German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse argued that advanced industrial societies neutralize radical opposition by absorbing it into the commodity system. Dissent becomes a product, rebellion becomes a lifestyle to be marketed and sold, and thus, the revolutionary charge is defused. This article attempts to address the paradox of small-scale revolutionary-flag manufacturing within a commodity system that disarms revolutionary dissent.
In One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse argues that liberal societies absorb opposition through what he called "repressive tolerance.” Co-opted radical symbols, subcultures, and anti-establishment rhetoric are tolerated precisely in order to defuse them. The perceived act of rebelling becomes just another lifestyle choice.
In the case of this vexillological initiative, its supporters might feel a perceived sense of resistance by acquiring the symbols of rebellion, while actually conforming to the market's expectations. More broadly, in the Armenian diaspora, Armenian patriotic sentiment is regulated by sustaining some revolutionary culture, but replacing revolutionary action with institutional participation. As my initiative's proceeds serve historical preservation efforts, and not revolutionary ones, the consumer acquires an object of historical resistance without meaningfully contributing to resistance.
Sublimation and Desublimation of the Revolution
The Freudian understanding of sublimation is the process of redirecting socially unacceptable desires, such as aggression, into productive, culturally celebrated avenues such as art, science, or philosophy. In the Armenian revolutionary context of the late-19th and early 20th century, the channeling of aggression, in the form of violent insurrection against the Ottoman Empire, into the culturally celebrated goal of liberating the homeland is a sublimation.
Marcuse argues that contemporary society “desublimates” previously sublimated higher culture. The pursuit of these higher cultural avenues appears to become incompatible with technological society. Marcuse writes: “Man today can do more than the culture heroes and half-gods; he has solved many insoluble problems. But he has also betrayed the hope and destroyed the truth which were preserved in the sublimations of higher culture.” The modern Armenian does away with the culture hero/half-god, the fedayi, the armed guerrilla fighter of the Armenian revolutionary movement, thus forgoing the revolutionary ideals he had previously sublimated, because as Marcuse puts it: “reality surpasses culture.”
Here, the offloading of the revolutionary charge and the desublimation come together to produce not a rejection of revolution, but its wholesale incorporation into the established order, through the (increasingly meaningless) reproduction and display of revolutionary culture at scale. This is a paradoxical incorporation of insurgency into order. The visual presence of revolutionary Armenian symbols for sale is indicative of this shift, even in the case of hand-made, small-scale production. What was once venerated is now purchased. The liquidation and incorporation of revolutionary culture into a one-dimensional reality deprives the flag of its ability to challenge and transform the world that produced it.
Conclusion
The disappearance of the higher culture ultimately flattens the Armenian into what Marcuse termed a one-dimensional state. Through the absorption of all criticism and dissent as a form of subculture, liberal society eliminates the possibility of meaningful disruptive dissent. The Armenian revolutionary risks taming actual revolutionary thought and transforming its cherished symbols, flags included, into consumables. Thus, this contemporary vexillological initiative is simultaneously an act of preservation and, despite my best intentions, an act of neutralization.
Sources
Lunn, Eugene. “The Frankfurt School in the Development of Mass Culture Debate.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, vol. 10, no. 2–3, 1986, pp. 61–89.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2002, pp 53–83.
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