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Looking Backwards: A Feminist Revisits Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Nancy J. Holland
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Abstract

This paper reconsiders Marcuse's Eros and Civilization from the perspective of Gayle Rubin's classic article “The Traffic in Women.” The primary goals of this comparison are to investigate the social and psychological mechanisms that perpetuate the archaic sex/gender system Rubin describes under current conditions of post-industrial capitalism; to open possible new avenues of analysis and liberatory praxis based on these authors’ applications of Marxist insights to cultural interpretations of Freud's writings; and to make clearer the role sexual repression continues to play in all forms of oppression, even in a public world seemingly saturated with sex.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Winter 2011 , pp. 65 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Hypatia, Inc.

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