Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 24, No. 3/4, pp. 283–293, 2001 Copyright © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd Pergamon Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/01/$–see front matter

PII S0277-5395(01)00187-X

WHY A MATERIALIST IS (STILL) POSSIBLE— AND NECESSARY

Stevi Jackson Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK

Synopsis — The title of this paper derives from ’s (1980) rejoinder to her Marxist crit- ics, formulated at a time when was centrally preoccupied with material social inequali- ties. Since then, we have witnessed the so-called “cultural turn” as a result of which perspectives that fo- cus on social structures, relations, and practices have been sidelined. Not all feminists, however, took this turn, and there have recently been signs of a revival of . In assessing the effects of these theoretical shifts, and in making a case for the continued relevance of materialist feminism, I will focus on the analysis of and sexuality. Here, I will argue that a sociologically informed, ma- terialist approach has more to offer feminism than more culturally oriented postmodern and queer perspectives. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION Not all feminists, however, took the cultural The title of this article is borrowed from Chris- turn or embraced . Many contin- tine Delphy’s rejoinder to her Marxist critics: ued to work within broadly materialist frame- “A materialist feminism is possible” (Delphy, works and to address modernist preoccupations 1980). Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh such as the pursuit of liberty, justice, and equal- (1979), among others, had chastised Delphy ity. Moreover, in the early 1990s, when postmod- for making free with Marxism, for borrowing ern feminism seemed to have become the estab- Marx’s method and some of his concepts while lished theoretical orthodoxy, materialist not staying true to the letter of his texts and, feminism began to be revived or perhaps rein- above all, for daring to suggest that the vented, especially in the United States (Hen- method of historical could be ap- nessy, 1993; Hennessy & Ingraham, 1997; Landry plied to patriarchal productive relations within & MacLean, 1993). Recently even Judith Butler family households. Significantly, Delphy’s af- (1997) has drawn on historical materialism to firmation of materialist feminism was made in contest the view that sexual is response to another, more traditionally Marx- “merely cultural.” Because I wish to argue for ist, version of materialism. Yet in a very few the continued importance of materialist perspec- years many of those who saw Delphy as insuf- tives, I welcome this resurgence of interest in ma- ficiently Marxist had abandoned materialist terial social relations. I am concerned, however, analysis altogether as a result of the so-called by some of the forms it is taking, in particular the “cultural turn,” which Michèle Barrett charac- tendency—evident in Butler’s (1997) article and terised as a shift in feminism’s emphasis from elsewhere1—to reduce the material to capitalist “things” (such as women’s work and male vio- economic relations. This might bring us full circle lence) to “words,” to issues of language, repre- back to the least productive forms of 1970s sentation, and subjectivity (Barrett, 1992). Marxism, in which every form of inequality that This development, sometimes called the “lin- was not demonstrably functional to capitalism guistic turn,” is associated with the move, dur- was declared nonmaterial. This is precisely the ing the 1980s, away from the “modernist” form of Marxism that Delphy challenged. agenda of early second-wave feminism to- Given that the term “materialist” has been wards postmodern perspectives. claimed from many competing theoretical po-

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sitions I should make it clear that I am using it the social, I am also seeking to reclaim some to refer to perspectives deriving from Marx’s fundamental sociological insights. My under- historical materialism. My own theoretical al- standing of the social encompasses all aspects legiance is to materialist feminism as it devel- of social life, from structural inequalities to ev- oped in from the 1970s, and particu- eryday interaction. It is concerned with mean- larly the variant of it associated with Christine ing, both at the level of our wider culture and Delphy. Materialist feminism originally as it informs our everyday social life. It in- emerged in opposition both to conventional cludes subjectivity because our sense of who Marxism and to of difference. Its we are in relation to others constantly guides exponents included, in addition to Delphy, Co- our actions and interactions and, conversely, lette Guillaumin, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, and who we are is in part a consequence of our lo- . These were radical feminists cation within gendered, class, racial, and other in that the object of their analysis was prima- divisions, and of the social and cultural milieux rily rather than capitalism—and we inhabit. they refused to see the former as deriving from I will return to these different facets of the the latter—but they saw historical materialism social later in the paper. First, however, I will as a method of analysing relations between give a very brief and necessarily sketchy out- men and women as social rather than natural. line of the trajectory of the cultural turn, pay- Materialist feminism is not a form of eco- ing particular attention to the issue of gender nomic determinism. As Delphy and Leonard and the category “women.” Finally, I will elu- (1992) remind