Erotica, Aesthetics and Revolution: Why Read Marcuse in the 21st Century?

Lecture by Amador Fernández-Savater

Herbert Marcuse was perhaps the most popular and influential philosopher of the 1960s and 1970s, in the heat of the countercultural movements and the so-called New Left. His reading subsequently declined, parallel to the decline of the utopian capacity of societies, the triumph of what Mark Fisher called "capitalist realism," which tells us: what there is, is what there is. 

However, recently, Marcuse's reading has been updated. His old books and unpublished manuscripts are being reissued. Important analysts such as Mark Fisher himself and Franco Berardi (Bifo) are championing him for thinking about the present. There is renewed interest in his work, his approaches, and his figure. Marcuse's critique is relevant because it places "what there is" and "what could be" in tension. 

This is the content of his utopian vision, a listening to the potentials that can bring something different to the world. Where did he find them? In aesthetics, in eroticism, in politics. Aesthetics as a break with stereotypical perception, the enrichment and expansion of the senses. Erotics as a reactivation and reconsideration of the human being's desiring capacities. Politics as an essentially anthropological dispute, for ways of life and sensibility, for a new type of human being, capable of establishing a different relationship with the world. 

Today, faceing the capitalist realism of "what there is is what there is," which the new right seeks to prop up through brute force, research into the "potentialities of the other" becomes urgent and necessary. Are aesthetics, erotica, and politics still fraught with possibilities? It is a question of resuming the conversation with Marcuse, tearing him away from stereotypes and academic interpretations, and reading him from the perspective of the questions and challenges of the 21st century.

Amador Fernández-Savater was born in Madrid in 1974. Through various channels, including reading workshops, school projects or media writing, he engages in what he terms “the battle of thought”, the daily struggle to forge our own identities in order to comprehend and transform our experiences, rather than having them imposed upon us by others. His contributions have been collected in recent books such as Habitar y gobernar (texts on the Indignados or 15-M movement, 2020), El eclipse de la atención (2022) or Capitalismo libidinal (2024), which explores the relationship between capitalism and desire, the struggle to remove desire from pure market consumption.