Chapter 11 The Revolutionary Subject in Lukács and Feminist Standpoint Theory: Dilaceration and Emancipatory Interest
Mariana Teixeira
…and the totality, in its highest vitality, is only possible through a recon- stitution out of the highest separation. G.W.F. Hegel, Differenzschrift, in Werke, 20 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 2:21–22.
Georg Lukács’s theory of reification, with its original combination of Weberian and Simmelian themes within a Hegelian-Marxist framework, has had an in- credibly fertile influence on 20th century social philosophy1 – including nu- merous renowned philosophers, literature scholars, and social theorists, as well as collective theoretical enterprises such as the Praxis and Budapest Schools, the Situationist International, and Critical Theory. Yet, in his essay on “History and Class Consciousness as an ‘Unfinished Project,’” Fredric Jameson provocatively suggests that “the most authentic descendency of Lukács’s think- ing is to be found, not among the Marxists, but within a certain feminism, where the unique conceptual move of History and Class Consciousness has been appropriated for a whole program, now renamed (after Lukács’s own us- age) standpoint theory.”2 Jameson makes reference to the groundbreaking works of Nancy Hartsock, Sandra Harding, and Alison Jaggar – and Dorothy
1 This chapter is a revised and expanded version of papers presented at the conference “The Legacy of Georg Lukács” (Budapest, April 2017) and the “11th International Critical Theory Conference” (Rome, May 2018). I would like to thank Michael Thompson and János Kelemen for organizing the conference in Budapest and Richard Westermann for putting the panel on Lukács together at the Rome conference, as well as the participants of both events who dis- cussed the ideas presented here. This chapter has also benefited from many years of instruc- tive exchanges with Marcos Nobre and from the discussions held by the Women’s Research Group of the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning. Finally, my thanks to Greg Zucker for the invitation to contribute to this volume and for the patience during the production of the manuscript. 2 Fredric Jameson, “History and Class Consciousness as an ‘Unfinished Project,’” Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 1, No. 1 (1988): 63–64.
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Smith could very well be added to this list.3 Regardless of the adequacy of Jameson’s unreserved claim about “authentic descendency,” the affinity of this ongoing project to Lukács’s Marxism is remarkable: the idea that the proletar- iat might achieve a distinctive, and potentially privileged, standpoint that al- lows (and even compels) it to grasp capitalist society in its totality has a paral- lel in the affirmation made by feminist standpoint theorists that women might also attain a privileged perspective on the dynamics of patriarchal societies. Although the Lukácsian and Marxian lineage of feminist standpoint theory is usually alluded to, this relationship is often taken for granted and not further problematized. Indeed, some of the proponents of this paradigm themselves do not give a detailed account of their (certainly not seamless) connection to Marxism in general, and Lukács in particular.4 In this chapter, I address two prominent early versions of feminist standpoint theory, namely, those of Nan- cy Hartsock and Dorothy Smith, with the aim of exploring both the connec- tions and the contrasts to Lukács’s theory regarding their accounts of the expe- riences of “the revolutionary subject” – the proletariat, women. By addressing the affinities between feminist standpoint theory and Lukács’s Marxism, the purpose of this chapter is not to legitimate the former based on its relatedness to the latter, but rather, in a sense, the opposite: to argue that Lukács’s theory of reification is still relevant not least because it provides a theoretical frame- work that is fruitful for contemporary debates within feminism and critical thought more generally. It might seem odd to address, in order to discuss Lukács’s importance for the present, texts that were first published more than thirty years ago – feminist standpoint theories have their origins in debates within academia and wom- en’s social movements which date back to the 1970s and 1980s. Its current
3 Cf. Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex and Power (New York: Longman, 1983), Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), and Dorothy Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Boston: Northeastern Uni- versity Press, 1987). 4 Jameson equally refrains from further exploring this connection in his essay. Two tentative exceptions, which nonetheless put more emphasis on the divergences between Lukács and feminist standpoint theories, are: W. Scott Cameron “The Genesis and Justification of Femi- nist Standpoint Theory in Hegel and Lukács,” Dialogue and Universalism, No. 3–4 (2005): 19– 41, and Bob Ellis and Rodney Fopp, “The Origins of Standpoint Epistemologies: Feminism, Marx and Lukács,” tasa 2001 Conference, The University of Sydney, 13–15 December 2001. An- drew Feenberg presents a brief, most interesting analysis – but focusing on the specific case of Sandra Harding’s discussion of the politics of science – in “On Bridging the Gap between Science and Technology Studies: Sandra Harding’s Is Science Multicultural?,” Science, Technol- ogy, & Human Values 24, No. 4 (1999): 483–494.