EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES (continued)

Like Gimenez, Teresa Ebert addresses issues of Marxist-feminist theory. But where Gimenez' essay concerns the question of theorizing women's oppression, Ebert's advances the Marxist-feminist critique of postmodern feminist theory and the identity politics it affirms. Key to her critique is the stress on the materiality of capitalism and of the capitalist exploitative relations of production that shape the social structures of daily life and the concomitant forms of consciousness. Because postmodernism postulates the total autonomy of discourses from their material conditions, it leaves entirely outside the bounds of theory and politics the realm of labor and exploitation (i.e., class relations). As a consequence, it severs the organic connections between social class and the various identities of the individuals who comprise social classes. Gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and other differences, then, are taken as autonomous realities, irreducible to anything outside themselves. Once abstracted from their roots in production and the division of labor, identities become "dematerialized floating oppressions." Ebert shows how the theoretical opposition between modernity and postmodernity is an ideological (mis-)understanding of the nature of current socio-economic changes, which do not portend either the end of history, or a qualitative change from a putative "modern" to a "postmodern" age. These are, rather, changes in the capitalist forces of production, which have fragmented social and political spaces at all levels, so that micropolitics appear to be the only rational course of action and identity the only legitimate ground for theorizing oppression. The alternative to the shortcomings of postmodern theoretical idealism and political pragmatism is a return to the core principles of Marxism and the development of what Ebert calls "a new (Red) Feminism," solidly grounded in the centrality of labor and of the exploitation of labor in women's lives.

Susan Mann and Douglas Huffman deploy a Marxist-feminist lens to analyze the so-called third wave of the modern women's movement. Rejecting conventional identifications of third-wave feminism with young feminists of the 1980s and 1990s, they view it instead as a multifaceted critique of the second wave, a discourse that consists of four distinct perspectives. Each centers on difference, but in dissimilar and sometimes contradictory ways. The first critical perspective arose in the early 1980s, when women of color and ethnicity called attention to second-wave feminism's tendency to essentialize "woman" and in response developed intersectionality theory, positing a matrix of identities based on race, ethnicity and class, as well as gender. Second, feminist postmodernists, likewise critiquing essentialist notions of "woman," decentered all political subjects and called for the total dismantling of group categories. These first two feminist perspectives, although both critical of second-wave feminism, had radically opposing consequences for the politics of gender. On the one hand, intersectionality theory endorses identity politics but replaces the hegemonic white upper-middle-class notion of "woman" with a set of equally essentializing identities, said to work together in complex combinations. On the other, feminist postmodernists reject identity politics altogether, finding it restrictive and disciplinary; in the absence of collective categories, they struggle to find some other basis for feminist politics. The third perspective that Mann and Huffman discuss is feminist postcolonial theory, which emerged in an effort to widen the discourse from the societal to the global level; here, the critique of feminist essentialism focuses on the tendency of feminists to essentialize third-world women as a monolithic "other." Finally, there is the perspective of the younger generations of feminists, whose "third-wave agenda" draws in various ways on the first three perspectives. For these young women, difference and hybridity are primary and the action is local and personal, often taking the form of a postmodernist and seemingly antipolitical performance politics. Having presented third-wave feminism as a complicated and contradictory discourse, Mann and Huffman then turn to an extended evaluation of it from a Marxist-feminist viewpoint, finding much that can and should be recuperated for 21st-century gender politics.

Marxist feminism, which grounds gender oppression in the overall organization of the social reproduction of labor, is relevant, as Alan Sears' article shows, to analyzing the oppression that states enact under the guise of protecting standards of sexual morality. Sears calls for the development of a queer anticapitalist politics that goes beyond the struggle for civil rights to incorporate in its political agenda the struggle for the social and economic rights of the working class and poor gay, lesbian and transgendered people. The relative openness of the capitalist state in Canada grants civil rights, including marriage, to gays and lesbians, a goal still inaccessible to most gays and lesbians in the United States. At the same time, the poor, the working poor and working class people, especially those who are not heterosexual, are targetted by coercive and repressive policies that coexist with more inclusive policies designed to integrate into civil society those sexual transgressors who are able, in light of their class location, to mimic the family stability and consumption patterns functional for the maintenance of effective demand. Given that gender inequality, regardless of sexual orientation, results in men's higher socio-economic status, it is gay men rather than lesbian women who are the greatest beneficiaries of civil rights advances and the opening of visible and legitimate social spaces. The creation of a social imaginary, endlessly reproduced by the mass media, according to which gays and lesbians are white, affluent, and stylish, obscures the social exclusion and oppression of those who are poor, non-white, and unable to benefit, for lack of economic and social capital, from the attainment of civil rights and legitimate gay and lesbian social spaces. This is why, Sears argues, a new kind of sexual liberation politics, one that is aware of class divisions among gays and lesbians and of the limits of civil rights and legal victories, should be forged, as Marxist feminism suggests, around struggles for the necessary conditions for the social reproduction of all labor, regardless of sexual orientation.

Marx's work has had a peculiar history in legal feminism, having been appropriated and transformed by radical feminist Catherine MacKinnon. Highly influential, MacKinnon developed a set of feminist analogues to Marxist concepts; for most feminist legal theorists and activists, MacKinnon's account of Marx was all they knew of Marxist thought. Kate Sutherland's systematic critique shows that MacKinnon's analogies rest on an essentialist understanding of women and sexuality. Sutherland notes that a Marxist dialectical analysis of the historically specific features of all social categories, identifying the power relations (in this case, patriarchy) that construct women and sexuality, opens the way for an alternative understanding of the contradictory role of the state and the legal system in contributing both to strengthen and weaken the oppression of women. A focus on women and their attributes as unchanging effects of oppressive gender, political and legal relations overlooks their historicity and the contradictory nature of all social relations. Sutherland suggests that feminist legal scholars and activists disentangle Marx from MacKinnon's misreadings and recognize the transformatory power of Marxism for feminist theory and for women's political struggles within the legal and political realms.

With the publication of this set of essays, diverse in topic, perspective, and approach, Science & Society reaffirms the centrality of Marx's work for women's struggles and illuminates as well the contributions of Marxist–feminist scholars to the development of Marxist theory.

Martha Gimenez
Lise Vogel

Department of Sociology
Rider University
2083 Lawrencevill Road
Lawrencevill NJ 08648
lvogel@mindspring.com

Back to Prior Page