O pensar da rebelião

The development of the individual subject is directly linked to the history and prehistory of capitalism: the isolated individual emerges along with and because of capitalism. However, this is the source of a major contradiction in modern society, for the individual whom society has created cannot help being frustrated in the attempt to live in that same society and ends up revolting against it. The Romantic exaltation of subjectivity — wrongly considered as the essential feature of Romanticism — is just one of the forms taken by the resistance to reification. Capitalism gives rise to independent individuals who can carry out socioeconomic functions; but when these individuals evolve into subjective individualities, exploring and developing their inner worlds and personal feelings, they enter into contradiction with a universe based on standardization and reification. And when they demand that their imagination be given free play, they collide with the extreme mercantile platitude of the world produced by capitalist relations. In this respect, Romanticism represents the revolt of repressed, channeled, and deformed subjectivity and affectivity.

— « Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity », Michael Löwy e Robert Sayre, p. 19