us, one of the original strengths cidate my argument further in relation to cur- of Marx’s materialism was that he did not con- rent debates on gender and heterosexuality. ceive of the economic as an abstract system with its own internal laws, but as a realm of so- THE CULTURAL TURN AND THE cial relations, constructed through social activ- PROBLEM OF “WOMEN” ity. I want to argue for a version of materialist feminism that foregrounds the social—social Until the early 1980s the dominant perspec- structures, relations, and practices—but that tives within feminist theory derived from the does not reduce all social structures, relations, social sciences and were generally informed and practices to capitalism. From my perspec- by, or formulated in dialogue with, Marxism. It tive patriarchal or gendered structures, rela- is these perspectives that were displaced by the tions and practices are every bit as material as cultural turn and subsequently brushed aside capitalist ones, as are those deriving from rac- or dismissed as a source of past errors. Be- ism, colonialism, and imperialism. And, of cause these theories focused on social struc- course, all these intersect and interact, often in ture, analysing women’s oppression as the unpredictable and contradictory ways, so that product of a patriarchal and/or capitalist social the social order is not some seamless mono- system, they have often been depicted as lithic entity. Hence, adopting a materialist flawed by foundationalism and universalism, stance does not preclude awareness of differ- suspected of being essentialist, racist and het- ences among women: on the contrary, a full erosexist (see, e.g., Flax, 1990). Yet this early understanding of those differences requires feminist theorising gave feminism some of its that we pay attention to material social ine- most important and lasting insights, most sig- qualities and everyday social practices. Nor nificantly the idea that sexuality and gender does materialism ignore issues of language, are socially constructed, as well as an emanci- culture representation, and subjectivity, but it patory politics of social transformation. does entail locating them in their social and In Britain, and to a lesser extent in the historical context. Above all, materialist femi- United States, it was Marxist feminists who nism does not reduce women’s oppression to a spearheaded the move away from social struc- single cause; it eschews attempts at totalising tural to cultural, literary, and philosophical the- grand theory and transhistorical, universalistic ories.2 They had been resistant to those per- claims (see Delphy, 1984, pp. 17–27). spectives, such as French materialist feminism, For me, a materialist perspective is neces- which radically reformulated Marxism (Barrett sarily a sociologically informed one; hence, in & McIntosh, 1979), but were more receptive to reasserting the importance of the material and ideas that might extend Marxism’s reach with-

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out challenging its central tenets. The problem proach, treating “women” and “men” as “fluc- was that Marxism, despite its strengths as a sys- tuating identities” (Riley, 1988) or the binary tematic theory of social oppression, could not divide of gender as a “regulatory fiction” to be account for all aspects of gender relations. subverted (Butler, 1990). In so doing, how- Even in areas that were within Marxism’s tradi- ever, they lost touch with material social struc- tional remit, notably women’s labour, it was tures and practices. It became impossible to difficult to explain why it should be women think of “women” and “men” as social catego- who occupied particular niches in the capitalist ries, products of a structural hierarchy—the order—for example, as reproducers of labour perspective that materialist feminists were de- power or a reserve army of labour. veloping and that questioned, just as radically, This latter problem was central to the project the idea that gender categories were natural of the Marxist feminist journal m/f, which was and presocial (Delphy, 1984, 1993; Wittig, launched in 1978. The editors saw the question 1992). The cultural turn effectively sidelined of “how women are produced as a category” as this materialist analysis and emptied the con- the key to explaining their social subordination cept of gender of its social import as a hierar- (Adams, Brown, & Cowie, 1978, p. 5). This jour- chical division between women and men. nal was highly influential in Britain in expanding During the 1980s there was another, compel- the boundaries of what counted as Marxist fem- ling, reason for questioning the category inism, but it was not a lone voice. Others were “women,” in that it served to conceal differences becoming interested in ideology, psychoanaly- among women and to privilege definitions of sis, and the work of French structuralists such as womanhood framed from White Western view- Althusser, Lacan, and Lévi Strauss (see Coward points. Once this ethnocentrism was exposed it & Ellis, 1977; Mitchell, 1975). At first, these new became clear that “women” has never been a approaches remained loosely connected to unitary category (Brah, 1991). Increasingly it more traditional forms of Marxism via Althus- was recognised that feminists needed to con- ser’s conceptualisation of ideology as relatively front the complexities of women’s lives in a post- autonomous from economic relations. This colonial era with its global economy, its history made it possible to theorise women’s subordina- of colonial diasporas, and its current labour mi- tion as ideological and cultural without having grations and displacements of