Reserve Text: Martha E. Gimenez, "Marxist Feminism / Materialist Feminism" [Copyright Martha E. Gimenez, 1998]
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 few years ago, 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 introduction to the page, is 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 the subtitle of her
recent book (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 come 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).These brief comments about Vogel's understanding of Materialist
Feminism highlight some of its problematic aspects as a term intended to
identify a specific trend within feminist theory. It can blur, as it does in
this instance, the qualitative differences that existed and continue to exist
between Socialist Feminism, the dominant strand of feminist thought in
the U.S. during the late 1960s and 1970s, and the marginalized Marxist
Feminism. I am not imputing such motivations to Lise Vogel; I am
pointing out the effects of such an interpretation of U.S. Socialist
Feminism which, despite the use of Marxist terms and references to
capitalism, developed, theoretically, as a sort of feminist abstract
negation of Marxism. Other feminists, for different reasons, would also
disagree with Vogel's interpretation; for example, for Toril Moi and
Janice Radway, the relationship between Socialist Feminism and
Materialist Feminism "is far from clear" (Moi and Radway, 1994: 749).
Acknowledging the problematic nature of the term, in a special issue of
The South Atlantic Quarterly dedicated to this topic they do not offer a
theory of Materialist Feminism, nor a clear definition of the term.
Presumably, the articles included in this issue will give the reader the
elements necessary to define the term for herself because all the authors
"share a commitment to concrete historical and cultural analysis, and to
feminism understood as an 'emancipatory narrative'"(Moi and Radway,
1994:750). One of these authors, Jennifer Wicke, defines it as follows:
"a feminism that insists on examining the material conditions under
which social arrangements, including those of gender hierarchy,
develop... materialist feminism avoids seeing this (gender hierarchy) as
the effect of a singular....patriarchy and instead gauges the web of social
and psychic relations that make up a material, historical moment"
(Wicke, 1994: 751);"...materialist feminism argues that material
conditions of all sorts play a vital role in the social production of gender
and assays the different ways in which women collaborate and
participate in these productions"... "there are areas of material interest in
the fact hat women can bear children... Materialist feminism... is less
likely than social constructionism to be embarrassed by the occasional
material importance of sex differences.."(Wicke, 1994: 758-759).Insistence on the importance of material conditions, the material
historical moments as a complex of social relations which include and
influence gender hierarchy, the materiality of the body and its sexual,
reproductive and other biological functions remain, however, abstract
pronouncements which unavoidably lead to an empiricist focus on the
immediately given. There is no theory of history or of social relations or
of the production of gender hierarchies that could give guidance about
the meaning of whatever it is observed in a given "material historical
moment."Landry and MacLean, authors of MATERIALIST FEMINISMS
(1993), tell us that theirs is a book "about feminism and Marxism" in
which they examine the debates between feminism and Marxism in the
U.S. and Britain and explore the implications of those debates for
literary and cultural theory. The terrain of those early debates, which
were aimed at a possible integration or synthesis between Marxism and
feminism, shifted due to the emergence of identity politics, concern with
postcolonialism, sexuality, race, nationalism, etc., and the impact of
postmodernism and post- structuralism. The new terrain has to do with
the "construction of a materialist analysis of culture informed by and
responsive to the concerns of women, as well as people of color and
other marginalized groups" (Landry and MacLean, 1993: ix-x). For
Landry and Maclean, Materialist Feminism is a "critical reading
practice...the critical investigation, or reading in the strong sense, of the
artifacts of culture and social history, including literary and artistic texts,
archival documents, and works of theory... (is) a potential site of
political contestation through critique, not through the constant
reiteration of home-truths" (ibid, pp. x-xi). Theirs is a "deconstructive
materialist feminist perspective" (ibid, p. xiii). But what, precisely, does
materialist mean in this context? What theory of history and what
politics inform this critique? Although they define materialism in a
philosophical and moral sense, and bring up the difference between
mechanical or "vulgar"materialism and historical materialism, there is no
definition of what materialism means when linked to feminism. Cultural
materialism, as developed in Raymond William's work, is presented as a
remedy or supplement to Marx's historical materialism. There is,
according to Williams, an "indissoluble connection between material
production, political and cultural institutions and activity, and
consciousness ... Language is practical consciousness, a way of thinking
and acting in the world that has material consequences (ibid, p. 5).
