The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Movements

Description

Herbert Marcuse examined the subjective and material conditions of radical social change and developed the "Great Refusal," a radical concept of "the protest against that which is." The editors and contributors to the exciting new volume The Great Refusal provide an analysis of contemporary social movements around the world with particular reference to Marcuse's revolutionary concept. The book also engages-and puts Marcuse in critical dialogue with-major theorists including Slavoj Žižek and Michel Foucault, among others. The chapters in this book analyze different elements and locations of the contemporary wave of struggle, drawing on the work and vision of Marcuse in order to reveal, with a historical perspective, the present moment of resistance. Essays seek to understand recent uprisings-such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement-in the context of Marcuse's powerful conceptual apparatus. The Great Refusal also charts contemporary social movements against global warming, mass incarceration, police brutality, white supremacy, militarization, technological development, and more, to provide insights that advance our understanding of resistance today. Contributors include: Kevin B. Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Joan Braune, Jenny Chan, Angela Y. Davis, Arnold L. Farr, Andrew Feenberg, Michael Forman, Christian Fuchs, Stefan Gandler, Christian Garland, Toorjo Ghose, Imaculada Kangussu, George Katsiaficas, Douglas Kellner, Sarah Lynn Kleeb, Filip Kovacevic, Lauren Langman, Heather Love, Peter Marcuse, Martin J. Beck Matuštík, Russell Rockwell, AK Thompson, Marcelo Vieta, and the editors. Andrew T. Lamas teaches urban studies and critical theory at the University of Pennsylvania and is on the board of the International Herbert Marcuse Society. Todd Wolfson is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Rutgers University, author of Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left, and cofounder of the Media Mobilizing Project. Peter N. Funke is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of South Florida. Foreword: Abolition and Refusal • Angela Y. Davis  Acknowledgments 1. Bouazizi's Refusal and Ours: Critical Reflections on the Great Refusal and Contemporary Social Movements • Peter N. Funke, Andrew T. Lamas, and Todd Wolfson PART I MAPPING COORDINATES 2. Marcuse in the Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism: Revisiting the Occupation • Michael Forman 3. Negating That Which Negates Us: Marcuse, Critical Theory, and the New Politics of Refusal • Christian Garland 4. Occupying and Refusing Radically: The Deprived and the Dissatisfied Transforming the World • Peter Marcuse PART II LIBERATING RESISTANCE 5. Asia's Unknown Uprisings • George Katsiaficas 6. Chinese Workers in Global Production and Local Resistance • Jenny Chan 7. Queer Critique, Queer Refusal • Heather Love 8. Mic Check! The New Sensibility Speaks • Imaculada Kangussu, Filip Kovacevic, and Andrew T. Lamas PART III PROTESTING VIOLENCE 9. The Work of Violence in the Age of Repressive Desublimation • AK Thompson 10. Neutrality and Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Hélder Câmaraon the Violence of Tolerance • Sarah Lynn Kleeb 11. Democracy by Day, Police State by Night: What the Eviction of Occupy Philadelphia Revealed about Policing in the United States • Toorjo Ghose PART IV COMMUNICATING RESISTANCE 12. Insurrection 2011: Great Refusals from the Arab Uprisings through Occupy Everywhere • Douglas Kellner 13. Beyond One-Dimensionality • Andrew Feenberg 14. Herbert Marcuse and the Dialectics of Social Media • Christian Fuchs 15. Inklings of the Great Refusal: Echoes of Marcuse's Post-technological Rationality Today • Marcelo Vieta PART V CONTESTING THEORIES 16. Hope and Catastrophe: Messianism in Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse • Joan Braune 17. The Dunayevskaya-Marcuse Correspondence: Crystallization of Two Marxist Traditions • Russell Rockwell and Kevin B. Anderson 18. The Existential Dimension of the Great Refusal: Marcuse, Fanon, Habermas • Martin Beck Matuštík 19. A Critical Praxis from the Americas: Thinking about the Zapatistas in Chiapas with Herbert Marcuse, Bolívar Echeverría, and Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez • Stefan Gandler 20. Where Is the Outrage? The State, Subjectivity, and Our Collective Future • Stanley Aronowitz 21. From Great Refusals to Wars of Position: Marcuse, Gramsci, and Social Mobilization • Lauren Langman Afterword: The Great Refusal in a One-Dimensional Society • Arnold L. Farr and Andrew T. Lamas Contributors Index