From lochness@aracnet.com Wed Jan 1 14:40:11 1997 From: lochness@aracnet.com To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 13:44:37 +0000 Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? > > I have been a list member since October but have never received > anything from this list. Is this just a particularly quiet list? It is, and a good thing too, because I can't get off it. I've tried unsubscribing, complaining, everything. If anyone knows a procedure which will work, I'd appreciate it no end. Ness From leman@bgnet.bgsu.edu Thu Jan 2 13:22:34 1997 by bgnet2.bgsu.edu (8.8.4/8.8.4) Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 15:22:29 -0500 (EST) From: Leman Giresunlu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu In-Reply-To: Thanks for reminding that I was subscribed to this list around past September too. I had the impression that my subscription had not worked for some reason. Althought I just received a conference call from the same list. sincerely, Leman Giresunlu On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Judy Evans wrote: > It was quite active when it began. I don't know whether there > are other lists that have taken over the subject. > > On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Doug Henwood wrote: > > > At 2:38 PM 12/31/96, Sharon M. wrote: > > > > > I have been a list member since October but have never received > > >anything from this list. Is this just a particularly quiet list? > > > > I've been on here for a year or more and I haven't gotten more than 5 > > messages. Quiet doesn't begin to describe it. > > > > Doug > > > > -- > > > > Doug Henwood > > Left Business Observer > > 250 W 85 St > > New York NY 10024-3217 > > USA > > +1-212-874-4020 voice > > +1-212-874-3137 fax > > email: > > web: > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > Judy Evans + Politics + jae2@york.ac.uk > using voice-recognition software: please > ignore editing errors > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > From hbingham@starnetinc.com Thu Jan 2 20:45:28 1997 Date: Thu, 02 Jan 1997 21:11:52 -0600 From: H Bingham Organization: Family Fulfillment To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? References: I first joined this list over a year ago. At the time there was discussion of slow reading _Materialist feminism and the politics of discourse_. I left for reasons unrelated to the list. I recall, though, that there was also some discussion of how busy list members were and how difficult a slow reading would be. If anyone is interested, we could revive the idea. The book was written by Rosemary Hennessy, one of the founders of this list. The book is about 150 pg.. Slow reading is sometimes confusing, so it would be wise to agree to some ground rules before we start. Sincerely, HB From sh96az@badger.ac.BrockU.CA Thu Jan 2 23:26:17 1997 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 01:26:13 -0500 (EST) From: "Sharon M." To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? In-Reply-To: <32CC78F8.6FE6@starnetinc.com> On Thu, 2 Jan 1997, H Bingham wrote: > I first joined this list over a year ago. At the time there was > discussion of slow reading _Materialist feminism and the politics of > discourse_. > > If anyone is interested, we could revive the idea. The book was written > by Rosemary Hennessy, one of the founders of this list. The book is > about 150 pg.. > > Slow reading is sometimes confusing, so it would be wise to agree to > some ground rules before we start. I would be very interested in a discussion of Hennessy's book. I have no idea what a *slow reading* is, so you'd have to explain that. Ground rules are fine by me, and since this list is so quiet anyway, perhaps those who are familiar with this work would not mind if those of us (if that includes anyone but me) who are new to *materialist feminism* discussed it. I happen to have a copy and have already started reading. Ready and willing... Sharon M. Grad Student Politics Dept York University sh96az@badger.ac.BrockU.ca From fourie@german.unp.ac.za Fri Jan 3 02:45:44 1997 Date: Fri, 03 Jan 1997 11:45:17 +0200 From: Regine Fourie To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? -Reply May I ask, what is a "slow reading"? Is it the same as a "close reading"? >>> H Bingham 3/1/97, 05:11am >>> I first joined this list over a year ago. At the time there was discussion of slow reading _Materialist feminism and the politics of discourse_. I left for reasons unrelated to the list. I recall, though, that there was also some discussion of how busy list members were and how difficult a slow reading would be. If anyone is interested, we could revive the idea. The book was written by Rosemary Hennessy, one of the founders of this list. The book is about 150 pg.. Slow reading is sometimes confusing, so it would be wise to agree to some ground rules before we start. Sincerely, HB From schmolka@ftn.net Fri Jan 3 07:12:25 1997 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 97 09:12 EST To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu From: Diane Schmolka Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? At 01:26 AM 1/3/97 -0500, you wrote: >On Thu, 2 Jan 1997, H Bingham wrote: > >> I first joined this list over a year ago. At the time there was >> discussion of slow reading _Materialist feminism and the politics of >> discourse_. >> >> If anyone is interested, we could revive the idea. The book was written >> by Rosemary Hennessy, one of the founders of this list. The book is >> about 150 pg.. >> > > I would be very interested in a discussion of Hennessy's book. I agree. I'd certainly be interested in a 'slow' [meaning "close", in my definition], reading of hte book. Thanks for the proposal, Diane Schmolka. Musician, Feminist, Human Rights-Peace Activist From chouinar@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA Fri Jan 3 10:25:54 1997 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 12:25:35 -0500 (EST) From: Vera Chouinard To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? In-Reply-To: Hi folks! This list was quite lively when I joined it. In fact, we tried to organize a discussion forum around Rosemary Hennessy's work but seemed to run amok due to the usual multiple schedule conflicts and sheer hecticness of life. I think this forum is a useful one and, at this point, it is probably worth discussing how those 'out there' would like to use it. I suppose we could begin by discussing what's materialist about our own feminism and the sorts of research we're involved in. Unfortunately, I can't kick the discussion off as I'm off to a conference in Britain in a couple of days. Any enthusiastic volunteers 'out there'? :) Vera Chouinard, Geography, McMaster University. On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Judy Evans wrote: > It was quite active when it began. I don't know whether there > are other lists that have taken over the subject. > > On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Doug Henwood wrote: > > > At 2:38 PM 12/31/96, Sharon M. wrote: > > > > > I have been a list member since October but have never received > > >anything from this list. Is this just a particularly quiet list? > > > > I've been on here for a year or more and I haven't gotten more than 5 > > messages. Quiet doesn't begin to describe it. > > > > Doug > > > > -- > > > > Doug Henwood > > Left Business Observer > > 250 W 85 St > > New York NY 10024-3217 > > USA > > +1-212-874-4020 voice > > +1-212-874-3137 fax > > email: > > web: > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > Judy Evans + Politics + jae2@york.ac.uk > using voice-recognition software: please > ignore editing errors > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > From freeland@fhs.csu.McMaster.CA Fri Jan 3 13:07:38 1997 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 15:07:19 -0500 (EST) From: Avril Freeland To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? In-Reply-To: Hi folks: this is the first communication I have had from this listserve .... I've been on the list about 6 months. I am currently doing research in biomedical ethics. I have designed a course for health care profressionals which utilizes problem based learning and alternative ethical teachings (in particular feminist ethics, intuitionism, critical thinking and existentialism). The framework for the course is poststructual feminism. The research group includes both undergraduate nursing and medical students. The research is looking at an alternative model of ethics for healthcare professionals which would challenge the rather narrow viewpoint of traditional biomedical ethics. My hope is that the students will emerge with a more critical attitude towards their ethical decision-making and continue to deconstruct the current bioethical framework and replace it with a more client-centred feminist discourse. On Fri, 3 Jan 1997, Vera Chouinard wrote: > Hi folks! This list was quite lively when I joined it. In fact, we > tried to organize a discussion forum around Rosemary Hennessy's work but > seemed to run amok due to the usual multiple schedule conflicts and sheer > hecticness of life. I think this forum is a useful one and, at this > point, it is probably worth discussing how those 'out there' would like > to use it. I suppose we could begin by discussing what's materialist > about our own feminism and the sorts of research we're involved in. > Unfortunately, I can't kick the discussion off as I'm off to a conference > in Britain in a couple of days. Any enthusiastic volunteers 'out there'? :) > Vera Chouinard, Geography, McMaster University. > > On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Judy