Herbert Marcuse, the Liberation of “Man,” and Hegemonic Humanism

This essay revisits Marcuse’s most influential book, One-Dimensional Man, to situate his intervention within the debates and disagreements that made up the larger Marxist-humanist turn in Western Europe, the United States, Eastern Europe, and the global South. Drawing on Marxist-feminist and decolonial critical traditions, it develops a feminist and decolonial critique of Marcuse’s notions of labor, technology, freedom, and revolutionary subjectivity. The essay joins efforts in decentering male-centric and colonial genealogies of Western critical theory and contributes to unraveling the social histories of its formation from its margins and its undersides.