INTRODUCTION TO PART 2 A Revolution of Reason Nicole K. Mayberry and Sid Simpson “And yet this society is irrational as a whole.” – Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man Marcuse’s claim in One-Dimensional Man, written some half a century ago, that “it is a rational universe which, by the mere weight and capabilities of its apparatus, blocks all escape” (1964: 71) is every bit as relevant today as it was when it was frst published. In a world where comfortable unfreedom and unmitigated violence coincide, the fetishization of “reason” runs rampant. Witness, for instance, the de-funding of public education and the liberal arts in favor of STEM (the “rational” and proftable disciplines of science, tech- nology, engineering, and math), the persistent far-right invocations of “reason” to dismiss normative claims to justice (internet pseudo-intellectual Ben Shapiro’s tagline “facts don’t care about your feelings” is illustrative), and the harrowing growth of “consulting” indus- tries that exemplify technological rationality by shrouding their anti-labor goals in clichéd paeans to “market rationality” and “efciency.” The self-refective, substantive conception of reason that Marcuse and his Frankfurt colleagues sought to defend has not yet emerged from its eclipse. At the same time, Marcuse’s insight that reason, when reduced and reifed, yields a one-dimensional society likewise rings true. Across the globe political one-dimensionality renders meaningful resistance to the status quo unreasonable. In the United States, resist- ance against the police and other violent state apparatus is framed as immature and dan- gerous. In Palestine, over 100 years of white settler colonial violence, dispossession, and displacement are framed as “good” for the indigenous peoples of Palestine, the stabil- ity of the Middle East, and world peace at large (Khalidi 2020). Violence in Yemen and Congo is outright ignored. A withered conception of reason likewise enforces an economic one-dimensionality, in which neo-colonialism is masked as “development,” falling wages are vouchsafed by invocations of “dedication” and “worth ethic,” and the provision of basic welfare is villainized as “entitlement.” Worse still, these axes intersect in ever more dire ways: the ecological crisis, for instance, continues to unfold because the realm of pos- sibility is delimited to individualized action and green capitalism undertaken by singular DOI: 10.4324/9781003381020-12