Final Repression: Adorno and Marcuse on the Antinomy of Progress

Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut)

The School of Materialist Research is proud to present the fifth of its (free) promotional lectures, which will last through May and June. Our fifth lecture, which will take place on May 26, 2021, at 18:30 CET and is part of a cluster called “Materialism in Philosophy and Non-philosophy: Marxian, Scientific and Artistic Perspectives” is by Ray Brassier, entitled “Final Repression: Adorno and Marcuse on the Antinomy of Progress.” This seminar, through a dialogue with such thinkers as Freud, Adorno, and Marcuse, discusses the relations between capitalism, progress, nature, and freedom, while also relating them to questions of repression and sublimation. More specifically, his primary questions are: in the case of Adorno, how resistance breaks with repetition, and how, in the case of Marcuse, repression sublimates itself.

Ray Brassier is Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He is the author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan 2007). He is currently writing about Marx, freedom, and fate.

The School of Materialist Research (SMR) is an informal graduate and post-doc level program that offers seminars and workshops that address the materialisms running through contemporary science, philosophy, art, mathematics, design, architecture, and politics. SMR is an international platform, founded by the Center for Philosophical Technologies at Arizona State University, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje and Department for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics at TU Wien that functions as a global online school combining education, research, and mentorship to advance academic study at the intersection the Social Sciences and Humanities and the STEM sciences. Two more institutions from Europe are expected to join the platform in the upcoming months. The Spring and Summer Sessions are offered for free and open to the public serving as promotional events that illustrate the programmatic commitment and style of work offered by the School for Materialist Research. Some of the confirmed speakers in the Spring/Summer series of seminars include: Paul Cockshott, Greg Michaelson, Ray Brassier, Anne-Françoise Schmid, John Ó Maoilearca, Guiseppe Longo, Agon Hamza, Adam Nocek, Katerina Kolozova, Vera Buhlman, Iris van der Tuin and many many more.