Marcuse’s utopia: right here, not yet, and over
Margath Walker, Department of Geography and Geosciences, University of Louisville, USA
The most striking aspect setting Herbert Marcuse apart from other principal figures identified with the
Frankfurt School is his unwavering commitment to the utopian spirit, to the possibility of a better
future. While there are many lines of connection between Marcuse and Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope, most notably in the idea that the process of attaining utopia is a self-generating one rather than a pre-existing ideal state to strive for, Marcuse politicizes the concept by building on Bloch’s formulations. He writes that while the established reality principle has cast utopia as a placeless place beyond reach, the notion and desire for utopia is a necessary component of the human mind. Here, I seek to characterize Marcuse’s vision through a geographic lens and argue that utopia is a realizable place, itself part of his larger project of dialectical thinking. Utopia is commonly understood as both ‘good place’ and ‘no place’ but for Marcuse it is more. Across the breadth of his work, utopia is right here, not yet, and over. In elaborating these three phases, I argue that utopia stretches beyond juridical-territorial conceptualizations reconfiguring temporal borders through an activation of the ‘disallowed’, an articulation of oppositional space rooted in imagination. Spatio-temporal plurality is precisely what imbues utopia with power; at times translating into elusiveness and at others appearing right before us to thwart pessimism and defeatism. Marcuse’s work on utopia is integral to a prefigurative politics where the concept of becoming is integral. It is synonymous with struggle, change and overcoming material and metaphorical borders.
via Utopia at the Border, 2016.
Spatializing Marcuse, Critical Theory for Contemporary Times, Margath A. Walker · 2022
On Marcuse And Liberation Philosophy: Arnold Farr, interviewed by Margath Walker. May 15, 2015.
