ABSTRACT
Contemporary Western society is in serious crisis. Politically, wars abound; terrorism is a persistent presence. Contemporary economics is characterized by financial collapse, national recessions and depressions, and inequality of wealth and incomes. Culturally, things are little better. Herbert Marcuse’s ‘one-dimensional’ individual has now become the quintessential character of the postmodern age. The modern forms of domination and repression are by no means immediately obvious or necessarily experienced as overly domineering and overly repressive. The cultural forms of mass media, mass-advertising, management of production processes, and modes of education dominate our cultural existence, while persuasion and manipulation permeate our cultural experience.