refugees. All of to relate it to the capitalist mode of production. this was taken by some feminists as a further As poststructuralism replaced structuralism, mandate for postmodern theorising, seen as a however, the concept of ideology gave way to means of avoiding the exclusions of an imagined discourse, and structural analysis to deconstruc- universal womanhood (Flax, 1990). tion. Later, postmodern scepticism about truth There is no doubt that the ways in which gen- claims and metanarratives further discredited der intersects with other forms of inequality, es- the analysis of systematic economic and social pecially those founded on racism and colonial- oppression. Ultimately, then, these forms of the- ism had hitherto been undertheorised. What is ory led feminists away from a socially grounded more questionable is whether postmodernism materialism altogether. provides the best corrective to this situation. The issues that precipitated these shifts, Certainly postmodern, postcolonial theorists however, were well worth pursuing. In particu- speaking from the location of the previously lar, the category “women” certainly needed to marginalized “other” have played a major role be problematised rather than taken as given. in reorienting feminist theory (see, e.g., Spivak, In the first place, it was important to “denatu- 1987). However, as some critics have noted, ralize” women, to emphasise that women were many postmodern writings perpetuated the a social and cultural category. Yet within the same exclusions as other theories, themselves logic of the cultural turn “women” could only presumed to speak for the excluded or professed be thought of in limited ways; “women” and concern with diversity while refusing directly to the “feminine” were cultural constructs, repro- confront racism (Modleski, 1991; Stanley, 1990). duced through the symbolic or through our Postmodernism, moreover, has no monop- psyches, with the emphasis on sexual differ- oly on theorising diversity and complexity. ence rather than social hierarchy. While Like Sylvia Walby (1992), I see no reason why some embraced feminisms of difference, oth- social structural analysis, provided it is not ers sought a less essentialist deconstructive ap- crudely reductionist, cannot address the di-

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verse locations occupied by women within local materialist implications of postmodernism, a and global contexts. There are dangers, too, in recognition of the continued need for a “cri- turning our backs on structural inequality in tique of social totalities like patriarchy and cap- the name of scepticism about universalistic italism” (Hennessy, 1993, p. xii). Some of this truth claims. Those “differences,” which preoc- recent work reaffirms basic Marxist principles cupy postmodernists, are often more than just (Hennessy & Ingraham, 1997), but some de- “differences”—the most significant of them are rives from a revisioning of Marxism through founded upon real, material inequalities. Insti- the lens of postmodernism. For example, J.K. tutionalised racism, the heritage of centuries of Gibson-Graham (1996)3 treats Marxist ac- slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, along counts of capitalism as a discursive construc- with local and global divisions of labour, are at tion, not to deny the material, but as a means of least as important as culturally constituted dif- focusing on contextualised and localised pro- ference. Moreover, if we neglect the structural, cesses and practices. Gibson-Graham suggests material dimensions of social life, we may risk that by dismantling the hegemonic representa- valorising differences that are products of op- tion of capitalism as a monolithic global system pression and inequality. Meera Nanda (1997) we can reveal what this representation con- makes this point in her critique of ceals: the persistence of noncapitalist processes in the Indian context. She suggests that cele- and practices. In this way she is able to analyse brating Indian women’s supposed embedded- the appropriation of women’s labour within ness in nature fails to question the divisions of households as a noncapitalist class process. The labour that accord them this “privileged access idea that men appropriate their wives’ labour— to nature,” which consign them to work that is deemed heretical by Marxists when Delphy unpaid and unvalued. Ultimately, she argues, (1977) first expressed it—can now, it seems, be this emphasis on cultural difference as a site of respectably refloated as post-Marxist. resistance to global capitalism, an emphasis Many materialist feminists, while still that ignores local patriarchal relations, serves favouring structural analysis, have moved to glorify women’s status as underdogs. away from “grand theory” towards empirically Materialist analysis of systematic inequalities grounded work on specific issues and contexts. is as relevant now as it ever was, and remains These trends are in keeping with Mary May- necessary to grapple with the complexities of a nard’s (1995) suggestion that feminists should postcolonial world, with the intersections of develop what some sociologists have called gender, ethnicity, and nationality. We live today “middle range” or “middle order” theories.4 within a global context characterised by ex- Such theories bridge the divide between the tremely stark and worsening material inequali- abstraction of “grand theory,” which is often ties—and it is often women who are most disad- remote from daily social life, and untheorised vantaged by the intersections between global empiricism. They focus on the specifics of and local exploitation (see, e.g., Mohanty, given