30  Ibid.,  38.  

  13  
it  does  not  determine  the  minimum  of  repression  required  for  the  existence  of  
culture.  So  either  this  modification  is  brought  about  by  a  culture  without  social  
domination  –  one  in  which  the  use  of  natural  resources  involves  minimal  
domination  (e.g.  hunting  and  gathering)  and  natural  scarcity  is  equally  
distributed  –  or  it  reflects  a  specific  mode  of  social  domination,  and  hence  a  
variety  of  the  performance  principle.  In  the  first  case,  freedom  from  social  
domination  obtains,  but  at  the  cost  of  submission  to  scarcity.  To  turn  this  into  the  
paradigm  of  equilibrium  between  culture  and  nature  is  to  naturalise  basic  
repression  as  the  perfect  harmonization  of  pleasure  and  necessity;  an  accord  
harbouring  the  myth  of  a  human  state  of  nature  that  is  metaphysical  at  best,  and  
fascistic  at  worst.  In  the  second  case,  where  the  modification  of  instinct  is  
compelled  by  social  domination,  basic  repression  is  inseparable  from  surplus  
repression;  the  reality  principle  inextricable  from  the  performance  principle.  In  
either  case,  basic  repression  is  a  mythical  harmony  or  a  vanishing  quantity.              
 
But  if  repression  is  precisely  what  separates  humans  from  other  animals,  
demarcating  culture  from  nature,  then  the  decomposition  of  basic  repression  
into  repressing  culture  and  repressed  nature  presupposes  a  prior,  more  
fundamental  repression.  In  other  words,  the  repression  that  institutes  culture  
cannot  be  carried  out  by  culture.  Basic  repression  as  condition  for  the  
perpetuation  of  civilization  pressuposes  another  more  fundamental  repression,  
through  which  culture  first  emerges  as  a  dislocated,  ‘second’  nature.  This  is  
primal  repression.  If  culture  is  the  domain  of  normative  as  opposed  to  natural  
compulsion,  then  primal  repression  is  what  institutes  the  break  between  first  
and  second  nature,  or  force  and  law.  But  of  course,  law’s  emergence  from  force  
must  be  enforced.  Freud’s  myth  of  the  murder  of  the  primal  father  is  an  attempt  
to  schematize  the  structure  of  primal  repression  and  account  for  the  emergence  
of  law  as  a  relation  of  force  against  force.  Freud’s  myth  should  not  be  understood  
as  a  narrative  about  how  culture  (the  domain  of  law),  emerged  from  nature  (the  
realm  of  force),  but  as  a  dialectical  schema  explaining  why  repression  is  ‘always  
already’  operative  in  culture.  Freud’s  schema  is  dialectical  because  it  is  logically  
paradoxical:  repression  is  both  the  origin  and  the  consequence  of  culture.  This  
makes  no  sense  so  long  as  one  is  trying  to  understand  the  operations  of  the  
unconscious  in  terms  of  cause  and  effect.  But  the  unconscious  is  not  a  part  of  
nature;  it  is  what  joins  and  disjoins  culture  and  nature.  Primal  repression  is  the  
phenomenon  in  virtue  of  which  culture  is  at  once  continuous  and  discontinuous  
with  nature.  It  is  coextensive  with  what  we  know  as  history,  and  so  cannot  be  
understood  as  an  event  in  history.  Unlike  basic  repression,  primal  repression  is  
not  fixed  by  the  trade-­‐off  between  pleasure  and  scarcity;  it  is  not  the  repression  
of  a  specific  incompatibility  between  enjoyment  and  survival.  What  Freud  calls  
Urverdrängung  –  the  originary  repression  that  institutes  the  unconscious  as  
interface  of  force  and  law  –  is  a  process,  not  an  event.  What  is  unconscious  does  
not  pre-­‐exist  repression  as  a  positively  existing  thing  subsequently  forced  down  
into  the  unconscious  understood  as  a  subterranean  chamber  or  reservoir.  It  is  
precisely  this  substantialization  of  the  unconscious  that  Lacan  undermines.  What  
is  unconscious  lies  in-­‐between  being  and  non-­‐being,  presence  and  absence;  it  
persists  as  something  whose  negation  fails  but  whose  failed  negation  is  also  
what  succeeds  in  constituting  it.  What  is  repressed  persists  because  it  is  neither  
full  being  nor  the  complete  absence  of  being;  it  is  ‘not-­‐fully-­‐being’  in  the  sense  of  

  14  
congenitally  incomplete  or  partial.  Alenka  Zupančič  puts  this  point  most  
forcefully:  
 Whenever  we  are  dealing  with  an  unconscious  content,  we  are  dealing  
with  something  which  is  constitutively  unconscious,  that  is  to  say  that  it  
only  registers  in  reality  in  the  form  of  repression,  as  repression  (and  not  
as  something  that  first  is,  and  is  then  repressed).  This  is  why  if  we  simply  
focus  on  the  content,  we  lose  this  specificity  (we  lose  this  dimension  of  
not-­‐fully-­‐being  as  the  very  mode  of  being  of  this  particular  thing,  which  is  
precisely  the  mode  of  repression).  Repression  is  not  something  that  we  
can  simply  lift  and  get  access  in  this  way  to  the  “unstained”  unconscious  
content/representation  [...]  If  we  reduce  the  Freudian  notion  of  the  
unconscious  to  the  difference  between  a  content  that  is  present  to  the  
conscious  and  a  content  that  is  “repressed  from  it”,  if  we  reduce  it  to  the  
opposition  between  being  or  not  being  conscious  of  something  (or  
between  consciously  accepting  or  not  accepting  something),  we  lose  it  
entirely.31    
 
There  is  no  lifting  of  repression  that  could  grant  us  access  to  a  repressed  content,  
as  if  it  existed  positively.  This  understanding  of  repression  as  process  obviates  
the  need  to  specify  the  boundary  between  basic  or  necessary  repression,  and  
surplus  or  unnecessary  repression.  This  is  to  say  that  there  is  no  functional  
rationale  for  repression.  It  does  not  serve  to  harmonize  pleasure  and  necessity.  
What  is  originally  repressed  is  not  what  is  counter  to  social  productivity;  rather,  
primal  repression  fixes  the  difference  between  what  is  productive  or  counter-­‐
productive.  Desubstantialized  or  unconscious  pleasure  is  what  Lacan  calls  
‘enjoyment’  (jouissance).  But  enjoyment  does  not  pre-­‐exist  repression;  
repression  constitutes  enjoyment.  From  this  perspective,  what  is  questionable  in  
Marcuse’s  account  is  its  substantialising  of  libido  as  a  ‘force  governing  the  entire  
organism’.  Marcuse  characterises  libido  in  terms  of  an  originary  plenitude  or  
fullness  that  is  subsequently  fragmented  into  a  multiplicity  of  drives  by  basic  
repression;  indeed,  Marcuse’s  substantializing  of  libido  as  a  positive  force  
investing  the  whole  organism  is  surprisingly  redolent  of  Deleuze  and  Guattari’s  
claim  that  desire  in  the  pure  state  would  be  “a  pure  fluid  in  a  free  state,  flowing  
without  interruption,  streaming  over  the  surface  of  a  full  body”.32  It  is  precisely  
this  positivization  of  libido  as  a  separate  force  independent  of  the  death-­‐drive  
that  fuels  Marcuse’s  suggestion  that  “Eros,  freed  from  surplus-­‐repression,  would  
be  strengthened,  and  the  strengthened  Eros  would,  as  it  were,  absorb  the  
objective  of  the  death-­‐instinct.”33  This  is  to  assume  that  it  is  death  as  quiescence  
or  stasis  that  is  the  objective  of  the  death-­‐drive;  whereas  it  is  precisely  death  as  
unbound  residue  of  libidinal  binding  that  compels  the  drive  and  allows  it  to  
derive  satisfaction  from  dissatisfaction.  The  problem  of  liberation  does  not  
consist  in  working  out  how  to  eliminate  surplus  repression  while  maintaining  
necessary  repression,  but  in  understanding  how  the  surplus  of  enjoyment  

                                                                                                               
31  Alenka  Zupančič  ‘Hegel  and  Freud:  Between  Aufhebung  and  Verneinung’  Crisis  and  Critique  Vol.  
4,  No.  1:  483-­‐484  
32  Gilles  Deleuze  and  Felix  Guattari  Anti-­Oedipus:  Capitalism  and  Schizophrenia,  Tr.  Robert  
Hurley,  Mark  Seem,  and  Helen  R.  Lane  (Minneapolis:  University  of  Minnesota,  1983)  8.    
33  Eros  and  Civilization,  234-­‐235.  

