Radical Philosophy Review

ONLINE FIRST

published on April 28, 2017

Nina Power

Society without Opposition
Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man Meets Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism

This essay seeks to read Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism together in the context of what Marcuse calls the “society without opposition.” It seeks to extract a conception of hope as method from within these two otherwise rather bleak analyses. Their shared conception of hope is understood as the attempt to speak from a conception of capitalism as hell, and to continue to speak anyway. The essay concludes by defending a conception of hope that haunts rather than a hope that promises.