social contexts, institutions, and relation- 1997). Within the wealthy Western nations, too, ships, offering grounded generalisations rather gender class and racist inequalities are still with than universalistic, totalising models of entire us (see Walby, 1997). The “things” that femi- societies and are more easily integrated with nists identified as oppressive in the 1970s—male empirical research. Here, the emphasis is on violence, the exploitation of women’s domestic theorising, rather than producing “Theory” labour, and low-paid waged labour—continue with a capital “T.” It suggests a more open, to shape what it means to be a , although eclectic approach rather than an insistence on the precise constraints we face and their mean- theoretical purity, making use of conceptual ings for us vary depending on the specific social tools that seem useful for a particular purpose locations we each occupy. rather than being guided by a dogmatic alle- giance to a particular set of concepts. Hence, we can analyse women’s everyday existence BACK FROM THE “CULTURAL TURN”? and the meanings women give to their lives While many feminists resisted the seductions without losing sight of structural patterns of of the cultural turn, others are beginning to find dominance and subordination. a way back to materialism. In the 1990s, there Empirically grounded theorising that pays at- were signs of a retreat from the extreme anti- tention to the local material conditions of

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women’s lives is enabling us to see connections fabric of our daily lives, and cannot be under- between aspects of the social once thought of as stood as separable from the social practices and discrete spheres of enquiry, such as sexuality relations in which it is embedded. Yet it was to and work. For example, Lisa Adkins (1995) has cultural theories, to linguistic, and semiotic drawn our attention to the sexualisation of structuralism and then to poststructuralism and women’s labour in the service sector. Analyses postmodernism, that many Marxist feminists of gendered labour markets have largely ig- turned to explain those aspects of life that con- nored sexuality or, where is has been consid- ventional Marxism failed to address. ered, it is often treated as an aspect of workplace These theories were often sold to feminists culture unrelated to the gendered structuring of as a means of combating essentialist thinking jobs. Her empirical investigations of a hotel and about the human subject and the social and a leisure park enabled her to see that the persis- cultural world she inhabits. For example, ac- tent sexualisation of women’s labour—their use cording to Chris Weedon (1987), poststructur- as display, the particularities of dress codes, the alism reveals that there is no essential preso- expectation that coping with cial self, that language is not a transparent from customers was “part of the job”—was far medium of communication, that meanings from incidental. This “heterosexualisation” was shift as they are contested and renegotiated, coded into the gendered division of labour: it that knowledge is a social construct rather was a covert aspect of the “person specification” than a revelation of absolute truth. None of for particular jobs and the everyday practices of this is news to those with sociological memo- recruitment and work discipline. She is thus able ries reaching back to the 1960s and 1970s, be- to argue that sexuality may play a much larger cause all of these ideas were, by then, familiar part in the structuring of gendered labour mar- tenets of certain microsociological theories, kets than is usually assumed. i.e., theories that focused on the interpretative processes underpinning everyday life rather than on social structure. These included sym- EVERYDAY SOCIAL LIFE bolic interactionism and forms of phenomeno- As we shift our focus to the everyday, localised logical , such as ethnomethodology. contexts of women’s lives it becomes clear that These neglected theories may offer feminists the material and the social cannot only be un- a more nuanced understanding of the many fac- derstood in terms of social structure. We need ets of social and cultural life, enabling us to re- also to account for subjectivity and agency; for late meaning and subjectivity both to the every- patterns of gendered interaction in everyday day actualities of women’s lives and to the wider life as well as the institutional hierarchies within social and cultural contexts in which those lives which they take place; the ways in which such are lived. During the 1970s and early 1980s, interaction is endowed with, and shaped by, the these perspectives informed analyses of the so- meanings it has for participants; the micro levels cial construction of gender and sexuality (Gag- at which power is deployed and resisted, as well non & Simon, 1974; Jackson, 1978; Kessler & as the macro level of systematic domination. McKenna, 1978; Plummer, 1975; Stanley, 1984) Taking account of all of this requires a level of and critiques of mechanistic concepts of “role” social analysis that does not reduce every aspect and “socialization” (Stanley & Wise, 1983, 1993). of our lives to an effect of social structure—and A number of feminists continue to work produc- that enables us to appreciate the extent to tively within the traditions of interactionist and which social structures are themselves perpetu- phenomenological sociology, utilising them to ated through human practices. address such contemporary theoretical issues Displacing the social in favour of the cultural, as embodied sexuality and gender (DeNora, however, does not necessarily provide the an- 1997; Lindemann, 1997) and gender ambiguity swers. Of course, the social world includes the (Kessler, 1998). Although there are some very cultural—but the cultural is not all there is to the well-known feminists who have drawn on these social. Whether we define culture narrowly, as theories, such as Dorothy Smith (1987, 1993), the symbolic and representational, or more work of this kind has generally been a minority broadly, as the shared way of life of a given soci- endeavour, little known outside sociology.5 ety or community, cultural practices are also so- Why is this? And why, given that these per- cial practices. Culture is woven into the social spectives were available and known to femi-