Williams, they point out, "strives to put human subjects as agents of
culture back into materialist debate" (ibid, p. 5).The implications of these statements is that "humans as agents of
culture" are not present in historical materialism and that Marx's views
on the relationship between material conditions, language, and
consciousness are insufficient. But anyone familiar with Marx's work
knows that this is not the case. In fact, it is Marx who wrote that
"language is practical consciousness" and posited language as the matter
that burdens "spirit" from the very start, for consciousness is always and
from the very first a social product (Marx, [1845-46] 1994, p.117).Landry and Maclean present an account of the development of feminist
thought from the late 1960s to the present divided in three moments: the
encounters and debates between marxism and feminism in Britain and
the U.S.; the institutionalization and commodification of feminism; and
"deconstructive materialist feminism." These are "three moments of
materialist feminism" (ibid, p.15), a very interesting statement that
suggest that Materialist Feminism -- a rather problematic and elusive
concept which reflects, in my view, postmodern sensibilities about
culture and about the subject of feminism -- had always been there,
from the very beginning, just waiting to be discovered. Is that really the
case? If so, what is this materialism that lurked under the variety of
feminist theories produced on both sides of the Atlantic since the late
1960s? Does reference to "material conditions" in general or to "the
material conditions of the oppression of women" suffice as a basis for
constructing a new theoretical framework, qualitatively different from a
Marxist Feminism? If so, how? The authors argue that feminist theories
focused exclusively on gender and dual systems theories that bring
together gender and class analysis face methodological and political
problems that "deconstructive reading practices can help solve;" they
propose "the articulation of discontinuous movements, materialism and
feminism, an articulation that takes the political claims of deconstruction
seriously... deconstruction as tool of political critique (ibid, p. 12-13).
But isn't the linking between deconstruction and Marxism what gives it
its critical edge? It is in the conclusion that the authors, aiming to
demonstrate that materialism is not an alias for Marxism, outline the
difference between Marxist Feminism and Materialist Feminism as
follows:"Marxist feminism holds class contradictions and class analysis central,
and has tried various ways of working an analysis of gender oppression
around this central contradiction. In addition to class contradictions and
contradictions within gender ideology... we are arguing that materialist
feminism should recognize as material other contradictions as well.
These contradictions also have histories, operate in ideologies, and are
grounded in material bases and effects.... they should be granted
material weight in social and literary analysis calling itself materialist....
these categories would include...ideologies of race, sexuality, imperialism
and colonialism and anthropocentrism, with their accompanying radical
critiques" (ibid, p. 229).While this is helpful to understand what self-identified materialist
feminists mean when they refer to their framework, it does not shed
light on the meaning of material base, material effect, material weight.
The main concept, materialism, remains undefined and references to
ideologies, exploitation, imperialism, oppression, colonialism, etc.