Evans wrote: > > > It was quite active when it began. I don't know whether there > > are other lists that have taken over the subject. > > > > On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Doug Henwood wrote: > > > > > At 2:38 PM 12/31/96, Sharon M. wrote: > > > > > > > I have been a list member since October but have never received > > > >anything from this list. Is this just a particularly quiet list? > > > > > > I've been on here for a year or more and I haven't gotten more than 5 > > > messages. Quiet doesn't begin to describe it. > > > > > > Doug > > > > > > -- > > > > > > Doug Henwood > > > Left Business Observer > > > 250 W 85 St > > > New York NY 10024-3217 > > > USA > > > +1-212-874-4020 voice > > > +1-212-874-3137 fax > > > email: > > > web: > > > > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > Judy Evans + Politics + jae2@york.ac.uk > > using voice-recognition software: please > > ignore editing errors > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > From LAVERNEG@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Jan 3 13:19:15 1997 03 Jan 1997 12:19:05 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 03 Jan 1997 12:19:05 -0800 (PST) From: Faye La Verne Gagehabib Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu delete From lennox@german.umass.edu Fri Jan 3 13:30:56 1997 Date: Fri, 03 Jan 1997 15:29:46 -0500 From: lennox@german.umass.edu (Sara Lennox) Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Hello, people on the MatFem list: Yes, I'm particularly dismayed that nothing is happening on this list because I just published an article in German on "Materialistischer Feminismus und Postmoderne" in which I gave the e-mail address for subscribing and urged people to sign up! There is an English version of my article, which gives a little history of materialist feminism and then mostly focuses on Hennessy's book. If people want that big a message (it's about twenty pages long) I'd be happy to put it out on the list. (I also have a ten-page version I gave as a talk--maybe that would make more sense.) I could also send it individually via e-mail to anyone who's interested. (It's appeared in print already, so your critiques, alas, aren't going to do me any good.) I really enjoyed the discussions on the list a year ago, and I'd love to get them started again. Best, Sara Lennox From ostrow@shani.net Fri Jan 3 14:19:22 1997 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 23:12:56 +0200 To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu From: ostrow@shani.net (Rachel Ostrowitz) Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? Hi, Very interested to hear about the concept of materialist feminist since I don't have Hennessy's book nor do I have access to it (I am an Israeli). Could anyone give more details about the book such as publisher, year published and such. To Sara Lennox, I would like to read your work. Peace, Rachel Ostrowitz >Hello, people on the MatFem list: > >Yes, I'm particularly dismayed that nothing is happening on this list >because I just published an article in German on "Materialistischer >Feminismus und Postmoderne" in which I gave the e-mail address for >subscribing and urged people to sign up! > >There is an English version of my article, which gives a little history of >materialist feminism and then mostly focuses on Hennessy's book. If people >want that big a message (it's about twenty pages long) I'd be happy to put >it out on the list. (I also have a ten-page version I gave as a >talk--maybe that would make more sense.) I could also send it individually >via e-mail to anyone who's interested. (It's appeared in print already, so >your critiques, alas, aren't going to do me any good.) > >I really enjoyed the discussions on the list a year ago, and I'd love to >get them started again. > >Best, Sara Lennox From kmbooth@garnet.berkeley.edu Fri Jan 3 15:06:51 1997 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 14:06:48 -0800 (PST) From: Karen Booth To: MATERIALIST FEMINISM Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? I'd really like to get involved in discussions of Hennessy's work and would love to read Lennox's article--short or long or both! I too have been dismayed at the silence on this list. And hoping it doesn't signal an end to materialist perspectives in feminism. I'm working right now on a review essay for Feminist Studies on four books about race/gender/sex and empire that take on postmodern perspectives on the colonial condition and subject them to materialist analysis. So I'd be really interested sometime in getting a conversation going on post-colonialist theories. this seems like a good site for such a thing. Karen Booth Post Doc UC Berkeley kmbooth@garnet.berkeley.edu From jbarison@students.wisc.edu Fri Jan 3 15:32:06 1997 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 16:45:14 -0600 To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu From: jbarison@students.wisc.edu (Jeannette Barisonzi) Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? I had even forgotten I was on this list and the upcoming discussion sounds too steeped in theoretical distance from the real struggles that working class women face in our daily lives. I had hoped the list would address concrete materialist feminist concerns. Could someone please tell me how to get off this list? From leman@BGNet.bgsu.edu Fri Jan 3 17:25:18 1997 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 19:25:12 -0500 (EST) From: Leman Giresunlu To: MATERIALIST FEMINISM Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? In-Reply-To: Hi Sara -- Although at this point I am getting ready for my exams, I would be glad to read a copy of your article on Hennessey. Sincerely, Leman Giresunlu On Fri, 3 Jan 1997, Sara Lennox wrote: > Hello, people on the MatFem list: > > Yes, I'm particularly dismayed that nothing is happening on this list > because I just published an article in German on "Materialistischer > Feminismus und Postmoderne" in which I gave the e-mail address for > subscribing and urged people to sign up! > > There is an English version of my article, which gives a little history of > materialist feminism and then mostly focuses on Hennessy's book. If people > want that big a message (it's about twenty pages long) I'd be happy to put > it out on the list. (I also have a ten-page version I gave as a > talk--maybe that would make more sense.) I could also send it individually > via e-mail to anyone who's interested. (It's appeared in print already, so > your critiques, alas, aren't going to do me any good.) > > I really enjoyed the discussions on the list a year ago, and I'd love to > get them started again. > > Best, Sara Lennox > > > From sh96az@badger.ac.BrockU.CA Sat Jan 4 00:18:30 1997 Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 02:18:26 -0500 (EST) From: "Sharon M." To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? In-Reply-To: Hi Sara. I would be interested in a copy also (long or short form). About discussing the Hennessey book... Any suggestions for *ground rules* and perhaps a tentative start date? Sharon M. Grad Student Politics Dept York University sh96az@badger.ac.BrockU.ca From ostrow@shani.net Sat Jan 4 00:55:34 1997 Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 09:49:35 +0200 To: MATFEM@csf.colorado.edu From: ostrow@shani.net (Rachel Ostrowitz) Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? Hi, Very interested to hear about the concept of materialist feminist since I don't have Hennessy's book nor do I have access to it (I am an Israeli). Could anyone give more details about the book such as publisher, year published and such. To Sara Lennox, I would like to read your work. Peace, Rachel Ostrowitz From jbarison@students.wisc.edu Sat Jan 4 08:27:02 1997 Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 09:39:40 -0600 To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu From: jbarison@students.wisc.edu (Jeannette Barisonzi) Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? please unsubscribe From hbingham@starnetinc.com Sat Jan 4 12:54:01 1997 Date: Sat, 04 Jan 1997 12:55:04 -0600 From: H Bingham Organization: Family Fulfillment To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Slow Read [Long] References: Diane Schmolka wrote: > I'd certainly be interested in a 'slow' [meaning "close", in my > definition], reading of the book. Correct me if I'm wrong, but close readings are open ended and take as much time with a passage as it takes to unpack it. A slow reading is not as thorough or explorative as a close one. A slow reading is structured so that list members can know what chapter/ passage/page to be on at any given week. Real life has a way of interrupting participation in the discussion of a reading. Slow readings are scheduled so that when work, love, home, or school takes one away, one may rejoin the group down the road. Certainly discussion does not end if some list members want to read the scheduled passage more "closely." It only means that the slow reading continues to the next scheduled portion of the text. Close readings may be more appropriate after reading an entire text, when some connections and arguments may be more clear. A slow reading schedules a beginning, middle, and end to the reading. A "slow reading" is preferred over a "close" one when the "slow readers" have not yet read the text in its entirety and/or are not yet confident in their understanding of the subject matter. Or maybe it's been a while since reading the text, and a slow reading offers a paced review. Given the lack of activity on this list, there is room for a lot of things to happen. There are a number of questions to answer before beginning a slow read, the most important of which is "What text?" Sarah Lennox has offered her article. I can see the benefits in taking her lead. If she has the time and inclination to answer direct questions (not challenges, but questions for clarification), I would hope to be able to approach Hennessy's book from a more informed place. Another benefit is that, because Sarah knows the natural breaks in her article, scheduling a week or two-week discussion would be easier. Perhaps if we started by February 1, we could be through her 20-page article by May 1. Is anyone interested in that? Sarah, can you and are you willing to take on the extra work? If Sarah cannot take on the extra work--I know I couldn't--we still could read through her article as an introduction, if it is indeed an article that introduces. Sarah, is it? If Sarah's text is not to be slow read at this time, the questions to be answered are: 1. What text? 2. When to begin? 