From Playful Pleasure to Dystopian Control: Marx, Gramsci, Habermas and the Limits of Leisure

Abstract | Abstract

In this new century of (post)modernity and technological progress, it is easy to think that leisure lives have become more meaningful and important. Leisure is claimed to be the space or activity in which we become human, find our Self, and find belonging. There is an enormous range of literature that makes the case for contemporary leisure as a form that allows for meaningful human agency and human development, whether through the discipline of physical activity or the virtual communities of the internet. In this paper, I will make the opposite case. I will concede that leisure has had an important role to play in human development (as a Habermasian communicative discourse and playful pleasure) - but using Marx, Gramsci and especially Habermas, I will argue that the lifeworld of contemporary leisure has been swamped by the systems of global capitalism and captured by the power of hegemonic elites.