Re: Re Article? [Fwd: MarxFem/MatFem I]

[Martha Gimenez <gimenez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you Carrol for your kind comments and for bringing M-Fem's attention
to these posts.  I wrote a longer article based on them which was
published in the May/June 2000 issue of Radical Philosophy.

Best,

Martha

**********************************************************************************

On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Carrol Cox wrote:

>
> 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/
>
>
>