Holding Contradictions: Marcuse and the Idea of Refusal

In this paper, the author considers the implications of refusal in the context of dialectic and depth psychology. What does it mean to refuse? What are the personal and psychological costs of refusal? Marcuse suggested that refusal could lead to greater possibilities for action. The author suggests that those in the field of public administration can participate in the "Great Refusal" by learning to think more dialectically, thus disabling the Western principle of non-contradiction and permitting the simultaneous acceptance of contradictions, in both theory and practice. In this symposium, we have been asked to consider Marcuse's idea of The Great Refusal, and its relevance to the field of public administration. The idea of refusal is one that I have found compelling for some time. Refuse what? What does it mean to refuse? Does refusal make me a negative, cranky, difficult, and contrarian person? Some who know me might already be nodding their heads in affirmation. But that leads me to ask: under what circumstances is refusal an affirmative act? What connotations are created by considering the act of refusal linked with the gender of the one refusing? What subliminal connections are made as a result of the spelling and pronunciation of the word, which can mean either an act of denial (refuse) or garbage (re/use), depending on the context? In this essay, I would like to consider refusal in the context of dialectic and depth psychology. Our Western "principle of non-contradiction" dictates that contradictions (a and not-a) cannot logically exist simultaneously. Therefore, when we encounter contradictions, we are tempted?indeed, instructed?to resolve them at any cost. I link these two perspectives to the public servant by suggesting that one important critical "refusal" can be learning to "hold" contradictions until their resolution emerges organically. ?2003, Public Administration Theory Network This content downloaded on Mon, 7 Jan 2013 22:33:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 262 Administrative Theory & Praxis Vol. 25, No. 2 REFUSAL: THE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING Marcuse, in the 1960 Preface to Reason and Revolution, extolled dialectic by pointing out the power of negative thinking. He argued that the function of dialectical thought is to break down the self assurance and self contentment of common sense, to undermine the sinister confidence in the power and language of facts, to demonstrate that unfreedom is so much at the core of things that the development of their internal contradictions leads necessarily to qualitative change (1960, p. ix). In his opinion, "The power of negative thinking is the driving power of dialectical thought, used as a tool for analyzing the world of facts in terms of its internal inadequacy" (1960, p. viii). Among other things, Marcuse was reacting to the work of Freud, particularly Freud's Totem and Taboo (1913) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), in which Freud explores the relationship between civilization and the individual. In Totem and Taboo Freud describes his theory of the primal murder of the father by his sons, an episode that he imagines represents the founding act of civilization (the contract among the brothers, in which they mutually agree to renounce their claim to unfettered sexual and aggressive drives in return for the benefits of an ordered social life). This establishment of prohibitions (against incest and against patricide) is, in Freud's view, the essential condition: the "constitutive act through which a law-governed social world is created, namely, the oedipally structured social ontology of civilization [italics added]" (Whitebook, 1995, p. 22). What does it mean to reject this social world? Joel Whitebook (1995) suggests that there is an important distinction between the radical reformer and the transfigurative Utopian. The radical reformer accepts the basic structure of society, but objects to the unequal distribution of prohibitions and renunciations. A transfigurative Utopian, however, rejects the entire oedipally structured framework at its foundations. Horkheimer and Adorno, in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/1972), critiqued Freud's analysis by arguing that, in order to conquer the external world (create civilization), humans first had to conquer their inner worlds?that is, they had to transform themselves into disciplined, purposive agents of a bureaucratized and administered society. Horkheimer's and Adorno's basic thesis was that the domination of the inner world ultimately made emancipation impossible. They tried to imagine a Utopian transfiguration of civilization but, ultimately, could not envision any alternative in which the regressive features were not more disturbing than the prospect itself. It is this theoretical cul-de-sac that has challenged critical theorists ever since (Whitebook, 1995; Zanetti, 1997). In his book Eros and Civilization (1966), Marcuse attempted a reply to both Freud and the Dialectic of Enlightenment by taking on the role of transfigurative Utopian. In particular, he was concerned that individuals' This content downloaded on Mon, 7 Jan 2013 22:33:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions