Re: Capitalism and Heterosexism: Judith Butler & Nancy Fraser (To Carrol)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Carrol wrote:
>The habit is the proliferation of "isms" to
>include all possible additions to the basic pair of racism and sexism.

The proliferation of 'isms' can be a problem in that terminological
resemblance often sets up a false sense of sameness among different
material bases of various oppressions.

Heterosexism is for me a shorthand to refer to the ideological production
of sex/gender/sexuality as we have known it under capitalism, and this
ideology has an intimate connection to the production of the 'family' (as a
naturalized unit for primary affective relationships, care-giving,
reproduction of labor power, etc. outside the 'market') unlike the
pre-capitalist 'household' (whose primary mode of existence was as an
economic unit of production), the production of genders through the sexual
division of labor (productive and reproductive), the naturalization of
sexuality, and so on. There may be a better term, but in my view it is not
the same as homophobia (as sexism is not the same as misogyny).
Heterosexism may possibly come to dispense with homophobia (though as of
now the two support each other).

Not every ill under capitalism may not have to be explained through 'one's
analysis of capitalism,' but this one has to be, or sexism (and its linkage
to capitalism) can't be effectively analyzed. (This insight I get from the
legacy of marxist feminism and queer theory.)

I entirely agree with your critique of Fraser. (My frustration with her
line of argument is one of the main reasons why I sent my post here and
elsewhere; and unlike you guys, I would very much like to see further
theoretical work that addresses the same questions using historical
materialism.)

>I will suggest, very tentatively, a possible line of
>inquiry, related to but not the same as the traditional marxist critique
>of racism and sexism as barriers to class unity. This critique in its
>simplest form simply sees racism as dividing whites from blacks (which
>it certainly does do) but does *not* see racism as a terrible barrier to
>*effective* unity even among whites. And here I believe an important
>guide is Marx's *Wages, Price & Profit* -- in which he argues that if
>the workers do not defend themselves within capitalism "they would be
>degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation....By
>cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would
>certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger
>movement." (_Selected Works_ Vol. 2 (Progress), p. 75.) We do *not* need
>to theorize, certainly not as part of our basic analysis of capitalism,
>homophobia, indifference to the disabled,  acquiescence to the "war
>against crime" and the "drug war," in order to see that failure to
>struggle against these abuses disqualify workers for initiating any
>larger movement.

As you noted, the lbo discussion on the Black Radical Congress has been a
frustrating one. (And so have been many other discussions on issues wrongly
cast as 'identity politics,' 'single-issue movement,' 'merely cultural,'
etc.) I don't think that a better theory would necessarily have changed the
nature of that discussion, but 'that failure to struggle against these
abuses [homophobia, indifference to the disabled, acquiescence to the "war
against crime" and the "drug war,"] disqualify workers for initiating any
larger movement' doesn't seem to be shared widely enough among
self-identified leftists to constitute the generally accepted premise of
political discussion (and if it had been, we wouldn't have had a
frustrating discussion). And I think that those who do not accept the above
as premise is trapped within a fundamentally incorrect theory of what
constitutes the material of historical materialism (and they also often get
history wrong); and they disregard ideology properly so called (whose
material base they insist on ignoring and saying it's 'cultural,' a matter
of 'attitude,' [or in Fraser's case] 'the relations of recognition,' etc.).
For queer leftists to exist within or even in some collaborative
relationships with non-queer leftists, a better theory to combat theirs, I
think, is indispensable.

Last but not the least, a queer movement itself needs a better theory, to
adequately grasp the nature of our oppression under capitalism. It's a
matter of self-defence.

Yoshie