| Beneath the veil of our affluent, sexually permissive capitalist society, Herbert Marcuse identifies a deep-rooted contradiction concerning how sexuality is made to operate in this system. On his account, our current civilization is characterized by the wholesale incorporation, or "containment," of all dimensions of human life into a system that seeks to control and dominate individuals. With regards to sexuality in particular, Marcuse maintains that the increased liberalization of sexuality represents its effective containment within a system that reduces all human interests and activities to their market value and binds individuals to a market system structured to maximize profit and impoverish human experience. In the following thesis, I explore the development of Marcuse's thought on sexual repression under late capitalism and explicate the connections between his position and that of Sigmund Freud. |
