Herbert Marcuse An Aesthetics of Liberation

In a world of rampant consumerism and unsustainable excess, the ideas of Herbert Marcuse remain highly relevant. Author of the classic One Dimensional Man and a key figure in the post-war revival of Marxism alongside Adorno, Horkheimer and Sartre, this is the first English introduction to Marcuse to be published for decades. Although mainly a critic of consumer society, Miles provides an insight into Marcuse's broader attitudes, from his anxiety at the rise of fascism in the 1930s through heady optimism during the radicalism of the 1960s, to acceptance in the 1970s that radical change was far away. This development fuelled his belief that culture should take on a specifically critical function. Marcuse's theory of liberatory aesthetics, in which radical ruptures in perception made possible by art can make up for the absence of an organised proletariat, is one that students, scholars and activists engaged with radical theory today can learn from and engage with.

Malcolm Miles is Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Plymouth. He is the author of Urban Utopias: The Built and Social Architectures of Alternative Settlements (2008), Cities & Cultures (2007), Urban Avant-Gardes: Art, Architecture & Change (2004), and Art, Space & the City (1997). He is co-editor of the Routledge Critical Introductions to Urbanism Series.

Introduction  * 1. Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Society * 2. The Artist and Social Theory *
3. Affirmations * 4. A Literature of Intimacy * 5. Society as a Work of Art * 6. The End of Utopia *
7. The Aesthetic Dimension * 8. Legacies and Practices * Notes * Index