GENDER RELATIONS, CAPITALISM AND SEXUALITY IN THE CRITICAL THEORY OF SOCIETY

Though analyses dealing with sexuality, the family and gender relations were important elements in early attempts at developing a Critical Theory of bourgeois society, they have received relatively little attention to date. In general, the prevailing impression is that critical theorists did not talk much about gender or, when they did, did so in traditional rather than critical terms. At the same time, in recent years feminist theory has shown a growing interest in the critique of capitalism, but not in the contributions of Critical Theory in the so-called Frankfurt School tradition. Such a situation calls for a re-reading of the analyses of Critical Theory in light of the latest theorisations on gender relations and the social configuration of sexuality. In this way potentially neglected elements might be recovered, helping enrich current debates.

Certainly, the corpus of Critical Theory is affected by a certain blindness on gender, tending to reproduce male stereotypes and neglecting the lived experiences of women. At the same time, it cannot be ignored that, from the Studies on Authority and the Family to the analyses of authoritarianism, Critical Theory established the bourgeois family as a crucial object of study, one whose analysis would help to unpack relations of authority in the twentieth century. The historic effort of updating (Marxian) critical social theory focused on the changing form and function of the family in the transition from liberal to late-capitalist phases of bourgeois society. Certainly, there was no systematic engagement with gender. However, it is equally true that Critical Theory saw the issue of gender hierarchy as a constitutive element of bourgeois society and the capitalist mode of socialisation. For Critical Theory, focusing on gender relations in isolation is insufficient. It is also necessary to ask how gender relations overlap with the specific power relations, forms of social domination, and structural inequalities that define capitalist socialisation and mediate its processes of subjectivation.

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, a significant place is given patriarchal domination on the one hand, and, on the other, to the link between instrumental rationality, the domination of nature, and the repression of sexuality, sensuality and pleasure. It focused largely on the dialectics of the rationality underlying masculinity and patriarchy, and on capitalism’s effects on subjectivation processes. As a result of neglecting the lived experience of women its understanding of patriarchal domination was compromised. However, its critical-theoretical tools and analyses of male domination are undoubtedly relevant to feminist theory today. Presided over by the unity of gender and private property, Adorno and Horkheimer state that bourgeois society and its legal order have a patriarchal character. The intertwined character of different relations of domination—of nature, class, and gender—presents itself as one of the constitutive connections of bourgeois society. Bourgeois masculinity and femininity are regarded as products of determinate social relations and historical processes. Patriarchal domination goes hand in hand with the denial of subject status to women and their identification with nature. This said, by attributing the domination of women to the sphere of reproduction—with the effect of excluding them from the dominant forms subjectivation—Dialectic of Enlightenment has been criticised by feminists. This attribution occludes the ways in which non-remunerated domestic work and market-mediated wage labour overlap. Such overlapping is characteristic of much of the history of women in bourgeois society. Its consideration helps reveal not only the interconnectedness of patriarchal and capitalist forms of domination and exploitation, but also the impossibility of reducing one to the other.

Herbert Marcuse is largely absent in today’s debates on critical theory, queer liberation and feminism. Yet his dialogue with the feminist movement is perhaps the most significant of all Frankfurt School Critical Theory authors. His critique of patriarchal society and (hetero-)sexual repression dates back to Eros and Civilisation (1955). In the 1970s, Marcuse explicitly addressed the relationship between "Marxism and feminism". His reflections influenced debates over the meaning of sexual liberation, women's emancipation, as well as on the emancipatory potential of qualities defined as specifically 'feminine'. For Marcuse, emancipation cannot be achieved without overcoming the dualistic counterposition of 'masculine' and 'feminine'. Certainly, his understanding of difference and gender remained largely binary. Nevertheless, Marcuse’s critique of a civilisation founded on the principle of domination succeeded in identifying such domination as specifically patriarchal, i.e. based on a structural connection between aggressiveness, instrumental rationality, destructive productivity and the will to power. From this emerged an idea of emancipation that discovered potential for societal transformation in 'feminine' qualities—though such qualities themselves resulted from domination.

In short, Critical Theory regards gender oppression and patriarchal power as one of the central constitutive elements of bourgeois society. The intertwining of capitalist domination and patriarchal domination applies both to the transitional phase of the classical liberal order at the beginning of the 20th century and to later phases, with each variation needing to be analysed in its specificity. In this sense, an emancipation that affects gender differences and gender relations is inseparable from a profound transformation of society as a whole.

