Eros às avessas: pansexualismo e dessublimação repressiva

Abstract

The article explains the concept of Eros as a social category in Herbert Marcuse’s thought. Eroticism has political meaning for the author. It indicates the possibility of liberation from forms of social repression. In the first section I provide a brief account of Marcuse’s association with psychoanalysis, before his more intensive contact with Freud. In the second section I show the essentially political and social character of Eros with a reconstruction of Marcusian theory of social change. In his writings, Marcuse refers to the perverted forms of Eros represented by pansexualism and by what he calls repressive desublimation. In this context, I discuss the meanings of these perversions. The significance of repressive sublimation is more fully discussed in the third part of the article. Marcuse also dedicates his third chapter of One-dimensional Man to repressive desublimation. Pansexualism is analyzed from Eros and Civilization and other writings of the 1950s and 60s. Additionally discussed is the concept of whether pansexualism refers to the libertarian perspective that the philosopher intended by the politicization of Eros. In conclusion, I demonstrate that Marcuse understands that pansexualism and liberation without taboos cannot be seen as political liberation. They are only pernostic forms of the manifestation of Eros.