Commodities in Social Theory
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This study will discuss the relationship between Karl Marx's theory of commodities and Luce Irigaray's use (or abuse) of that argument to conclude that women are the basic commodities in a patriarchal society. The study will begin with Irigaray's statement that "Marx's analysis of commodities as the elementary form of capitalist wealth can thus be understood as an interpretation of the status of women in so-called patriarchal societies" (Irigaray 172). First, Marx's critique of the role of commodities in capitalistic society is presented in a far more clear, logical, and comprehensive way than is Irigaray's critique of society as a completely male-dominated world where women are nothing more than commodities to be exchanged by men. Second, Marx's argument about commodities seems to still largely hold true today, while Irigaray's argument (though it was written in the late 1970s) seems to be addressing the state of gender relations either in some earlier era (the Middle Ages?) or in some underdeveloped and unspecified nation. The reader must assume she is writing about Western societies in the late 1970s when she argues that men exchange women as if they were slaves. Related to the latter weakness in Irigaray's argument is a third: the commodities of which Marx writes are "things" which have never had and will never have the freedom to rebel or change their status, while the "commodities" of which Irigaray writes are human beings with the power to rebel and change their statu
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than the father.
Aside from the bewildering illogic of Irigaray's argument and her perversion of Marx's commodity theory, Irigaray seems to be making a fundamental assumption, upon which her whole argument is based, for which she gives no evidence. In fact, simple observation of the increasing power of women in society today belies that basic assumption. What modern society is she writing in which men exchange women, from father to husband, or in any other relationship? What modern society is it in which women must choose for their "social roles" among "mother, virgin, prostitute" (186)? What modern society is it in which only men and no women enjoy sexual pleasure, in which no woman (limited to the imposed roles of mother, virgin, and prostitute) "has . . . any right to her own sexual pleasure" (187)? Does Irigaray truly believe that sexual pleasure for men is "an essentially economic pleasure" (184)? If she does believe it, and is not simply being provocative, she does not present anything resembling an argument to support that preposterous claim. How much sexual pleasure of men is based on the "desire to make [nature] (re)produce" for economic gain (184)? Considering her limitation of men to the role of homosexuals exchangi
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Approximate Word count = 1838
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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