Marcuse, micro-aggressions and the right to be not offended: Rex van Schalkwyk

If anarchic means having no controlling rules or principles to give order, then the adherents of this school of philosophy at South Africa universities perhaps don’t exactly fit. You’d think rejecting coercive forms of hierarchy easily fits student activists we’ve seen on South African campuses in recent years; toppling and/or defacing colonial statues, disrupting lectures, manhandling vice rectors, burning cars and buildings and even driving a world-renowned black cardiologist leader willing to listen to an early grave. Yet not according to this pithy treatise by a former judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa and chair (dare we say man), of the Free Market Foundation’s Rule of Law Board of Advisors. They fit rather into the evolved philosophy of a former German pedant, philosopher and Marxist, Herbert Marcuse, whose followers down the century have reworked his anti-capitalist cause to feed endemic discontent, using racialism to pull the trigger of an incipient Marxist revolution. Subjective discontents across the United States leapt on Marcuse’s intellectual division of society into those with class privilege and those without, taking up the cudgels, be they feminists, members of LGBT or immigrant groupings, or any other minority cause. SA was ripe for this, even if expressing their pedantic “principles’ looked like anarchy. – Chris Bateman

Postmodernism and the silencing of dissent

By Rex van Schalkwyk* 

It began with Herbert Marcuse. A German pedant, philosopher and ardent Marxist, he became disappointed at the “inevitable” course of history: the anticipated revolution, unexpectedly did not occur. The event that he had been anticipating was the overthrow of the corrupt capitalist system by the marginalised and exploited working class. The Second World War had provided what was thought to be the ideal catalyst for the commencement of the class revolution: surely the working class would seize this opportunity of capitalist going to war against capitalist and take the initiative to rid themselves of their chains.

Rex van Schalkwyk

This did not happen and to the chagrin of Marcuse, and others, the working class, in every case, rallied in support of the national effort. There were British, French, and other working-class men fighting, and killing, not their capitalist exploiters, but the enemy across the border.

The disappointed Marcuse had left Germany in the 1930s to escape the rise of Nazism and emigrated to the United States where he was to achieve fame, and notoriety, as a member of the so-called Frankfurt School. His later influence spread from the University of California, San Diego, to other institutions of higher learning and eventually, throughout the United States.

Although disappointed, Marcuse was not deterred: Marx had merely made a relatively trivial technical error – perfectly understandable in the circumstances. The trick now was to find an alternative source of discontent upon whom the burden of revolution could, more dependably, be imposed. Within the tumult of the United States of the time, and its manifest racial divide, it was not surprising that Marcuse should have identified endemic racialism as the trigger of the coming revolution. He also identified a multiplicity of social groups that would each seek social change, for reasons of their own. There were, he contended, multiple forms of oppression that might lead to a revolutionary outcome. “The need for radical change”, he said, “must be rooted in the subjectivity of individuals themselves…”. (Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, 1978 3-4) He became an ardent exponent of what was called, radical revolutionary subjectivity. The action required by this subjectivity was the impulse towards social transformation.

Marcuse expanded upon the idea of class privilege; there were those that had it, and those that did not, and it was a simple matter to tell the one from the other. In this way the white male has come to represent the arch-villain, and the target of an ongoing revolution. This categorisation has lately been adjusted to encompass the white, hetro-sexual male. He advocated a tolerance which was however intolerant of what he called repressive political movements which, under the influence of postmodernism, has come to mean whatever was thought to be so.

It is not hard to see how, on the university campuses, upon which Marcuse had such a profound, radical effect, his philosophy would, in time, have morphed into the identification of multiple subjective discontents. These discontents have, in a short while, given rise to a strange and incontestable new right: the right to be not offended. Those who dare not be offended now include feminists, gay and lesbian individuals, transgenders, sexual indeterminates, immigrants and a host of others whose badge of honour depends principally on the assertion that they are not of the hetro-sexual white male category. Many university campuses offer “safe spaces” for those who believe that they may have suffered a micro-aggression (one that was not intended but was subjectively perceived to be so) to recover from the trauma. In this way Marcuse and his Marxist vision has contributed to the transformation of the American university. (Marcuse taught also at Harvard, Columbia and Brandeis)

Meanwhile in France, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault had been hard at work on their revolutionary work on philosophy, which has come to be known as postmodernism. This philosophy is predicated upon the idea that there can be no single, or predominant “good” in society. The “summum bonum” that was sought by philosophers such as Cicero, and later by St. Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics, and finally adopted by Immanuel Kant, was summarily cast aside. In its place came the ritual of an infinity of possibilities, which covered every aspect of philosophical enquiry, and every dimension of human conduct.

In a world of infinite possibilities any outcome is as plausible as any other and no one should be accorded precedence over any other. Philosophy cannot provide a definitive answer to any of the questions posed by philosophers because each attempt at an answer will be met by the unanswered remainder of the infinity. What then, in this chaotic world of infinite possibilities, is the impulse that drives society? The answer is power.

Society is made up of a hierarchy of power structures. What matters is not individual accountability but the nature of the power structure to which the individual belongs. The progression from this to the identity politics of today was an inevitable one, and the group obsession which has become so evident on the university campuses, its natural outcome. If all that matters is the power structure to which the individual belongs and there are no absolutes, such as the truth and individual responsibility, power games laced with mendacity become the chosen method of engagement.

The search for truth, which is an inseparable part of the summum bonum, forms no part of this philosophy; in fact the postmodernists disavow the abstraction of the truth and have replaced it with the concept of individual truth: that which the individual believes to be true is held to be true for that individual. This is part of the reason why this method is also described as ethical relativism. It accounts also for the extreme and violent means by which one “truth” is asserted against another. Where power is the only broker, and truth is not sought, because it has already been indisputably claimed, there is no possible room for rational debate; nor indeed for any debate at all. The result is that academic freedom and open debate have become an anathema: if my truth is the only truth that has any claim to be heard it must be expected that every view that might be in conflict with that truth may legitimately be silenced. Not only that; if, in permitting the expression of the contrary view, I should be offended in my “subjective reality” the purveyor of that view must be silenced to forestall the offence that will otherwise be endured. At all costs, the giving of offence cannot be permitted.

  • Rex van Schalkwyk is Chairman of the FMF Rule of Law Board of Advisors and a former judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa.
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