ABSTRACT
Human fragmentation was a major preoccupation of Enlightenment thinkers and more before its solution was perceived in terms of a drastic reshaping of the social structure. Offering no satisfactory explanation as to why men found themselves adrift in a hostile world, Feuerbach's validation of the sensuous and social degenerated into the sentimental plea that each should seek self-realisation through love of others. The Port Huron Statement, formulated in 1962 by the Students for a Democratic Society, is perhaps the best of many documents recently inspired by the desire to recreate social reality so as to stimulate individuals to engage in an infinite range of creative life-experiences. Hence the stress on the act of revolt as a surrealistic event, a festive occasion entailing a massive upsurge of libidinal energies in which established patterns of social control suddenly and dramatically disintegrate. Social relationships are thereby envisaged as arrangements of convenience, mutually beneficial arrangements of a contractual nature between parties not intrinsically connected.