3. When to end? 4. What are the minimum and maximum number of days for discussion of any one passage? 5. How is the text to be divided to satisfy 2 through 4? Remember that the purpose of a slow read is to get through the text with others, not to master the subject matter. I look forward to this (ad)venture within this list. Sincerly, HB From hbingham@starnetinc.com Sat Jan 4 12:54:04 1997 Date: Sat, 04 Jan 1997 12:58:53 -0600 From: H Bingham Organization: Family Fulfillment To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? Rachel, Rosemary Hennessey's book is _Material feminism and the politics of discourse_, published 1993 by Routledge, New York/London. It's available in paperback as part of the "Thinking Gender" series. Cost is about $16US. HB From hbingham@starnetinc.com Sat Jan 4 12:54:06 1997 Date: Sat, 04 Jan 1997 13:10:16 -0600 From: H Bingham Organization: Family Fulfillment To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Real Life Jeannette Barisonzi wrote: > I had hoped the list would address concrete materialist feminist > concerns. Lists are what we make them. What are the concrete materialist feminist concerns you had hoped to find addressed here? I'm concerned with mothers and mothering. Sincerely, HB From lennox@german.umass.edu Sat Jan 4 13:02:37 1997 Date: Sat, 04 Jan 1997 15:01:14 -0500 From: lennox@german.umass.edu (Sara Lennox) Subject: Lennox, Matfem and Pomo To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Enough people seemed interested in receiving my article that I am sending the short version to the whole list. For those of you of you who aren't interested, I'm sorry for cluttering up your mailboxes--just press the delete key! Yours, Sara Lennox MATERIALIST FEMINISM AND POSTMODERNISM Sara Lennox "What would it mean to call oneself a materialist feminist in the 1990s?" Toril Moi asked in a December 1993 interview with Juliet Mitchell. "For me," Moi explained, "that's one way of talking about the continuation of what used to be called socialist or Marxist feminism. Yet socialist feminism is not really a meaningful term in the 1990s" (937). The term "materialist feminism" first emerged in the late seventies, with Annette Kuhn and Anne Marie Wolpe in Britain and Christine Delphy in France among its first promoters (Hennessy/Mohan 323), and was introduced into American literary scholarship in 1985 by Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenvelt, who described the method of their collection Feminist Criticism and Social Change as "materialist feminist criticism." As Moi's comment may indicate, in the nineties "materialist feminism" has gained increased currency among feminists on the left, perhaps because the fall of Communism has made them reluctant to identify with Marxist or socialist paradigms they now regard as historically compromised. A number of books published in the U.S. since the early nineties explicitly identify their authors as materialist feminists: Valerie Wayne's edited collection, The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare (1991), Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean's Materialist Feminisms (1993), and Rosemary Hennessy's Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse. A forthcoming Routledge collection, Materialist Feminism: A Reader, edited by Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham, will continue those discussions through its inclusion of "an archive of essays that delineate the debates out of which materialist feminism emerged" as well as previously unpublished essays. Adopted, as philosopher Ann Ferguson recently observed in an encyclopedia article on "Feminism and Socialism," "by feminists who favor Marxist-oriented discourse theory and postmodernist approaches," in the nineties materialist feminism, has become an increasingly "important position" within North American academic feminism. Most materialist feminists might agree with the general definition of the new approach advanced by the editors ofa two-year-old Internet discussion group called MATFEM: "Materialist feminist work is distinguished by the claim that the critical perspective of historical materialism is historically necessary and empowering for feminism's oppositional political project. Materialist feminism calls for a consideration of the ways class, divisions of labor, state power, as well as gendered, racial, national and sexual subjectivities, bodies, and knowledges are all crucial to social production. While materialist feminists have made use of postmodern critiques of empiricism to develop analyses of the role of ideology in women's oppression, they have also insisted that ideology is only one facet of social life. This systemic view--the argument that the materiality of the social consists of class, divisions of labor, state power, and ideology--is one of the distinguishing features of materialist feminist analysis." But many specific aspects of the materialist feminist method still remain contested. As one participant in a debate on the "MATFEM" discussion list put it, "there is a struggle going on to claim materialist feminism for various purposes," particularly discernable in "a shift from a more strictly materialist materialist feminism to a materialist feminism that seems willing to embrace certain aspects of discourse theory or, more broadly, certain tenants [sic] of postmodernism" (Bouse 9 March 1995). In this essay I would like to engage that ongoing debate by exploring the encounter of materialist feminism and postmodernism. I want first to trace a brief genealogy of materialist feminism's critical appropriation of postmodernism and then to examine several texts by Rosemary Hennessy, arguably one of the most sophisticated younger materialist feminist critics. Finally I will explore the utility of the method for feminist German Studies by exploring its application to several texts by Ingeborg Bachmann. By what steps did materialist feminism move from the socialist or Marxist feminism of the seventies to its engagement with postmodernism? As Valerie Wayne has detailed, the feminist scholars who originated the term "materialist feminism" were initially concerned primarily with expanding the utility of Marxist method to make it more applicable to gender issues. Like many other left feminists of the seventies, Kuhn and Wolpe argued that Marxists had devoted too little attention to the sphere of reproduction and women's invisible labor. Though these early materialist feminists "take up different positions in what has been called the 'dual-systems debate' [i.e. the system of capitalism and the system of patriarchy--SL], they all exhibit a concern for specifically economic forms of women's oppression" (7). But several shifts in British Marxism in the late seventies and early eighties also occasioned a transformation of materialist feminism. The works of Louis Althusser challenged Marxist economism by insisting on "the relative autonomy of the superstructure from the base" and advanced a new conception of ideology, which Althusser now defined as "the imaginary relationship of people to their real conditions of existence." As well, Althusser expanded the meaning of materialism by maintaining that the term "material" could also be applied to actions, practices, rituals, and the ideological state apparatus and asserting that ideas themselves had a material force (Lenin and Philosophy, 136, 169, 166). Within British literary scholarship, Althusser's structuralist Marxism encountered (and often clashed with) an eclectic body of left cultural analysis influenced by the writing of literary scholar Raymond Williams and historian E.P. Thompson. That encounter of "structuralism and culturalism," as Stuart Hall has termed it, had a profound impact on the innovative body of interdisciplinary scholarship called cultural studies, and by the late eighties had also helped to generate a body of literary scholarship by younger academics particularly focused on the Renaissance that its practitioners called "cultural materialism." Though feminists frequently have criticized cultural materialism, and its more Foucauldian American cousin new historicism, for their lack of attention to gender (e.g. Newton), these transformations produced a climate within which a Marxist-influenced feminist literary and cultural scholarship also receptive to poststructuralism could flourish. Newton and Rosenvelt's anthology played a key role in delineating principles of materialist feminist criticism in the U.S., though the collection has since been criticized for its lack of theoretical rigor, its unease about its relationship to Marxism, its privileging of gender over other