1 - On social movements and culture

Summary

The new sensibility has become a political factor. This event, which may well indicate a turning point in the evolution of contemporary societies, demands that critical theory incorporate the new dimension into its concepts, project its implications for the possible construction of a free society.

Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (1969: 23)

Social movements and cultural transformation

Social movements are interpreted in this book as central moments in the reconstitution of culture. In the creative turmoil that is unleashed within social movements, modes of cultural action are redefined and given new meaning as sources of collective identity. For brief, intensive moments, the habitual behavior and underlying values of society are thrown open for debate and reflection, and, as the movements fade from the political center stage, their cultural effects seep into the social lifeblood in often unintended and circuitous ways.

It is our contention that both the culture of everyday life – the values, mores, and habits that form the basis of social behavior – and the “art worlds” of cultural expression are deeply affected by the innovative activities, the exemplary cultural actions, that take place in social movements. In the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse emphasized the aesthetic dimension of the movements of the time, suggesting that it was primarily in art and music that social movements “re-membered” traditions of resistance and critique (Marcuse 1969).