Re: MatFem/MarxFem

[Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Martha, Charles, and all,

First, I want to thank Martha for providing the four part essay on
materialist-feminism. I was the one who requested it and found it highly
informative. I had some experience with materialist-feminist thought and
intuitively felt that there was some differences. I will now follow up on
these leads (when I get room to breath). The thing that strikes me most,
however, is the redundancy of many of the points mat-fem makes. As Charles
Brown noted today, they find non-existent holes in historical materialism
and then "fill" in the gaps. I see this sort of turf-cutting a lot in
recent materialist scholarship. The transcendental/critical realism
position also often does the same thing. Despite important clarifications,
and many thanks to the spreading influence of historical materialism
thought on many other perspectives (I don't want to alienate people moving
in our realm), I find that some of this is not so much re-inventing but
rediscovering the wheel.

Andy