Repressive desublimation

By offering instantaneous, rather than mediated, gratifications,[4] repressive desublimation was considered by Marcuse to remove the energies otherwise available for a social critique; and thus to function as an emancipating dynamic under the guise of collectivist politics.

[8] A decade later, Ernest Mandel took up Marcuse's theme in his analysis of how dreams of escape through sex (or drugs) were commodified as part of the growing commercialisation of leisure in late capitalism.

"The world is no longer perceived as hostile" wherein the status quo is perpetuated through the proliferation of comforts, consumerism, and commodification; where the concept of repressive desublimation highlights the desire-production and control dynamics of these processes.

The pursuit of these is now sanctioned and celebrated, meaning being a member of these types of forms of life is no longer a subversive action or lifestyle, but in fact, has been commodified and now perpetuates capital society via the value-form.

[16] But some postmodernist thinkers – while accepting repressive desublimation as a fairly accurate description of changing social mores – see the ensuing depthlessness of postmodernism as something to be celebrated, not (as with Marcuse) condemned.

[17] Thus the advertisement-based system of mass sexualised commodification of the nineties meshed comfortably with the conservative, post-political ethos of the times, to create a kind of media-friendly and increasingly pervasive superficial sexuality.