confirm precisely that which the authors intended to dispel: materialism
would seem to be an alias for Marxism.Rosemary Hennessy (1993) traces the origins of Materialist Feminism in
the work of British and French feminists who preferred the term
materialist feminism to Marxist feminism because, in their view,
Marxism had to be transformed to be able to explain the sexual division
of labor (Beechey, 1977: 61, cited in Kuhn and Wolpe, 1978: 8). In the
1970s, Hennessy states, Marxism was inadequate to the task because of
its class bias and focus on production, while feminism was also
problematic due to its essentialist and idealist concept of woman; this is
why materialist feminism emerged as a positive alternative both to
Marxism and feminism (Hennessy, 1993: xii). The combined effects of
the postmodern critique of the empirical self and the criticisms voiced by
women who did not see themselves included in the generic woman
subject of academic feminist theorizing resulted, in the 1990s, in
materialist feminist analyses that "problematize 'woman' as an obvious
and homogeneous empirical entity in order to explore how 'woman' as a
discursive category is historically constructed and traversed by more
than one differential axis" (Hennessy, 1993: xii). Furthermore, Hennessy
argues, despite the postmodern rejection of totalities and theoretical
analyses of social systems, materialist feminists need to hold on to the
critique of the totalities which affect women's lives: patriarchy and
capitalism. Women's lives are every where affected by world capitalism
and patriarchy and it would be politically self-defeating to replace that
critique with localized, fragmented political strategies and a perception of
social reality as characterized by a logic of contingency.Hennessy's views on the characteristics of Materislist Feminism emerge
through her critical engagement with the works of Laclau and Mouffe,
Foucault, Kristeva and other theorists of the postmodern. Materialist
Feminism is a "way of reading" that rejects the dominant pluralist
paradigms and logics of contingency and seeks to establish the
connections between the discursively constructed differentiated
subjectivities that have replaced the generic "woman" in feminist
theorizing, and the hierarchies of inequality that exploit and oppress
women. Subjectivities, in other words, cannot be understood in isolation
from systemically organized totalities. Materialist Feminism, as a reading
practice, is also a way of explaining or re-writing and making sense of
the world and, as such, influences reality through the knowledges it
produces about the subject and her social context. Discourse and
knowledge have materiality in their effects; one of the material effects of
discourse is the construction of the subject but this subject is traversed
by differences grounded in hierarchies of inequality which are not local
or contingent but historical and systemic, such as patriarchy and
capitalism. Difference, consequently, is not mere plurality but inequality.
The problem of the material relationship between language, discourse,
and the social or between the discursive (feminist theory) and the
non-discursive (women's lives divided by exploitative and oppressive
social relations) can be resolved through the conceptualization of
discourse as ideology . A theory of ideology presupposes a theory of the
social and this theory, which informs Hennessy's critical reading of
postmodern theories of the subject, discourse, positionality, language,
etc., is what she calls a "global analytic" which, in light of her references
to multinational capitalism, the international division of labor,
overdetermined economic, political and cultural practices, etc, is at the
very least a kind of postmodern Marxism. But references to historical
materialism, and Althusser's theory of ideology and the notion of
symptomatic reading are so important in the development of her
arguments that one wonders about her hesitation to name Marx and
historical materialism as the theory of the social underlying her critique
of the postmodern logic of contingency; i.e., the theory of capitalism,
the totality she so often mentions together with patriarchy as sources of
the exploitation and oppression of women and as the basis for the "axis
of differences" that traverse the discursive category "woman." To sum
up, Hennessy's version of Materialist Feminism is a blend of
post-marxism and postmodern theories of the subject and a source of
"readings" and "re- writings" which rescue postmodern categories of
analysis (subject, discourse, difference) from the conservative limbo of
contingency, localism and pluralism to historicize them or contextualizing
them by connecting them to their systemic material basis in capitalism
and patriarchy. This is made possible by understanding discourse as
ideology and linking ideology to its material base in the "global analytic."In Hennessy's analysis, historical materialism seems like an ever present
but muted shadow, latent under terms such as totality, systemic, and
global analytic. However, in the introduction to MATERIALIST
FEMINISM: A Reader in Class, Difference and Women's Lives (1997),
written with her co-editor, Chrys Ingraham, there is a clear,
unambiguous return to historical materialism, a recognition of its
irreplaceable importance for feminist theory and politics. This
introduction, entitled "Reclaiming Anticapitalist Feminism," is a critique
of the dominant feminist concern with culture, identity and difference