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nists, were they not drawn upon to address the self, an idea which has roots in both the socio- lacunae in Marxist theory that inspired the cul- logical tradition of interactionism and in more tural turn? In part, this was simply because they recent discourse analysis (Jackson, 1998; Plum- were not, in the 1970s and early 1980s, in vogue, mer, 1995; Whisman, 1996). Such a perspective because their emphasis on everyday social prac- allows us to think of subjectivity as a product of tices was out of tune with the structural analysis individual, socially located, biographies—but predominating at the time. Thus, the critical in- not in the same sense as the old idea of sociali- sights they offered were ignored and later by- sation where the present, adult self was con- passed in favour of newer forms of theorising. ceived as a product of a past, child self. Rather, For example, interactionists had effectively cri- the present significantly reshapes the past as we tiqued the concept of sexual repression by the reconstruct our memories, our sense of who we early 1970s (Gagnon & Simon, 1974), but such are through the stories we tell to ourselves and arguments were ignored until they were given others. Experience is thus constantly worked credibility by Foucault’s (1981) critique of the over, interpreted, theorised through the narra- “repressive hypothesis” (see Jackson, 1999). Su- tive forms and devices available to us (Jackson, zanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (1978) of- 1998). These cultural resources are, of course, fered one of the earliest critiques of the sex- historically specific; hence, particular modes of gender distinction, arguing that there is no pre- self-construction become available at different given sex, only socially constituted gender. Fol- historical moments (Plummer, 1995). lowing Garfinkel (1967), they saw gender as What makes this conceptualisation of the produced and sustained through a process of self potentially congruent with a materialist performance and attribution (or “reading” of perspective is that it locates individual subjec- others’ embodied being). Again, this was all but tivities and biographies within specific histori- ignored. By the time Judith Butler (1990) made cal, social, and cultural contexts, linking the self the idea of performative gender fashionable, to the actualities of social existence. If we were the ethnomethodological roots of this idea had to be theoretically purist, there might still be a been largely forgotten.6 problem in that the symbolic interactionist tra- There is another reason why these ap- dition in which this conceptualisation is rooted proaches were not more widely adopted during does not allow for analyses of social structure. the cultural turn. Although they offered a so- However, in keeping with Mary Maynard’s cial theory of subjectivity, they lacked any (1995) call for middle-order theorising, for ready-made mode of articulation with Marx- greater pragmatism and eclecticism in our use ism—unlike psychoanalysis, which could be of concepts and perspectives, we can surely linked to the Marxist project via Althusser’s now admit that social life is multilayered, mul- (1971) notion that ideology constitutes us as tifaceted, and that contradictory processes are subjects.7 Moreover, a sociological conception often at work within it. We can see ourselves as of subjectivity does not, at first sight, fit with located within social structures and cultural the poststructuralist critiques of essentialism in categories (of gender, class, and “race,” for ex- that it rests upon the idea of a reflexive social ample), but as nonetheless possessing agency, self. This idea is sometimes resisted on the interpreting events, applying meaning to them, grounds that it presupposes a presocial, or pre- acting on the basis of our everyday, practical discursive “I,” which does the work of reflexiv- knowledge of the world. On this basis, I would ity. However, if we take this idea back to its or- suggest that the time is ripe for a reevaluation igins in the work of George Herbert Mead and development of these microsociological (1934), it does not assume an essential, inner perspectives, building on the contributions of “I,” but an “I” that is only ever the fleeting mo- those feminists who have continued to explore bilisation of a socially constituted self. There is their potential for the analysis of subjectivity, no self outside the social; it exists and comes meaning, agency, and everyday social practices. into being only in relation to the social “other.” This self is not a fixed structure but is always REDEFINING SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION “in process” by virtue of its constant reflexivity. One way in which this reflexive self-con- These microsociological perspectives were the struction has been analysed recently is through original source of the basic idea of social con- the idea of gendered and sexual narratives of struction and later, in the 1970s, of its applica-

