I heart writing so, so hard

This has been a week of library marathons. I’ve been writing papers since Monday, every waking moment, save to eat. So far I’ve written over 30 pages (double-spaced), and I’m nearing completion. I won’t sleep tonight until everything’s finished, and the PDFs are mailed out so the sugarplums can dance in my head.

I just wrote the two best papers I’ve ever written. One was a critical take on postmodernism and the future of critical theory. The next was a simple rundown of sociological concepts of my own choosing. A delectable excerpt from the latter paper follows.

Repressive desublimation

Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man made for an interesting read. As I understand it, the perspective Marcuse has crafted is an approximate (read: critical) synthesis of Marxism and Freudianism, a rather timely theory for the age in which it was conceived. (Look, I like Hegel, OK?) The specific concept of repressive desublimation refers to the conflation of freedom and indulgence so rampant in post-war America, and likely even more so today.

The sociological implications of such a theory are the waning prospects of revolution, or, in more contemporary jargon, an erosion of the expressive capacities of the average American. Steeped in stupefying entertainment for all our waking hours, we lucky few in the post-industrialist societies of the world have little hope of breaking out of the mold crafted for us and donning the gauntlets of critical theory to duke it out with the capitalist system—particularly its prize-winning fighting cock, the military-industrial complex. We become dumb mouths above genitals numb with monotonous, unending stimulation, existing only to feed and mutely perpetuate our feeding. Repressive desublimation is the method by which the tyrant constructs delicious complicity. It is the plastic bag we place over our heads to masturbate.

Take that, BDSM imagery of Foucauldian power dynamics!

I daresay it’s never been said better.