Within this frame, we’d like to encourage 1) submissions on key texts and arguments in Critical Theory. In addition, we especially welcome 2) submissions that enlist critical theoretical concepts in their analyses of contemporary gender relations. To this end, we’d like to propose the following thematic strands:

• Intersectionality is today an indispensable approach for feminist critique, yet its precise meaning is articulated differently by different theoretical contributions. How do intersectional and critical-theoretical perspectives conceive of the connection between different structures of power and domination? What are the respective strengths and limitations of such approaches? Can possible points of convergence, points of friction or complementary takes be identified?
• The feminist movement and feminist theory converge with Critical Theory on the central concept of emancipation. What notion of emancipation in or from sex and gender relations is there to be found within Critical Theory? If so, can this notion be evaluated within the context of more recent debates in feminism and feminist theory?
• One of the defining characteristics of critical social theory lies in its attempt to explore how economy, culture and subjectivity overlap and determine one another. This perspective has productive potential for analysing gender relations. Take for example the key critical-theoretical concept of "double socialisation". Its aim is to challenge the dominant androcentric conception of work for occluding the sphere of care work and feminised forms of wage labour. It equally focuses on how processes of subjectivation are themselves affected, while also incorporating contributions drawn from psychoanalysis. Such insights are potentially of great interest for contemporary feminist theorisation, especially for going beyond the limited scope of Marxist or materialist feminisms that focus mainly on the social division of labour and on theories of (re)production.
• Questions regarding concepts of identity, difference, and subjectivity (and their critique) have been at the heart of the exchange between Critical Theory and poststructuralism. In this connection, criticising processes of subject formation and identity would seem to offer a bridge between two theoretical positions that are similarly opposed to essentialising concepts of subjectivity and similarly concerned with how sex and gender are identified. A common impetus towards denaturalising power is recognisable in both approaches. Having said this, their conceptions of ‘power’ and its critique, as well as the role of subjectivity in criticising domination, remain different. The contemporary debates on identity politics represent a field in which the relationship between critical theory and the different understandings of feminism might be clarified.
• The relationship between critical theory, psychoanalysis and feminism is traversed by numerous tensions. For the majority of critical theorists, psychoanalysis occupies a prominent place. Its significance in unravelling the self-destructive dynamics of modernity as well as the rise of authoritarian tendencies is well known. From a feminist perspective, however, a seamless link to Freud and the reception of psychoanalysis in Critical Theory has not been possible. Instead, feminism problematised the Oedipus complex and androcentric biases in psychoanalytic accounts of subject formation. But within feminist theory there was also intense debate about the extent to which it was necessary to abandon Freudian ‘drive’ theory and to embrace the paradigm of intersubjectivity. We might ask what the respective strengths and limitations of each of these approaches to gender are. In any case, the different connections between Critical Theory and psychoanalysis, and between feminism and psychoanalysis, offer a productive constellation of issues capable of shedding light on gender: on its social identity and on its relation to the materiality of the body and to desire; on its role in processes of subjectivation; on how gender relates to mechanisms of social coercion and the reification of sexual and cultural identities; to the pathic rejection of ambivalence and internal discrepancy between attributions of sexual identity and underlying drives. For example, we might ask the following: how can the relationship between the social and bodily dimensions of gender be understood from a critical-theoretical perspective informed by psychoanalysis?
• Today we are witnessing a rise in authoritarian tendencies that mobilise anti-feminist sentiment on the back of heteronormative notions of family, gender and sexuality. Studies on the interconnected nature of nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia and anti-feminism assume a special urgency in this respect. So far, approaches based on discourse analysis and on intersections between different groups of actors in society have predominated. But here, too, the specific possibilities offered by Critical Theory should be explored. This may well allow for the constellation on the "limits of the Enlightenment" to be extended to the analysis of sexism: How can its insights into the social mediation of psychodynamic processes be rendered productive for studying today’s phenomena of authoritarianism? To what extent is it possible and/or necessary to further develop Critical Theory’s analytical approach, in order to achieve a better understanding of contemporary phenomena?

Original manuscripts may be submitted before May 15, 2024