categories of analysis, and its hostility to poststructuralism (Hennessy/Mohan 324-5, Landry/MacLean 45-46). U.S. left feminists generally remained cool to poststructrualist analysis, much in vogue since the seventies elsewhere in the American academy, until the late eighties, when they recognized that poststructuralist theory could be used to reconceive gender categories in response to the objectsions U.S. women of color raised to white feminists' use of "woman" as an essentializing concept that ignored differences of race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and sexuality among real women. But, though materialist feminists have found the postmodern emphasis on the discursive construction of subjectivity and their own implication in the discursive networks they wish to critique crucial to their own attempt to theorize women's multiple differences, they have also, and simultaneously, raised sharp objections to the postmodern/poststructuralist inclination to reduce all difference to the play of textuality, contending instead that textuality and difference--the relation of signifier and signified--are themselves the site of social conflict and struggle" (17). By continuing to insist that transformative social change must be the goal of feminist analysis, materialist feminists reaffirm their connection to the legacy of Marxism and earlier feminisms. Rosemary Hennessy's work brilliantly illustrates how materialist feminism can engage fully with postmodernism's challenge to meaning-making activity in the West while still retaining a commitment to radical political transformation. Hennessy's book Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse , called by one MATFEM participant "the 'ovular' text for mat fem in the 90's" (Helena 7 September 1995) reveal her subtle understanding of Marxism along with her determination to devise a theory adequate to the changed political conditions of the nineties that continues to promote a global agenda for social change analogous to Marx's own. She boldly retains Marx's goal of world-wide revolution which is "the effect of a collective, not just a feminist subject" (328)--that is, she regards feminism as only one of a variety of oppositional strategies with which feminism is aligned and to which it would contribute, and she pleads urgently for the elaboration of a "philosophy of praxis capable of directing a globally articulated revolutionary struggle" (323). To that end, she continues to insist upon globalized and systemic political analyses, considering recent arguments for regional or localized oppositional strategies a mechanism of crisis containment that, "by forestalling explanation of systemic relations . . . helps to sustain their proliferation under late capitalism" (336). She refuses explanations of power that conceive it to function within a diffused network of forces and argues instead that power takes the form of exploitation, "a process whereby the accumulation of surplus value in the form of social resources by one'class' depends on the work of an exploited class."(32). She rejects the postmodern accusation that Marxian formulations such as hers rest on unsustainable metaphysical foundations and argues that the legitimacy of her social analytic does not derives from "its scientific Truth", but rather from "its explanatory power and its commitment to emancipatory social change" (15). But, as Hennessy's diction may already have indicated, the kind of Marxism she as a materialist feminist advocates has already been strenuously modified via its encounter with post-Marxian theory--including that of postmodernism. Post-Althusserian theory has allowed her especially to appropriate conceptions of the discursively-constructed subject and ideology as discourse while still retaining an allegiance to a materialist method, a systemic analysis, and "feminism's emancipatory aims" (xiii). Althusser's work has allowed her to mount a critique of classical Marxism's overemphasis on a social formation's economy over its political and ideological practices. She adapts many of Althusser's key arguments--his critique of Marxism's failure entirely to repudiate Hegelian idealism, his notion of overdetermination, his conception of interpellation, his idea of articulation. But she also charges Althusser with a residual economism himself because he still views the economic as determining in the last instance. "Going beyond Althusser," she urges, "but still making use of the powerful problematic of the social as a mode of production, would entail abandoning entirely the base-superstructure model," and she argues instead that "political, ideological, and economic spheres of production mutually determine each other and are systematically implicated in maintaining particular social relations at various levels" (30). She sets as a goal for her own writing the "de-articulation" of postmodern's useful concepts from a postmodern problematic easily recuperable by the dominant order and their "re-articulation" "within a more thoroughly oppositional and politically effective framework" (7). Her own project is elaborating a method that "might allow materialist feminism to appropriate postmodern knowledges in such a way as to make visible the contesting interests at stake in their social analytic and rearticulate them within a theoretical framework that is congruent with feminism's political agenda" (137). Tracing Hennessy's utilization of postmodern theory to elaborate new concepts of ideology, the subject, and history can illuminate her materialist feminist encounter with postmodernism. With post-Althusserian theory as her starting point, she defines ideology as "the array of sense-making practices which constitute what counts as 'the way things are' in any historical moment" (7). Thus in Hennessy's view,"reality" itself is an ideological construct, which is not to maintain that extradiscursive reality doesn't exist, but merely that it is, in Hennessy's words, "unavailable except through the modes of intelligibility or discourses which comprise the object of knowledge" (75). Since, within Hennessy's model, the economic has no ultimately determining role, ideology has constitutive power, and discourse, now redefined as ideology to emphasize that it cannot be detached from other areas of the social formation, has for Hennessy (as for Althusser) a material force because it helps to produce (though also is produced by) economic and political practices. This (rather attenuated) notion of materialism allows Hennessy to advance her own conception of the "materiality of discourse." To address Althusserian theory's notorious difficulty in theorizing subversive social agency (since the discursively-constructed subject is a product of the ideologies that call him/her into being), Hennessy turns to Gramscian conceptions of hegemony in order to be able to theorize contestation within ideology. As Gramsci amends Althusserian theory by insising that coherent ideological discourse is always forged out of struggle, his theory makes it possible to understand ideology as "an ensemble of contesting discourses rather than as a monolithic determining force", while his notion of articulation explains how ideologies or disc Because, Hennessy would maintain, a range of ideologies (of which patriarchal discourse is only one) make intelligible whatever constitutes women's lives (like every other aspect of human experience) at any historical moment, her conception of ideology inflected by postmodern theory allows her to comprehend particular women's contradictory location within various oppressive systems, including patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism. Because Hennessy retains an allegiance to a systemic analysis, she is very critical of other postmodern theorists--Foucault, Kristeva, Laclau/Mouffe--who also allege themselves to be materialists but refuse to think systemically. She criticizes Foucault's inability to explain the relationship between discursive and non-discursive practices and his lack of a theory of causality. Furthermore, since power for Foucault is everywhere, he is unable to explain hierarchical relationships among discourses (that is, why some discourses have more power than others), nor under what conditions some discourses could be deployed to effect the kind of radical social change at which materialist feminist aims. Though Kristeva properly directs attention to the heterogeneous, self-divided speaking subject, she naturalizes that disruptive heterogeneity by locating it outside the realm of the social, rooting it in an ahistorical body, unable to understand struggle as taking place among contending symbolic systems. In the writings of Laclau and Mouffe, Hennessy finally argues, nothing exists except discourse. To Hennessy such arguments collude with the operations of late capitalism. "Explaining antagonism as an effect of the instability of signification," she arguest, ". . . reifies in the process of signification the highly mediated relation between discursive and nondiscursive practices, in other words, what is at stake in the history of struggles waged over words" (63). Materialist feminism's conception of the discursively-constructed subject would nonetheless not have been possible without postmodern critiques of the metaphysical foundations of language and symbolic systems; indeed, Hennessy asserts, "Materialist feminism is distinguished from socialist feminism in part because it embraces postmodern concepts of language and signification" (5). If the authority of utterances is no longer founded on an unquestioned correspondence between the signifier and the signified