considered in isolation from any systemic understanding of the social
forces that affect women's lives, and a critique of an academic feminism
that has marginalized and disparaged the knowledges produced by the
engagement of feminists with Marxism and their contributions to
feminist scholarship and to the political mobilization of women. More
importantly, this introduction is a celebration of Marxist Feminism
whose premises and insights have been consistently "misread, distorted,
or buried under the weight of a flourishing postmodern cultural politics"
(ibid, p.5). They point out that, whatever the name of the product of
feminists efforts to grapple with historical materialism (marxist feminism,
socialist feminism or materialist feminism), these are names that signal
theoretical differences and emphases but which together indicate the
recognition of historical materialism as the source of emancipatory
knowledge required for the success of the feminist project. In this
introduction, materialist feminism becomes a term used interchangeably
with marxist feminism, with the latter being the most prominently
displayed. The authors draw a clear line between the cultural
materialism that characterizes the work of post-marxist feminists who,
having rejected historical materialism, analyze cultural, ideological and
political practices in isolation from their material base in capitalism, and
materialist feminism (i.e., marxist or socialist feminism) which is firmly
grounded in historical materialism and links the success of feminist
struggles to the success of anticapitalist struggles; "unlike cultural
feminists, materialist, socialist and marxist feminists do not see culture as
the whole of social life but rather as only one arena of social production
and therefore as only one area of feminist struggle" (ibid, p. 7). The
authors differentiate materialist feminism from marxist feminism by
indicating that it is the end result of several discourses (historical
materialism, marxist and radical feminism, and postmodern and
psychoanalytic theories of meaning and subjectivity) among which the
postmodern input, in their view, is the source of its defining
characteristics. Nevertheless, in the last paragraphs of the introduction
there is a return to the discussion of marxist feminism, its critiques of the
idealist features of postmodernism and the differences between the
postmodern and the historical materialist or marxist analyses of
representations of identity. But, they point out, theoretical conflicts do
not occur in isolation from class conflicts and the latter affect the
divisions among professional feminists and their class allegiances.
Feminists are divided in their attitudes towards capitalism and their
understanding of the material conditions of oppression; to be a feminist
is not necessarily to be anticapitalist and to be a materialist feminist is
not equivalent to being socialist or even critical of the status quo. In fact,
"work that claims the signature "materialist feminism" shares much in
common with cultural feminism, in that it does not set out to explain or
change the material realities that link women's oppression to class" (ibid,
p.9). Marxist feminism, on the other hand, does make the connection
between the oppression of women and capitalism and this is why the
purpose of their book, according to the authors, is "to reinsert into
materialist feminism -- especially in those overdeveloped sectors where
this collection will be most widely read -- those (untimely) marxist
feminist knowledges that the drift to cultural politics in postmodern
feminism has suppressed. It is our hope that in so doing this project will
contribute to the emergence of feminisms' third wave and its revival as a
critical force for transformative social change (ibid, p. 9).In light of the above, given the inherent ambiguity of the term Materialist
Feminism, shouldn't it be more theoretically adequate and politically
fruitful to return to Marxist Feminism? Is the effort of struggling to
redefine Materialist Feminism by reinserting Marxist Feminist
knowledges a worthwhile endeavor? How important is it to broaden the
notion of Materialist Feminism to include Marxist Feminist contents?
Perhaps the political climate inside and outside the academy is one
where Marxism is so discredited that Marxist Feminists are likely to find
more acceptance and legitimacy by claiming Materialist Feminism as
their theoretical orientation. I do not in anyway impute this motivation to
Ingraham and Hennessy whose introduction to their book is openly
Marxist. In fact, after I read it and looked over the table of contents I
thought a more adequate title for the book would have been Marxist
Feminism. And anyone familiar with historical materialism can
appreciate the sophisticated Marxist foundation of Hennessy's superbly
argued book. In my view, as the ruthlessness of the world market
intensifies the exploitation of all working people among which women
are the most vulnerable and the most oppressed, the time has come not
just to retrieve the Marxist heritage in feminist thought but to expand
Marxist Feminist theory in ways that both incorporate and transcend the
contributions of postmodern theorizing.The justification for using Materialist Feminism rather than Marxist
Feminism is the alleged insufficiency of Marxist Theory for adequately
explaining the oppression of women. Lurking behind the repeated
statements about the the shortcomings of Marxism there is an
economistic and undialectical understanding of Marx and Marxist theory.