  15  
generated  by  repression  fixes  the  drive.  Thus  it  is  not  repression  that  is  the  
source  of  unfreedom,  but  rather  enjoyment.  Marcuse’s  schema  assumes  the  
substantial  positivity  of  pleasure  at  the  outset;  a  pleasure  that  is  then  repressed  
for  the  perpetuation  of  civilization.  But  this  basic  repression,  fixed  by  the  
satisfaction  of  needs,  is  inextricable  from  a  surplus  repression  fixed  by  the  
(unequal)  social  distribution  of  needs.  For  Marcuse,  surplus  repression  is  
overcome  when  repression  produces  a  surplus  of  satisfaction  that  negates  the  
satisfaction  of  productive  repression.  Desubstantializing  pleasure  as  enjoyment  
changes  the  parameters  of  the  problem.  If  repression  generates  enjoyment,  then  
as  Zupančič  points  out,  enjoyment  also  generates  repression:  “repression  always  
protects  some  enjoyment,  whereas  enjoyment  could  also  be  said  to  protect  
certain  repressions.”34  Liberation  does  not  consist  in  overcoming  repression  but  
in  exposing  what  is  repressive  in  enjoyment;  or  as  Zupančič  puts  it,  in  locating  
and  naming  “the  points  where  the  repression  (of  some  aspect  of  this  reality)  is  
being  actively  sustained.”35  And  if  the  distribution  of  scarcity  is  fixed  by  social  
relations,  so  is  the  distribution  of  enjoyment.      
 
Exposing  the  social  relations  sustaining  these  nodes  of  repression  remains  the  
task  of  ideology  critique.  If  the  process  of  repression  is  what  can  never  be  
‘present’  in  the  sense  of  wholly  actual  because  it  ‘not-­‐fully-­‐being’,  then  this  is  
because,  again  in  Zupančič’s  words,    “it  takes  place  all  the  time,  but  it  takes  place  
precisely  as  a  discontinuity  (of  the  present,  and  of  being).  It  appears  as  a  
complication,  torsion  of  the  (present)  being  as  such.”36  This  is  to  say  that  
although  repression  as  process  is  coextensive  with  history,  it  cannot  be  
synchronized  with  it.  Repression  generates  history,  but  cannot  be  historicized.  
Thus  the  exclusive  alternative  between  structure  and  process  is  subverted  by  
Freud,  just  as  it  is  by  Marx.  Marx’s  genetic  reconstruction  of  social  relations  in  
Capital  “is  not  primarily  about  ‘what  has  happened’,  but  rather  about  how  
certain  activities  driven  by  practical  needs  in  certain  social  relations  lead  to  
structural  transitions  of  the  praxisforms  and  the  social  relations.”  Praxis  
generates  forms  which  condition  it  in  turn;  process  gives  rise  to  structures  that  
condition  process.37  Social  experience  unfolds  in  between  the  time  taken  by  the  
reproduction  of  labour  and  the  time  required  for  the  reproduction  of  capital.  
Neither  time  coincides  with  the  time  of  consciousness.  The  unconscious  is  not  in  
time;  but  it  is  not  timeless.  It  takes  place  all  the  time,  but  by  twisting  and  
bursting  the  time  we  experience  as  present.  Against  the  eternalization  of  the  
unconscious  as  transhistorical  fate,  Marcuse’s  laudable  aim  is  to  historicize  the  
unconscious,  to  show  how  while  it  shapes  social  relations,  it  is  also  shaped  by  
them.  (And  indeed,  Marcuse’s  account  of  repressive  desublimation  is  congruent  
                                                                                                               
34  Alenka  Zupančič  Why  Psychoanalysis:  Three  Interventions  32-­‐3.  
35  “If  the  mere  lifting  of  the  repression  (inscription  of  the  repressed  content  in  the  conscious  
reality)  doesn’t  change  much,  it  is  because  it  fails  to  locate  and  to  name  the  point  of  repression  in  
this  very  reality  (which  is  the  point  of  the  unconscious).  In  other  words,  the  crucial  thing  is  never  
simply  to  reconstruct  the  other,  repressed  story,  but  to  work  in  the  direction  of  circumscribing  
the  point  in  the  present  reality  where  the  repression  (of  some  aspect  of  this  reality)  is  being  
actively  sustained.  It  is  only  here  that  we  arrive  to  something  like  truth.”  Alenka  Zupančič  ‘Hegel  
and  Freud:  Between  Aufhebung  and  Verneinung’  492  
36  Ibid.,  490  
37  Wolfgang  Fritz  Haug  ‘On  the  Need  for  a  New  English  Translation  of  Marx’s  Capital’  10  

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with  the  Lacanian  account  of  repressive  enjoyment.)  But  this  historicization  is  
premised  upon  a  dubious  substantialization  of  libido;  which  then  allows  the  
stepwise  sequencing  of  negations,  such  that  the  repression  of  pleasure  
culminates  in  the  sublimation  of  repression.  The  recognition  of  repression  as  a  
process  running  parallel  with  but  not  synchronous  with  history  also  makes  it  
possible  to  understand  liberation  as  a  process  inflected  by  history  but  not  
incubated  by  it.  This  inflection  is  marked  by  those  points  where  the  complicity  
between  repression  and  enjoyment  is  actively  sustained  by  the  interaction  
between  praxis  and  social  form.  And  while  the  trajectory  of  this  dynamic  may  not  
be  ineluctable,  neither  is  it  completely  unforeseeable.    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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