but results merely from the differential relationship between elements of the signifying system, the subject who appears to be the origin of those utterances can also be conceived to be an effect of the discursive systems within which the systems allows him/her to assume the postion of (or "interpellates" him/her as) speaker. For feminists seeking to theorize women's differences from one another, such poststructuralist arguments are extremely useful: now they can conceive the definition of "woman" to be a culturally-specific discursive category that is "historically constructed and traversed by more than one differential axis" (xii). Materialist feminism's contribution is to insist that the subject is not just a consequence of the play of discourse or the slippage of signifiers, but instead to emphasize that the subject is always embedded in social relations and that the discourses/ideologies that produce subjects are always complexly imbricated in economic and political structures. Hennessy's conception of history is rooted in this understanding of ideology and of ideology critique as the appropriate practice of materialist feminist intellectuals. To her, "history" is narrative, the stories cultures tell themselves about the past; it is "a particular mode of reading and writing which supports a specific regime of truth and disciplining of knowledge" (118). Almost by definition, then, history as Hennessy conceives of it is a form of ideology as she has defined the term, and competing versions of history comprise struggles within the realm of ideology. Since "the narrativity of history always issues from a set of values that support or disrupt a particular social order" (102), the task of a materialist feminist history is thus to generate counterhegemonic discourse, both criticizing hegemonic accounts and generating alternatives: "In materialist feminist practice," she emphasizes, "historical narratives are both the object and vehicle of ideology critique" (119) Hennessy calls this materialist feminist project of ideology critique an theory of reading. In her expanded definition of "reading," it becomes the act of intervening in the process of sense-making by negotiating the discursive materiality of one's lived reality to make social productions intelligible. "Once reading is understood in this way," Hennessy asserts, "the difference between reading and writing collapses. Both are activities of making sense--of and through the systems of difference available at any historical moment" (14-15). Via such a theory of reading as ideology critique materialist feminist literary scholars can also "make sense" of literary texts, showing how such texts perform the ideological work of supporting particular economic and social relations and/or also postulate counterhegemonic alternatives to what counts as reality within a particular social order. How might such a materialist feminist approach be useful to feminist German Studies? Applying the approach Hennessy proposes to thewriting of Ingeborg Bachmann, for instance, might enable a variety of new and productive readings of Bachmann texts. First, materialist feminism's insistence on a multi-factor, global and systemic analysis that considers gender to be only one of a variety of differential systems traversing the female subject and the text she produces means that it would no longer be sufficient to understanding Bachmann's texts to be postulating solutions that lie somehow outside the social, to examine her writing in the light of gender categories alone, or to subsume all other forms of domination portrayed in her work under the umbrella term "patriarchy" (whatever Bachmann herself may have thought of such analyses). As Hennessy and a collaborator, Rajeswari Mohan, put it:, materialist feminism's critique is "directed as much against new imperialism, white supremacy, homophobia, and class exploitation as it is against patriarchy" (325). Thus it would be necessary instead to investigate the relationship of Bachmann's texts, say, to colonialism and neo-colonialism, to racism and ethnic conflict in Europe, to the Cold War and U.S. efforts to reintegrate Germany and Austria into the capitalist system--as all of those historical phenomena are inflected by gender. Secondly, the materialist feminist notion of the discrursively-constructed subject might be applied to Bachmann's texts so as to understand her figures as locations at which historically specific discourses (of race, class, gender, etc.) intersect--another way of reading what Bachmann in her Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics termed "die Geschichte im Ich" (III, ). Thirdly, Althusser's and Gramsci's redefinitions of ideology make it possible to conceive of Bachmann's texts both as comprising her own interested, partisan efforts to construct or "make sense of" reality that reveal her own situatedness in particular social relations and also as contradictory ideological products in which both consent to and contestation with hegemenic ideologies can be discerned. Finally, our own reading strategies (along with controversies within Bachmann scholarship) can be understand as forms of ideology critique, as processes of "making sense" of Bachmann that also comprise struggles to clain Bachmann's texts for hegemonic or counterhegemonic purposes. Within the American academy, materialist feminism stands poised to become a perspective to be reckoned with. As the nineties have made clear that only some varieties of feminismare genuinely oppositional (i.e. counterhegemonic) and that, should male control ever be overthrown, many other aspects of women's lives would remain quite unchanged, materialist feminists have retained a tenacious hold on Marxist or socialist feminism's original revolutionary aims. Though unwilling to relinquish the vision that inspired the social movements of the sixties in which left feminism's roots lay, materialist feminists are not enmired in nostalgia for a time, and an analysis, that can't be retrieved, but have shown themselves also willing to engage critically but productively with the theoretical advances of the past quarter century. Certainly materialist feminism may not be an entirely fashionable position in an era when capitalism reigns triumphant, as Hennessy concedes: "Of course it is not popular these days to understand ideology in its relation to class and state power (that is, as more than the cultural reproduction of ideas), to maintain that social realtions are not merely discursive, or to insist that social analysis explain why (not just how) hierarchichal systems of power persist even as they are reconfigured under the more flexible regimes of late capitalism" (WL 16). But for feminist scholars who are dismayed by contemporary political developments and who wish to turn their own scholarly efforts as feminists to the purpose of combatting them, materialist feminism may provide a paradigm that could restore feminism's original political cutting edge as a revolutionary theory and practice of liberation and make feminism an entry point for a critique of all oppressive systems. WORKS CITED Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans.Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971. Bouse, Susan. "Defining Materialist Feminism." Diskussion List MATFEM. 9 March 1995. Delphy, Christine. Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women's Oppression. London: Hutchinson, 1984. Gimenez, Martha E., Rosemary Hennessey and Chrys Ingraham. "Welcome to MATFEM." Discussion List MATFEM. 18 February 1995. Grehan, Helena. "Reviews." Diskussion List MATFEM. 7 September 1995. Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies." Cultural Studies. Ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson und Paula A. Treichler. New York: Routledge, 1992. 277-294. -----. "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms."Media, Culture and Society 2 (1980): 57-72. Hennessy, Rosemary. Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse. New York: Routledge, 1993. -----. "Women's Lives/Feminist Knowledge: Feminist Standpoint as Ideology Critique." Hypatia 8.1 (Winter 1993): 14-34. ----- and Rajeswari Mohan. "The Construction of Woman in Three Popular Texts of Empire: Towards a Critique of Materialist Feminism,"Textual Practice 3.3 (Winter 1989): 323-359. Jones, Ann Rosalind. "Imaginary Gardens with Real Frogs in Them: Feminist Euphoria and the Franco-American Divide, 1976-88." Changing Subjects: The Making of Feminist Literary Criticism.. Ed. Gayle Greene und Copp=E9lia Kahn. New York: Routledge, 1993. 64-82. Kuhn, Annette and Ann Marie Wolpe, Eds. Feminism and Materialism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Landry, Donna and Gerald MacLean. Materialist Feminisms. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993. Moi, Toril. "Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Politics. A Conversation with Juliet Mitchell". South Atlantic Quarterly 93.4 (Herbst 1994): 925-949. Newton, Judith Lowder. "History as Usual? Feminism and the 'New Historicism.'"The New Historicism. Ed. H. Aram Veeser. New York: Routledge, 1989. 152-167. ----- and Deborah Rosenfelt, Eds. Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex,Class and Race in Literature and Culture. New York: Methuen, 1985. Vogel, Lise. Woman Question: Essays for a Materialist Feminism. New York: Routledge, 1995. Wayne, Valerie. The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. From jnewman@benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu Sat Jan 4 15:43:23 1997 Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 14:43:21 -0800 (PST) From: "Jane O. Newman" To: MATERIALIST FEMINISM Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? In-Reply-To: Yes, Sara. Please put the longer version on the list, or give the citation! Thanks. Jane O. Newman On Fri, 3 Jan 1997, Sara Lennox wrote: > Hello, people on the MatFem list: > > Yes, I'm particularly dismayed that nothing is happening on this list > because I just published an article in German on "Materialistischer > Feminismus und Postmoderne" in which I gave the e-mail address for > subscribing and urged people to sign up! > > There is an English version of my article, which gives a little history of > materialist feminism and then mostly focuses on Hennessy's book. If people > want that big a message (it's about twenty pages long) I'd be happy to put > it out on the list. (I also have a ten-page version I gave as a > talk--maybe that would make more sense.) I could also send it individually > via e-mail to anyone who's interested. (It's appeared in print already, so > your critiques, alas, aren't going to do me any good.) > > I really enjoyed the discussions on the list a year ago, and I'd love to > get them started again. > > Best, Sara Lennox > > From dhenwood@panix.com Sun Jan 5 10:53:16 1997 Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 12:52:41 -0500 To: matfem@csf.colorado.edu From: dhenwood@panix.com (Doug Henwood) Subject: New marxism-feminism l*st Another barely active l*st, except this one's new. Doug >Welcome to the marxism-feminism mailing list! > >If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list, >you can send mail to majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu >with the following command >in the body of your email message: > > unsubscribe marxism-feminism > >Or, if you're sending the unsubscribe command from an address different >than the one under which you're subscribed, the unsubscribe command >should have the form: > > unsubscribe marxism-feminism dhenwood@panix.com > >Here's the general information for the list you've >subscribed to, in case you don't already have it: > >Welcome to the marxism-feminism list, technically provided and >supported by the volunteer netizens of the Spoon Collective, proposed >and run by other volunteer netizens. > >"Marxism-Feminism" [or feminist socialism] is an important topic, one >continuously riddled with issues of feminism's reconcilation with, >"assimilation" into, and controversial relationship with marxist and >socialist politics and analysis. It challenges marxism to deal more >directly with issues of gender/power differences, and presents a >much-needed critique of mainstream feminism's failure to deal meaningfully >with analysis of class structures and ethnic differences. It offers >opportunities for unity of understandings and struggles in the midst of >difference and disagreement. > >The purpose of this list is to provide a useful and thought-provoking forum >for discussion for all those interested in the intersection of feminism and >marxism. It is especially intended to create a meaningful dialogue amongst >those working both inside and outside of "the academy" - as well as other >communities of people too often separated by oppressive social structures. >We hope to open new lines of communication between >people with like-minded feminist and socialist visions, to assist in >establishing a more concrete and politically viable connection between >"feminist theory" and actual lives and day-to-day concerns of >working-class people everywhere. > >All contributions should relate to issues of both class and gender, >whether explicitly or implicitly. > >This is intended to be a long-term, on-going discussion list, which may >include periods that are devoted to more intensive focus on a particular >project, reading or topic. > >Examples of some of the topics intended for discussion include [in no >particular order]: > > the relationship of marxist-feminist politics in and > outside of the academy , esp. issues of concerning the > so-called division between "theory" and "practice" > > > the necessity of establishing a feminist methodology that does not > isolate or privilege gender at the expense of class and race, instead > of the usual innefectual "listing" of differences in > place of serious discussion of the ways that they inform > our very notion of "gender" as such > > on a related note, how might an analysis of the reasons > for second wave feminism's bourgeois origins help us > avoid similar pitfalls today? > > a (re)evaluation of Marx's and Engel's positions on gender > and the family, esp. in relation to marxist and non-marxist feminists' > treatment of these issues > > the relationship of the different meanings/significations of > concepts such as "reproduction" and "nature" in feminist and > marxist writings > > the present position of women in the international > marketplace, esp. the role of gender in the > international division of labor; what new modes > of gender/class exploitation have arisen as a consequence > of the intensive global expansion of capitalism in all its new > and increasingly destructive forms? > > what new strategies can/must we devise to adequadely deal > with such changes (for instance, in communications, such as the WWW?) > what opportunities for effective political and social change > do they offer? how do issues of access/privilege complicate > and inform any such opportunites? how world-wide is the WWW? > >There is open subscription policy, anyone who chooses to subscribe >will automatically be subscribed. Only members of the list may post >to the list. "Moderation" will be exercised as needed to foster >discussion which advances the purpose of the list. > >All posts are automatically archived and publically accessible, along >with many other list archives, through the Spoon WWW home page at >http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/ > >------------------------------ >The mailing address of the list is >marxism-feminism@lists.village.virginia.edu. >Use this address to post messages, initiate or continue discussion etc. > >The administrative address is majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu. >Use this address for all administrative functions. If you have any >questions, don't hesitate to write to the moderator, >Rosalee Blumer > >------------------------------ >administrative possiblities: > >To subscribe to marxism-feminism: >send the message: subscribe marxism-feminism >to: majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu > >To unsubscribe, >send the message: unsubscribe marxism-feminism >to: majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu > From fourie@german.unp.ac.za Mon Jan 6 23:35:35 1997 Date: Mon, 06 Jan 1997 09:57:25 +0200 From: Regine Fourie To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? -Reply Dear Sara Lennox, Thank you for offering your article (*Materialistischer Feminismus und Postmoderne*). Please would you e-mail me a copy (English, the full version)? I would also like to know where the German version was published (in case I should be so lucky as to have German post-graduate students sometime in the future...). Vielen Dank im voraus, Regine fourie@german.unp.ac.za dr_fourie@mail.tcs.co.za From cwhite@bucknell.edu Tue Jan 7 08:55:10 1997 Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 11:05:00 +0100 To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu From: cwhite@bucknell.edu (Carol Wayne White) Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? Could someone please send me info on how to unsubscribe from this list? Thank you in advance. CWW From ferguson@philos.umass.edu Tue Jan 7 11:31:06 1997 Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 13:30:22 -0500 (EST) From: Ann Ferguson Subject: Re: MATFEM digest 84 <"MatFem@csf.colorado.edu"@Jan> To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu 1/7 I just read Sara Lennox's article posted to the list on Materialist Feminism with interest and note that she did not list the citation to my article she mentions on "Feminism and Socialism". This article is in press in The Blackwell's Companion to Feminist Philosophy, co-edited by Iris Young and Alison Jaggar and will be out shortly from Blackwell press in London. Regarding Sara's comments on materialist feminism and Rosemarie Hennessy's work, I think she is correct in her description of her position and very clear and good in her presentation. However, Hennessey's argument to defend her own position from the critiques she makes of people like Foucault is not particularly strong. Foucault is no idealist, since he clearly distinguishes between discursive and non-discursive practices, and sees the various bodily disciplinings he studies as both enabled by "scientific" discourses yet also not reducible to discourses. But it seems to me Hennessy's critique of Foucault, that he doesn't make clear the systematic connection between discursive and non-discursive practices, can also be applied to her own work. It is all well and good to refuse the distinction between base and superstructure and to insist that ideology as discourse has material effects. But then if one admits the existence of multiple discourses (eg. patriarchy, racism, capitalist development theory, etc) one needs to theorize systematically the connections between these discourses and the material practices in which they are embedded, particularly any contradictions or tensions that may be historically present between them. Any multi-systems theory of social domination has to do this, even if it eschews a totalizing narrative. For example, it has to do what I try to do in my book and show the concrete historical interconnections between racism, sexism