That Marx may not have addressed issues that 20th century feminists
consider important is not a sufficient condition to invalidate Marx's
methodology as well as the potential of his theory of capitalism to help
us understand the conditions that oppress women. But regardless of
those pronouncements, it is fascinating, in retrospect, to read the theory
produced by self- defined Materialist Feminists and realize that they are
actually using and developing Marxist theory in ways that belie
statements about its inherent shortcomings. And it is important to know
how Kuhn and Wolpe, authors of FEMINISM AND MATERIALISM
(1978) define the term materialism; they adopted Engels' definition of
the term: "According to the materialist conception, the determining
factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction
of immediate life. This, again, is of a twofold character: on the one side,
the production of the means of existence, of food, clothing and shelter
and the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the
production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species"
(Engels, [1883] 1972, p.71)(Kuhn and Wolpe, 1978: 7). Kuhn, Wolpe
and the contributors to their book in various ways expanded the scope
of historical materialism to produce new knowledges about the
oppression of women under capitalism. But materialist feminism, a term
which may have been useful in the past might have lost its effectivity
today. How useful is it to broaden the meaning of Materialist Feminism
today to encompass Marxist Feminism if, at the same time, the term is
claimed by cultural materialists whose views are profoundly
anti-marxist? How will the new generations learn about the theoretical
and political importance of historical materialism for women if historical
materialist analysis is subsumed under the Materialist Feminist label?
Doesn't this situation contribute to the marginalization of scholars who
continue to self-identify as Marxist Feminists? I understand Marxist
Feminism as the body of theory produced by feminists who, adopting
the logic of analysis of historical materialism, expand the scope of the
theory while critically incorporating useful insights and knowledges from
non-marxist theorizing, just as Marx grappled with the discoveries of the
classical economists and their shortcomings. Why should this theoretical
enterprise present itself under a different name, especially one likely to
elicit some degree of confusion among the younger generations of
feminists? Furthermore, the political cost of doing, essentially, Marxist
theorizing under the banner of Materialist Feminism is likely to be
exceedingly high. Why? Because, by overstressing the "materialist"
aspect in historical materialism it can contribute justify the dominant
stereotypes about Marxism: its materialism, meaning its alleged
anti-agency, anti-human, deterministic, reductionist limitations.The answers to these questions are political and will come from
feminists practices and dialogue and from the effects of the
intensification of capitalist rule upon both first and third world peoples.
In the meantime, it is important to know that Marxist and some works
within Materialist Feminism share fundamental theoretical assumptions
and political goals.Bibliography
Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism.
1994.Hennessy, Rosemary. Materialist Feminism and the Politics of
Difference. 1993.Hennessy, Rosemary and Chrys Ingraham, eds. Materialist Feminism:
A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives. 1997.Kuhn, Annette and AnnMarie Wolpe, eds., FEMINISM AND
MATERIALISM. Women and Modes of Production. Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1978.Landry, Donna and Gerald Maclean, MATERIALIST FEMINISMS.
Blackwell, 1993.Moi, Toril and Janice Radway, "Editors' Note." The South Atlantic
Quarterly (Fall, 1994): 749.Sharpe, Jenny. Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the
Colonial Text. 1993.Vogel, Lise. WOMAN QUESTIONS. Essays for a Materialist
Feminism. Routledge, 1995.Wicke, Jennifer. "Celebrety Material: Materialist Feminism and the
Culture of Celebrety." The South Atlantic Quarterly (Fall, 1994):
751-78.Gimenez, Martha and Jane Collins, ed.Work Without Wages.
SUNY Press, 1990.
