Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture Quotes

“For Marcuse the death drive has the function of protesting against the injustice and deprivations of history: The descent toward death is an unconscious flight from pain and want. It is an expression of the eternal struggle against suffering and repression. And the death instinct itself seems to be affected by the historical changes which affect this struggle, (p. 29) The death drive and its derivatives, along with the sexual perversions,8 are an unconscious protest against the insufficiency of civilization; they testify to the destructiveness of what they attempt to destroy – that is, repression. There is therefore an implicit idealism in them: ‘they aim not only against the reality principle, at non-being, but also beyond the reality principle – at another mode of being’ (p. 109).”
― Jonathan Dollimore, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture