Praxis Exiled: Herbert Marcuse and the One Dimensional University

Abstract

Leading Frankfurt School theorist, Herbert Marcuse, possessed an intricate relationship with higher education. As a professor, Marcuse participated in the 1960s student movements, believing that college students had potential as revolutionary subjects. Additionally, Marcuse advocated for a college education empowered by a form of praxis that extended education outside the university into realms of critical thought and action. However, the more pessimistic facet of his theory, best represented in the canonical One Dimensional Man, now seems to be the dominant ideology in the contemporary college experience. With the rise of the corporate university, knowledge is commodified and praxis is supplanted by rampant consumerism. Once a haven for critical theory, the college experience has been overtaken by capitalism, substantially limiting the revolutionary potential for college students in favour of an institutionalised, one dimensional university. HERBERT MARCUSE AND THE LEVELING OF THE COLLEGE LANDSCAPEHerbert Marcuse had a profound faith in the power of student populations. In the 1960s, students carried well-thumbed copies of his most notable work, One Dimensional Man, to demonstrations and protests, reciprocally elevating Marcuse to an esteemed position among theorists during that time. Marcuse, himself, participated in these movements and served as a key speaker in lectures celebrating the critical, the radical, and the avantgarde. Though a keen critic of capitalism's subtle deprivations and a theorist openly pessimistic about the expanding intrusiveness of the technological society, there is an underlying hopefulness pulsing through Marcuse's work. Like any true Marxist-inspired theorist, Marcuse envisioned a better future, one ushered not necessarily by the proletariat, but rather by the hundreds of thousands of college students spread across the United States.Marcuse's faith in college students stemmed from multiple originsidealistic and pragmatic. Those enrolled in universities held the most bs_bs_banner

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