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tion to gender and sexuality. It is because this and hence finds its expression at yet another has been forgotten that social constructionism level—that of our everyday social practices, is often mistakenly seen as a more recent, post- through which each of us negotiates and makes structuralist, innovation. These more recent sense of our own gendered and sexual lives. conceptualisations are, I would argue, often Here, too, gender and sexuality are constantly not very social at all, and are more accurately in the process of being constructed and recon- characterised as cultural constructionism. structed, enacted and reenacted, within specific The way in which we conceptualise the so- social contexts and relationships. Gender and cial profoundly affects our understanding of sexuality are thus socially constructed by what the process of social construction—and this is embodied individuals actually do. Finally, sexu- something central to my understanding of the ality and gender are socially constructed at the feminist project. Ever since Beauvoir made level of subjectivity, through complex social her famous claim that “one is not born, but and cultural process by which we acquire sex- rather becomes a woman” (Beauvoir, 1972, p. ual and gendered desires and identities (see 295), feminists have argued that is a also Jackson, 1999, pp. 5–6). social and cultural construct rather than a nat- What cultural, as opposed to social, con- ural one and that there is nothing inevitable structionism does is to exclude the first level, about male dominance (or, indeed any other sys- that of structure, altogether. The all-impor- tematic social inequality). If, as I have sug- tant hierarchical dimension of gender van- gested, the social is many faceted, then so is ishes from view, as does the ways in which the process of social construction, involving at gender hierarchy underpins heterosexuality. least four intersecting levels relating to struc- Meaning becomes central, but primarily at the ture, meaning, everyday practices, and subjec- level of culture and discourse rather than the tivity. Here I will spell this out in relation to meanings actually deployed in everyday social gender and sexuality, areas that have been settings. Sometimes practices are included—in much contested within feminism and where Butler’s (1990) discussion of performativity, cultural theories have made a major impact. for example—but rarely are these practices lo- At the level of social structure gender is a hi- cated in any social context. Finally, subjectiv- erarchical relation, constitutive of social men ity is usually theorised through psychoanalysis and social women, sustained through divisions that completely abstracts it from its social con- of labour and other means, notably the hetero- text. It is this cultural, rather than social, ap- sexual contract. Here, gender inter- proach to gender and sexuality that has set the sects with institutionalised heterosexuality, bol- agenda for much recent theorising, in particu- stered by law, the state, and social convention. lar through the influence of queer theory. The institution of heterosexuality is inherently gendered; it rests upon the assumed normality QUESTIONING HETEROSEXUALITY, of specific forms of social and sexual relations DESTABILISING GENDER between women and men. Gender is also con- structed at the level of meaning, through the Queer theory is not particularly easy to define, cultural distinction between women and men, and indeed, the continued use of the term has the unspoken and taken-for granted means by been contested. Generally it refers to a form of which we embody and recognise each other as postmodern theorising influenced by decon- women or as men as well as the more overt structive and psychoanalytical perspectives norms of appropriate femininity and masculin- and, above all, by Foucault’s (1981) analysis of ity. Sexuality is socially constructed at the level sexuality. It has tended to concentrate on of meaning through its constitution as the ob- texts, discourses, and cultural practices rather ject of discourse and through the specific dis- than on the social conditions under which our courses on the sexual in circulation at any his- sexualities are lived (see Seidman, 1997). In torical moment; these discourses serve to the last decade feminists have also been en- define what is sexual, to differentiate the “per- gaged in debates around heterosexuality, verse” from the “normal” and to delimit appro- sometimes engaging with queer perspectives, priately masculine and feminine forms of sexu- sometimes following quite different paths (Ri- ality. However, meaning is also deployed chardson, 1996; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1993). within and emergent from social interaction, Queer theory and feminism share some com-

