Re Article? [Fwd: MarxFem/MatFem I]

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Katha asked:


the marxist study group i'm in has asked me to conduct a meeting on
feminism.  We're look for an article that would be a good jumping off
place, but I am drawing my usual blank, except for Heidi Hartman's
"Strange Marriage of socialism and feminism."
 Any suggestions? it can be long article.

thanks in advance,
katha

It so happens that two years ago Martha Gimenez posted on this
list (in four parts) a comparison and contrast of Marxist Feminism
and materialist feminism.  As a basic document on marxism and
feminism I can't think of anything better. The archives of this
list also contain some responses to these posts that Martha fwd
from the materialist feminism list.

There was less response originally to Martha's posts than one might
have hoped. So I am posting them again at this time. Whether they
serve Katha's purposes or not, perhaps they will provoke more
list response at this time. Here is the first of the four posts.
The other three will follow shortly.

Carrol

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: MarxFem/MatFem I
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:47:26 -0600 (MDT)
From: Martha Gimenez <gimenez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: M-Fem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: A place for marxist-feminists to hang out <M-Fem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

          MARXIST FEMINISM/MATERIALIST FEMINISM

     It was possible, in the heady days of the Women's Liberation
Movement, to identify four main currents within feminist thought;
Liberal (concerned with attaining economic and political equality
within the context of capitalism); Radical (focused on men and
patriarchy as the main causes of the oppression of women);
Socialist (critical of capitalism and Marxism,  so much so that
avoidance of Marxism's alleged reductionisms resulted in dual
systems theories postulating various forms of interaction between
capitalism and patriarchy); and Marxist Feminism (a theoretical
position held by relatively few feminists in the U. S. -- myself
included -- which sought to develop the potential of Marxist theory
to understand the capitalist sources of the oppression of women).

     These are, of course, oversimplified descriptions of a rich
and complex body of literature which, however, reflected important
theoretical, political and social cleavages among women that
continue to this date. Divisions in feminist thought multiplied  as
the effects of post-structuralist and post-modern theorizing merged
with grass roots challenges to a feminism perceived as the
expression of the needs and concerns of middle and upper middle
class white, "First World" women.  In the process, the subject of
feminism became increasingly difficult to define, as the post-
modern critique of "woman" as an essentialist category  together
with critiques grounded in racial, ethnic, sexual preference and
national origin differences resulted in a seemingly never ending
proliferation of "subject positions," "identities," and "voices."
Cultural and identity politics replaced the early focus on
capitalism and (among Marxist feminists primarily) class divisions
among women;  today class has been reduced to another "ism;" i.e.,
to another form oppression which, together with gender and race
integrate a sort of mantra, something that everyone ought to
include in theorizing and research though, to my knowledge,
theorizing about it remains at the level of metaphors (e.g.,
interweaving, interaction, interconnection etc.).

     It was, therefore, very interesting to me to read a call for
papers for an edited book on Materialist Feminism.  The description
of Materialist Feminism put forth by the editors, Chrys Ingraham
and Rosemary Hennessy, was to me indistinguishable from Marxist
Feminism.  This seemed such a promising development in feminist
theory that I proceeded to invite the editors to join me in
creating an electronic discussion list on Materialist Feminism,
MatFem.  Initially, I thought that Materialist Feminism was simply
another way of referring to Marxist Feminism, but I was mistaken;
the two are, to some extent, distinct forms of feminist theorizing.
There is, however, such similarities between Materialist and
Marxist Feminist thought in some feminists' work that some degree
of confusion between the two is to be expected.

     My goal, in this short introduction (short response to Andy's
question) is simply to explore the differences and the similarities
between these two important currents within feminist theory. This
is not an easy task;  theorists who self-identify as materialist or
as marxist feminists differ in their understanding of what those
descriptive labels mean and, consequently, the kind of knowledges
they produce.  And, depending on their theoretical allegiances and
self-understanding within the field, feminists may differ in their
classification of other feminists works, so that clear lines of
theoretical demarcation between and within these two umbrella terms
are somewhat difficult to establish.  Take, for example, Lise
Vogel's work.  I always considered her a Marxist Feminist because,
unlike Socialist Feminists (whose avoidance of Marx's alleged
reductionisms led them to postulate ahistorical theories of
patriarchy), she took Marxism seriously and developed her analysis
of reproduction as a basis for the oppression of women firmly
within the Marxist tradition.  But her recent book's subtitle (a
collection of previously published essays), is "Essays for a
Materialist Feminism;"  self-identifying as a socialist feminist,
she states that socialist feminists "sought to replace the
socialist tradition's theorizing about the woman question with a
'materialist' understanding of women's oppression" (Vogel, 1995, p.
xi). This is certainly news to me; Socialist Feminism's rejection
of Marx's and Marxism's "reductionism" lead to the deliberate
effort to ground "patriarchy" outside the mode of production and,
consequently and from the standpoint of Marxist theory, outside
history.  Materialism, Vogel tells us,  was used to highlight the
key role of production, including domestic production, in
understanding the conditions leading to the oppression of women.
(But wasn't Engels' analysis materialist? and didn't Marxist
Feminists [Margaret Benston and Peggy Morton dome to mind) explore
the ways production -- public and domestic -- oppressed and
exploited women?)  Materialism was also used as "a flag," to
situate Socialist Feminism within feminist thought and within the
left;  materialist feminism, consequently cannot be reduced to a
trend in cultural studies, as some literary critics would prefer
(Vogel, 1995, xii).


Martha E. Gimenez
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado at Boulder
http://csf.colorado.edu/gimenez/