Evandro Carlos Salermo
Doctoral candidate in Education. Teacher in the
Mato Grosso State Education System.
Email: soproeverquest@gmail.com
Luciano Rodrigues Santos
PhD candidate in History. Federal University
of Goiás (UFG)
Email: ceffir@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This the article examines
the political status of technology through the lens of the perspectives of
Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas, arguing that technology constitutes a
historically situated social form of power organization . Starting from a critique
of the illusion of technical neutrality , an ideological mechanism that
naturalizes domination in technologically advanced societies , the text
analyzes How Habermas depoliticizes technology by inscribing it within a
cognitively instrumental interest of anthropological basis , separating it from
the normative sphere and confining critique to the communicative correctness of
systemic effects . In contrast , Marcuse politicizes technology by conceiving
it as a technological a priori , that
is , as a material grammar that precedes and conditions the field of the
possible , functionally integrating individuals into the existing order .
Drawing on the mediation of Andrew Feenberg , the article demonstrates that
technology can be reopened to social contestation through the notion of
technical code , which reveals how dominant values and interests crystallize in
artifacts and systems, naturalizing contingent decisions as rational demands .
Subsequently , contemporary diagnoses of platform capitalism are mobilized to
show how technological rationality intensifies and spreads in digital regimes,
operating as a ubiquitous environment for the management of life . It is
concluded that emancipation requires effective mastery of the material codes
and processes of technology , as well as concrete contestation over its design,
a condition for ensuring that political imagination is not reduced to the
administration of the existing technology thus reveals itself as an arena in
which what human beings can be is decided , rather than as an inevitable
destiny .
Keywords: Technique . Technological Rationality . Herbert Marcuse. Jürgen Habermas. Platform Capitalism .
Reviewed by Current Scientific Journal
on
abril 30, 2026
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