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mon concerns: both question the inevitability mony (Hennessy, 1998; Ramazanoglu, 1995). and naturalness of heterosexuality and both The social is thus reduced to the normative and assume that neither gender divisions nor the what is normative goes unexplained. boundary between heterosexuality and homo- More recently, Butler (1997) has made some sexuality/lesbianism are fixed by nature. There concessions to social structural analysis, ques- are also points of divergence between critiques tioning whether issues of gender and sexuality that are primarily feminist and those that are are “merely cultural.” In so doing she invokes a primarily queer, notably that the former take form of Marxism incorporating Lévi Strauss’s male dominance within heterosexuality as a notion of the exchange of women. This, how- starting point, whereas the latter are more con- ever, brings us back to an ahistorical and func- cerned with destabilising the binary divide tionalist notion of kinship that avoids confront- which sustains normative heterosexuality. ing the historical and cultural specificity of the I have recently argued that an effective cri- various social practices through which gender tique of heterosexuality must address both and sexuality are produced (see Fraser, 1997; heteronormativity and male dominance (Jack- Hennessy, 1998). Butler does distance herself son, 1999). I am not, however, proposing a from Lévi Strauss’s universalism, suggesting simple synthesis between queer and feminism, that queer studies might be a means of return- but rather an analysis that follows from a ma- ing to critiques of the family “based on a mobi- terialist feminist understanding of gender as a lizing insight into a socially contingent and so- hierarchical social division rather than simply cially transformable account of kinship” (1997, a cultural distinction (see Delphy, 1993). Gen- p. 276, emphasis in the original). But what the der is pivotal to a critical understanding of het- current structuring of gender and sexuality is erosexuality. Not only is heterosexuality, by contingent on, apparently, is the functionality definition, founded on gender polarity, but the of the heterosexual family for capitalism! But- binary division between heterosexuality and ler has traced the history of the cultural turn in homosexuality makes no sense without the reverse, back through structuralism to the most prior existence of gender; to desire “the same reductionist form of Marxism.8 sex” or “the opposite sex” requires gender as a Butler also reduces the material to the eco- social, cultural, and subjective reality. Without nomic, which as Nancy Fraser points out, de- gender, heterosexuality, homosexuality, and nies the materiality of noneconomic social pro- lesbianism could not exist (see Jackson, 1996). cesses (Fraser, 1997). What Fraser fails to In developing this argument I will briefly notice, however, is Butler’s reduction of the discuss some aspects of Judith Butler’s work, economic to capitalism, to class relations, a re- which can be read as both queer and feminist, duction which Fraser herself replicates. This and which engages, to some degree, with mate- strategy conceals the operation of noncapital- rialist feminism (Butler, 1990, 1993, 1997). Like ist economic processes, such as men’s appro- most queer theorists, Butler seeks to destabi- priation of the labour of wives and dependants lise heterosexual normativity. She also makes (Delphy, 1984; Delphy & Leonard, 1992). gender central to her analysis but, in keeping Hence, neither Butler nor her critics link the with her queer and postmodern perspective, oppression of and gays to the exploit- gender figures more as a cultural difference ative gender order underpinning institutiona- than a social hierarchy. Where her argument is lised heterosexuality. This omission is rather most effective is in revealing the artificiality of surprising given Butler’s early reliance on the gender, its status as a construction with no nec- work of Monique Wittig, for whom the hetero- essary relationship to particular bodies or sexu- sexual contract is a labour relationship, not alities (Butler, 1990). She makes it clear that just a sexual one, and one that constitutes gender is no ephemeral, voluntaristic perfor- women and men by their class-like relation to mance, that it is coercive and constraining in its each other (see Wittig, 1992). In focusing on effects, that it is no less material for being con- the narrowly sexual, however, Butler (1990) structed (Butler, 1993). Yet she discusses the filters out most of Wittig’s materialism (Jack- “materialization” of “sexed” bodies almost en- son, 1995). This may help account for the enor- tirely in terms of norms—but with no sense of mous gulf in Butler’s theorising between het- where these norms come from or why they re- erosexuality’s functions (for capitalism), the produce gender divisions or heterosexual hege- norms that enforce it (asserted but never fully

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explicated), and the performances and perfor- its gendered parts—that all we can achieve is a mativity through which gender is produced in remix of identities and subjectivities constructed everyday life. through gender division. From a more sociologi- Gender and heterosexuality are sustained cally informed, materialist perspective this can- not only through structural hierarchies and so- not be the case. If human beings are social be- cial norms, but through our everyday sexual ings, then what we are depends on the society and social practices. The gendered heterosex- and culture we inhabit. If men and women are ual order thus requires our continual reaffirma- products of a hierarchical relation, in the ab- tion for its continuance. As ethnomethodolo- sence of that relation very different subjectivi- gists would tell us, most of the population “do ties, identities, and desires might emerge—and gender” and “do heterosexuality” every day these would have nothing to do with gender. without reflecting critically on that doing. This is accomplished through talk and action, CONCLUSION through the embodied practices of dress and demeanour, through active participation in for- As Christine Delphy has commented, “we mal institutional settings, through the mundane shall only really be able to think about gender activities through