and class exploitation in the US social formation. But Hennessy doesn't do this to my satisfaction (although she tries to do a contextual historical analysis of the "New Woman" discourse in ch. 4, but one which still doesn't make the connections between the systems clear), and as a result, one is left wondering if her perspective doesn't really come down to an Althusserian "economics/capitalist contradictions in the last instance" base/superstructure analysis after all!! Have others found this to be a gap between theory and practice in Hennessy? Best, Ann Ferguson Women's Studies and Philosophy UMass/Amherst ferguson@philos.umass.edu From cwhite@bucknell.edu Tue Jan 7 14:37:48 1997 Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 16:37:48 -0500 To: MATERIALIST FEMINISM From: cwhite@bucknell.edu (Carol White) Subject: Re: Is anyone out there? Could someone please send me info on how to unsubscribe from this list? Thank you in advance. CWW From nnaples@orion.oac.uci.edu Tue Jan 7 18:15:36 1997 Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 17:15:30 -0800 (PST) From: Nancy Naples To: MATERIALIST FEMINISM Subject: Re: MATFEM digest 84 In-Reply-To: <199701071830.NAA07110@asimov.oit.umass.edu> I have also just finished reading the shortened version of Sara Lennox's article on materialist feminism. I appreciate her enthusiasm for Hennessy's book but wonder what it means for the "method" of materialist feminism to be reduced (to show my bias) to "ideology critique". I find this problematic especially since it renders invisible other ways of understanding the very structures or the material consequences of discourse/ideology that Hennessy discusses in the early part of her book. Maybe this approach makes sense for those in literary critical studies, but I would like to see the methodological limits of ideology critique addressed before it becomes touted as THE "appropriate practice of materialist feminist intellectuals." Now if the response is that, "well isn't everything we do ideology critique, e.g. gathering and reviewing ethnographic field notes, reviewing census data categories, etc, then we still need to specify the different sites in which such "critique" can take place and what are the different challenges we face coming at it from different sites. I guess there's still the old socialist feminist in me that continues to find it important to explore women's experiences (however partial their view). But this gets us back into the standpoint epistemological debate (which I wouldn't mind reopening, if anyone is still interested). I don't think that "ideology critique" adequately replaces the powerful ways of understanding how different women confront and are confronted by relations of ruling (to use Dorothy Smith's term) that shape their daily lives. Ideology critique does not give me a tool to explore resistance and that, I believe, remains central to the feminist project. Nancy A. Naples Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies University of California, Irvine Irvine, California 92717 714-824-5749 (office phone) 714-824-4717 (fax) From ingrac@Sage.EDU Wed Jan 8 10:24:40 1997 Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 12:19:08 -0500 (EST) From: Chrys Ingraham To: mult-cul@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu, wmst-l@umdd.umd.edu, afamhed@cwis-20.wayne.edu, afam-l@lists.missouri.edu, psn@csf.colorado.edu, matfem@csf.colorado.edu Maureen McLeod Subject: position announcement (fwd) Russell Sage College for women, a member of The Sage Colleges, invites applications for a multi-year non-tenure track assistant professorship in Sociology, starting in Fall 1997. Applicants must be prepared to teach Introduction to Sociology, Research Methods (graduate & undergraduate), and Women and Health. Additional areas of teaching include two of the following: Sociology of Education, Marriage and the Family, Urban Sociology, Sociology of Gender, and Race and Ethnicity. The Sage Colleges are strongly committed to the recruitment of candidates who have been traditionally underrepresented on college faculties. Qualifications include Ph.D. in Sociology, evidence of teaching excellence, record of publication, and willingness to contribute to the college community. Russell Sage College is located on the Hudson River in Troy, NY, and is part of the Capital Region of New York. It is convenient to large urban centers such as Boston and New York City, as well as to outdoor areas such as the Catskill Mountains, the Adirondack State Wilderness Park, and the Green Mountains of Vermont. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, and names and addresses of 3 current references by Feb. 28, 1997 to: Sociology Search Chair, Dept. of Sociology & Criminal Justice Russell Sage College Troy, NY 12180 Lisa A. Callahan Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice Russell Sage College Troy, NY 12180 (518) 270-2278 CALLAL@SAGE.EDU From MARAN@VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU Wed Jan 8 13:37:49 1997 From: MARAN@VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU 08 Jan 1997 14:37:44 -0600 (CST) Date: Wed, 08 Jan 1997 14:37:44 -0600 (CST) Subject: Re: MATFEM digest 84 To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Thanks, Nancy. I think it's important to examine what ideology *does* as well as how it's understood. And I think there's definately a place to reopen discussions of epistemology here. I recall reading some of Katherine Pynne Addleson's work as addressing applications and outcomes as part of an epistemological evaluation, but I need to review it. Is anyone else familiar with her work? Maran Fulvi Mankato State University From lennox@german.umass.edu Thu Jan 9 09:48:19 1997 Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 11:47:47 -0500 From: lennox@german.umass.edu (Sara Lennox) Subject: Hennessy discussion To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Thank you all for the interesting comments on my paper. To those of you who asked for a copy of the longer English version: the problem is, there isn't really a final English version--I wrote the longer article in English, then translated it myself into English, editing as I went. I can fix that article up so it is ready to send out, but I don't have time to do it right now. I promise you all you will get a copy, but not right away. The German reference, for anyone who's interested, is: "Materialistischer Feminismus und Postmoderne." Literaturtheorie und Geschichte: Zur Diskussion materialistischer Literaturwissenschaft. Ed. Ruediger Scholz and Klaus-Michael Bogdal. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996. 53-71. I had a few comments to make to the discussion that's on-going. To the ideology question: Hennessy I think defines ALL experience as mediated through ideology, a la Althusser, so perhaps all scholarly investigations could be defined as ideology critique. That makes a lot of sense to me as a literary scholar. But you all may be right that this is seen too much from a lit-crit perspective. A problem I had with the question of ideology critique, however, is the issue of polysemy, as they say in Cultural Studies, that different groups of people appropriate ideology in different ways, depending on their own social positioning, and those responses may be located different places on the political spectrum. As well, I would like to talk more about systemic analysis. My understanding of her objection to Foucault was that he dealt mainly with local knowledges, the local exercise of power, and didn't think systemically. However (at the risk of revealing myself to be a Foucaudian myself), I think one of the things that the critiques of women of color have taught feminism in the past decade is that we can't presume there is a single patriarchy operative in the same way everywhere, and I would say that is also true of racism--there are DIFFERENT racisms that can't be traced back to a single generative principle. I'm quite prepared to agree that there is a single, global capitalist system (though it of course has different effects in different places) but less ready to talk about global patriarchy or global racism (maybe global white supremacy, though I'm not even so sure about that). Any ideas about this? Best, Sara Lennox From elizabeth.bounds@vt.edu Thu Jan 9 13:12:11 1997 id PAA08623 for ; Thu, 9 Jan 1997 15:12:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 15:11:23 -0500 To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu From: elizabeth.bounds@vt.edu (Elizabeth M. Bounds) Subject: Re: Hennessy discussion I'm quite prepared to agree that there is a single, global >capitalist system (though it of course has different effects in different >places) but less ready to talk about global patriarchy or global racism >(maybe global white supremacy, though I'm not even so sure about that). >Sara Lennox While I certainly agree that there is not one, singular form of patriarchy or one, singular form of racism, I think we still need, on occasion, to talk about how it is that men in many different historical periods and cultures have had more of whatever counts as power than those women who are located in a similar class/race/status position. It may not be possible to have even this kind of weak universal discussion about racism--what kind of similarities might there be between, for example, the racism white French persons employ towards Algerians and the racism Euro-Americans employ towards African-Americans? Elizabeth M. Bounds 540-231-7617 Religious Studies Program elizabeth.bounds@vt.edu Major Williams 204 Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061-0135 From dhenwood@panix.com Thu Jan 9 14:00:25 1997 Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:00:29 -0500 To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu From: dhenwood@panix.com (Doug Henwood) Subject: Re: Hennessy discussion At 3:11 PM 1/9/97, Elizabeth M. Bounds wrote: >It may not be possible to >have even this kind of weak universal discussion about racism--what kind of >similarities might there be between, for example, the racism white French >persons employ towards Algerians and the racism Euro-Americans employ >towards African-Americans? Isn't there something useful about studying how social conflicts get played out in racial terms - and how the notion of "race" is itself constructed? Obviously there are millions of different particularities in each tale, but don't they share something in common that's worth examining? Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: web: From lennox@german.umass.edu Thu Jan 9 15:53:26 1997 Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 17:52:06 -0500 From: lennox@german.umass.edu (Sara Lennox) Subject: Re: Hennessy discussion To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu At 4:00 PM 1/9/97, Doug Henwood wrote: >At 3:11 PM 1/9/97, Elizabeth M. Bounds wrote: > >>It may not be possible to >>have even this kind of weak universal discussion about racism--what kind of >>similarities might there be between, for example, the racism white French >>persons employ towards Algerians and the racism Euro-Americans employ >>towards African-Americans? > >Isn't there something useful about studying how social conflicts get played >out in racial terms - and how the notion of "race" is itself constructed? >Obviously there are millions of different particularities in each tale, but >don't they share something in common that's worth examining? > >Doug > >-- > >Doug Henwood >Left Business Observer >250 W 85 St >New York NY 10024-3217 >USA >+1-212-874-4020 voice >+1-212-874-3137 fax >email: >web: Yes, I agree with you, Doug--if they didn't have SOMETHING in common it wouldn't be possible to use the word "racism" to describe them all. But I think the point re Hennessey is, can one do a global and SYSTEMIC analysis of racism, which suggests to me that all forms of racism are part of one larger general system. Or maybe I've understood incorrectly what she means by systemic. What do other people think?--Sara From ingrac@Sage.EDU Thu Jan 9 18:36:29 1997 Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 20:34:32 -0500 (EST) From: Chrys Ingraham To: Sara Lennox Subject: Re: Hennessy discussion In-Reply-To: I think there are some misunderstandings in these discussions of Hennessy's book which I think would be useful to address. First, this book was written some time ago and Hennessy's later work (articles) elaborate on some of the things you find troubling. Second, Hennessy's use of ideology critique is not to the exclusion of peoples' lives but as a means by which we can interrogate our own approaches to such study as well as in examining other theoretical perspectives. As someone who has studied Dorothy Smith, I find Hennessy's approach both pressures and extends Smith's work. Finally, the anthology we have been working on, Materialist (Marxist) Feminism: A Reader (Hennessy and Ingraham) is scheduled for publication from Routledge in May. The introduction to this Reader makes some of these arguments more succinctly than I can do here but foregrounds the very real material conditions for women locally and globally, the need for a systemic analysis which makes these conditions visible and stimulates change, illustrates the various ways this problematic is useful, and demonstrates that patriarchy is not a universal but is, instead, historically and regionally contingent. Best to all....Has anyone thought about teaching an international internet course on materialist (marxist) feminism? I'm doing one this semester on race, ethnicity, and conflict and would be very interested in trying something like that on this topic....any ideas? Chrys Ingraham From jayati.lal@nyu.edu Wed Jan 15 18:57:47 1997 Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 20:57:27 -0500 To: Anu Seth , dms@sas.upenn.edu (Dina M Siddiqi), Edna Bonacich , Jeff Cowie , matfem@csf.colorado.edu, PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK , Sociologists for Women in Society , Sociologists for Women in Society , "Tami J. Friedman" , Rebecca Johns , "Donna R. Gabaccia" , korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu, andrew ross , Erin McMurray , Ethel Brooks , Ginny Coughlin , Hillary Barranco , Irene Gramovski , Kitty Krupat , Oscar Owens , Robyn Dutra , Simone Weil Davis From: Jayati Lal Subject: new limited call for papers > >Please disseminate the following call for papers: > > >New, limited Call for Papers: > > The Southern Labor Studies Conference will hold its tenth biennial >meeting at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, >from September 25 to 28, 1997. This conference brings together >scholars from a wide range of disciplines, labor activists, teachers, >and students to learn about labor in the South and other parts of the >world. The theme of the conference will be "Organizing the Unorganized: Past >and Present, Locally and Globally." In seeking to fill existing >panels, the Program committee seeks paper proposals in the following >areas: > >-Contingent workers: temporaries; subcontracted labor; or workers in >the informal sector >-Workers and the Law >-Affirmative Action >-Child labor >-the criminalization of vagrancy >-farm workers > >Please submit proposals and brief biographies or CVs to Cindy >Hahamovitch by February 15, 1997 >email cxhaha@mail.wm.edu >fax: 757/221-2111 >mail: Prof. Cindy Hahamovitch > Department of History > P.O. Box 8795 > The College of William & Mary > Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795 Jayati Lal Women's Studies Program 19 University Place, 5th Floor New York University, NY, NY 10003-4556 Tel: 212-998-3813; Fax: 212-995-4017 From garvey@panix.com Sun Jan 19 15:56:42 1997 Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 17:56:35 -0500 (EST) From: Ellen Garvey To: Materialist Feminist List Subject: a change of direction I've been struck in the recent set of exchanges, and in those the last time the list was active, by the extraordinary nonmateriality of the prose on it. I wonder if that has something to do with the long silences on the list. Do we imagine that only undergraduates need examples to make sense of concepts? I joined the list because I'd been much taken with the _South Atlantic Quarterly_ issue on Materialist Feminism edited by Toril Moi and Janice Radway (Fall 1994). They approached the issue rather differently from Hennessey, not writing a theory in the abstract, but rather "build[ing] up a provisional, tentative picture of what a 'materialist feminism' might look like in the 1990s." Has anyone else read this issue? Would anyone be interested in a discussion of any of its articles? Alternatively, would anyone be interested in discussing her or his own research, explaining in what ways they see it as materialist feminist work? It seems to me that the term's meaning is still in flux, and that one way for the members to use this list would be to start to connect their work to it. -- Ellen Gruber Garvey From mreeves@chass.utoronto.ca Tue Jan 28 12:35:06 1997 Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 14:11:48 -0500 (EST) From: Margaret Reeves To: MatFem@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Hennessy discussion Dear List: I have been reading the recent discussion with great interest, and also in the hope that one query I had regarding the discussion following Sara Lennox's paper might be cleared up. I am referring to the comment Sara Lennox makes in her paper regarding Rosemary Hennessy's criticism of Foucault and his "inability to explain the relationship between discursive and non-discursive practices and his lack of a theory of causality" (Jan. 4/97) After reading volume one of _The History of Sexuality_, I too share what almost amounts to a sense of frustration with Foucault's unwillingness to expand and extend his discussion of how we have historically perceived sexuality with some concrete examples of how this actually affected the lives of ordinary people, and most especially women. It almost seems at times as if the idea and ideologies of sexuality are of more concern to Foucault than actual practices, although the text is supposed to be a "history." Having said all this, though, I am only too aware that I still have lots of learn about Foucault's work, and Ann Ferguson's reply to the list (Jan 7/97) suggests that I may indeed be quite wrong in my interpretation of Foucault. Prof. Ferguson claims that Foucault "clearly distinguishes between discursive and non-discursive practices." But where does he do this? And does he make this distinction clearly enough to address the concerns of materialist feminists? Although my questions focus more precisely on Foucault than on Hennessy's work, I do think that it is relevant to the subsequent discussion on the list where several others have expressed concern about the non-materiality of the discussion. I think the one thing that seems to connect all of us from our various disciplines is this compelling need to ground our theory in a material reality (no matter how mediated and interpellated that reality may be). Would anyone on the list be willing to help me out with this question about Foucault and non-discursive practices? With thanks, Margaret Reeves, Graduate Student, Dept of English, U of Toronto, mreeves@chass.utoronto.ca