Marcuse on resistance

Charles Reitz

Chapter 19 in Research Handbook on Critical Theory, 2026, pp 218-224 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Resistance as opposition to domination would come to have a deep resonance as a theme in post-war European and North American philosophy. The members of the Frankfurt School presented resistance as a duty of intellectuals. Critical educationist Henry A. Giroux's philosophy of resistance and educational activism is an intervention into the political sphere, ultimately in the direction of system change. The Frankfurt School's critical social theory confronted and resisted America's core illusions of freedom and democracy within the political economy and culture of corporate capitalism. Herbert Marcuse concluded that advanced industrial society in the US was characterised by untenable forms of consumerism, cultural anaesthetisation, intellectual obsequiousness, environmental degradation, racism, sexism, and war. For Marcuse and Giroux, a critical theory of resistance emphasised its break from complicity in both liberal and reactionary forms of plutocracy and oligarchy; resistance energises a collective cultural and political action for human freedom.

Keywords: Marcuse; Giroux; Critical Pedagogy; Great Refusal; Emancipatory Violence; Repressive Violence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781800373754
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