which our everyday lives are on the day we can imagine nongender” (Del- ordered. Cultural approaches (Butler’s and phy, 1993, p. 9). Much of what passes as radical others) ignore not only the social structural un- these days is more limited in vision, so that the derpinnings of gender, which help explain why end of gender hierarchy and the collapse of in- it exists in its current form, but also the every- stitutionalised heterosexuality appear unthink- day social practices that reveal how gender and able. If we are unable to imagine the social heterosexuality are continually constructed and world as radically other than it is we restrict reconstructed in routine social interaction. our ability to think critically about it. To make Queer theorists, have, of course, said much this imaginative leap we need to see the social about “undoing,” or at least unsettling, the nor- order we inhabit more clearly, to remove the mativity of heterosexuality and gender, of de- blinkers the cultural turn has imposed upon stabilising male/female and hetero-/homosexual our vision. We can never, of course, focus on binaries. This, however, is by no means the everything at once, never expect to grasp the same as thoroughly undoing gender and hetero- full, kaleidoscopic, shifting complexity of the sexuality themselves—doing away with them. social and cultural world, but we can collec- Butler’s performative subversions, for example, tively try to see more. If we succeed, we may are not so much undoing gender as doing it in recover feminism’s transformative vision and new ways (Butler, 1990).9 Transgressive sexual restore our ability to imagine the unimagin- and gender performances, moreover, can have able: not only a world without gender, but also little social effect without an erosion of material a world without the myriad inequalities and in- inequalities associated with gendered divisions justices that constrain women’s lives today. of labour and resources and a dismantling of the institutions through which heterosexuality’s privileged place in society is sustained. ENDNOTES There is another problem inherent in much current cultural thinking on gender. Because of 1. Materiality has quite other connotations in Butler’s ear- lier work. In Bodies that Matter (1993) she discusses the the preoccupation with deconstructing binaries, processes whereby bodies are materialised within a Fou- the subversion of gender is widely thought of as cauldian framework and here the social and material is a multiplication process: making the boundaries conceptualised as normative rather than economic. between more fluid and creating more 2. For an account of similar theoretical shifts from a U.S. genders by moving between and combining ele- perspective see Hennessy and Ingraham (1987). They argue that what has emerged is a post-, ments of the existing two. This does not chal- characterised as cultural materialism, which denies sys- lenge gender itself: you do not subvert a hierar- tematic oppression in favour of a focus on the local and chy by introducing more ranks between the contingent, on culture, representation, and the body. dominant and subordinate. Moreover, it draws 3. This is a singular authorial voice adopted by two femi- nists writing collaboratively. For convenience, I write of back from the implications of a social construc- them “as if” they are one person. tionist understanding of gender, assuming that 4. Maynard borrows this idea from Robert Merton (1968). the whole of human potential equals the sum of She is well aware of some of the problems of Merton’s

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work, but argues that this particular concept is nonethe- Flax, Jane. (1990). Postmodernism and gender in feminist less useful for feminists. theory. In L. Nicholson (Ed.), Feminism/postmodern- 5. These perspectives can readily be integrated with more ism (pp. 39–62). New York: Routledge. recent conceptualisations, such as the Foucauldian Foucault, Michel. (1981). The history of sexuality, volume notion of discourse (Jackson, 1993; Plummer, 1975), but one. Harmondsworth: Penguin. this ease of assimilation may contribute to their contin- Fraser, Nancy. (1997). Heterosexism, misrecognition and ued invisibility: they are sometimes interpreted as post- capitalism: A response to Judith Butler. Social Text, 15, structuralist, as in Deborah Lupton’s (1998) reading of 279–289. my (1993) article on love. Gagnon, John, & Simon, William. (1974). Sexual conduct. 6. Butler, of course, does not cite either Garfinkel or London: Hutchinson. Kessler and McKenna. It is not possible to ascertain Garfinkel, Harold. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. whether she drew on their ideas or arrived at her analy- Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. sis by other means. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996). The end of capitalism (as we 7. Althusser’s ideas, as I have already indicated, played a knew it): A feminist critique of political economy. crucial role in the shift from structural Marxism to post- Oxford: Blackwell. Marxism and poststructuralism. Hennessy, Rosemary. (1993). Materialist feminism and the 8. A much more nuanced Marxist analysis has been devel- politics of discourse. New York: Routledge. oped by (1995, 1998, 2000). Hennessy, Rosemary. (1995). Queer visibility in commod- 9. Her reflections on a femme’s claim that she likes ity culture. In L. Nicholson & S. Seidman (Eds.), Social her “boys to be ” (Butler, 1990, p. 122) are illustra- postmodernism (pp. 142–185). Cambridge: Cambridge tive of this. University Press. Hennessy, Rosemary. (1998). 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