Marxism and Modern Feminism

In order to understand the connections and divergences of Marxism and modern feminism, it is necessary to understand, at least in broad outline, the influence of Marxism on contemporary critical discourse. To understand that influence, it is necessary to understand the character of Hegel's influence on Marx. Although Marxism is avowedly materialist and not rationalist (Richter 385), what Hegel and Marx share as rationalists (= systematic, logical thinkers) are both the dialectic as a rhetorical/analytical strategy and a systemic, unified structure of content-heavy, value-laden critical method. Hegel and Marx remain influential as progenitors of modern critical theory, partly on account of the dialectic and partly on account of the trenchant diagnosis that Marxism gives of its subject: bourgeois capitalism and all economic, social, and cultural evils proceeding therefrom. But there is compelling evidence of a second strand of modern critical theory entailing distrust or degeneration of the dialectic. Partly, this

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of dominant patriarchy by relatively oppressed, alienated, or marginalized female constituencies. But to more pressing matters. Two lines of feminist thought are discernible, distinguished vis-a-vis Marxism according as each finds consistency with Marxist alienation theory. Armstrong's views seem most in line with Marxist alienation theory, although her approach to alienation has more to do with the dominance of patriarchal norms--more exactly patriarchy-friendly values as the norm--than with class and economic alienation per se. Armstrong cites the "cultural logic" of domestic values institutionalized as dominant social values and effectively imposed as social norms, then institutionalized as national educational policy in late eighteenth- and then nineteenth-century England. These values, identified with feminine virtues and articulated as "the puritan doctrine of equality" as against monarchic prerogatives, nevertheless fostered "a difference of sexual roles, in which the female was certainly subordinate to the male" and thereby socially virtuous and moral in ways that women of independent rank and fortune could not be (Armstrong 1326). This formulation of what Jameson describes as the hegemony of dominant culture first had so
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Hegel Marx, Christina Sommers, Helene Cixous, According Armstrong, Hence Showalter's, Woman Woman, Political Unconscious, , Bedford Books, Contemporary Trends, critical theory, dominant culture, boston bedford books, ed david richter, ed david, 2d ed, ed ed, trends 2d, david richter, boston bedford, 2d ed ed, ed ed david, contemporary trends, richter boston, richter boston bedford,
Approximate Word count = 1931
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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