Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 04:05:12 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Capitalism and Heterosexism: Judith Butler & Nancy Fraser



Have you guys read the exchange between Judith Butler ("Merely Cultural")
and Nancy Fraser ("Heterosexism, Misrecognition and Capitalism: A Response
to Judith Butler") in _New Left Review_ (227 + 228) and _Social Text_
(Fall/Winter 1997)? Their essays pose important questions that should
interest Foucault readers: what is the nature of heterosexism? How is it
linked to capitalism? How do we 'synergize' struggles for anti-heterosexism
and anti-capitalism?

To clarify the common ground between Butler and Fraser, both argue for the
importance of fighting both capitalism and heterosexism. Both are critical
of the left conservative drift. For instance, Butler writes:

In Fraser's recent book _Justice Interruptus, she rightly notes that "in
the United States today, the expression 'identity politics' is increasingly
used as a derogatory term for feminism, anti-racism, and anti-heterosexism.
She insists that such movements have everything to do with social justice
and argues that any leftist movement must respond to their challenges. (P.
39 in NLR; p. 270 in ST)

What they disagree on is how to conceptualize the linkage between
capitalism and heterosexism. Butler argues:

Nevertheless, she [Fraser] reproduces the division that locates certain
oppressions as part of political economy and relegates others to the
exclusively cultural sphere. Positing a spectrum that spans political
economy and culture, she situates lesbian and gay struggles at the cultural
end of this political spectrum. Homophobia, she argues, has no roots in
political economy, because homosexuals occupy no distinctive position in
the division of labor, are distributed throughout the class structure, and
do not constitute an exploited class. "[T]he injustice they suffer is
quintessentially a matter of recognition" (17-18), she claims.... (P. 39 in
NLR; p. 270 in ST)

Drawing on Marx (e.g. _The German Ideology_), Engels (_The Origin of the
Family, Private Property, and the State_), and socialist feminists, Butler
argues for an expansive conception of the material that includes
reproduction of persons, genders, and the 'heterosexual normative family":

many of the feminist arguments during that time [the 70s and the 80s]
sought not only to identify the family as part of the mode of production,
but to show how the very production of gender had to be understood as part
of the "production of human beings themselves [in Engels's words],"
according to norms that reproduced the heterosexually normative
family....[Socialist feminists] maintained that a specifically social
account of the family was needed to explain the sexual division of labor
and the gendered reproduction of the worker. Essential to the
socialist-feminist position of the time was precisely the view that the
family is not a natural given and that, as a specific social arrangement of
kin functions, it remained historically contingent and, in principle,
transformable.... (39-40 in NLR; 271-272 in ST)

With regard to the separation of the cultural and the economic, Butler
reminds us of Marx' account of "how the cultural and the economic
themselves became established as separable spheres...how the institution of
the economic as a separate sphere is the consequence of an operation of
abstraction initiated by capital itself" (42 in NLR; 274 in ST).

In response to Butler, Fraser says that in her view, the aspects of
socialist feminist scholarship Butler ressurects are "the overtotalized
view of capitalist society as a monolithic 'system' of interlocking
structures of oppression that seamlessly reinforce one another. This view
misses 'gaps'" (147 in NLR; 285-286 in ST). Fraser also criticizes Butler
for being 'functionalist' and argues that "[e]mpirically...contemporary
capitalism seems not to require heterosexism. With its gaps between the
economic order and the kinship order, and between the family and personal
life, capitalist society now permits significant numbers of individuals to
live through wage labor outside of heterosexual families. It could permit
many more to do so--provided the relations of recognition were changed"
(149 in NLR; 285 in ST).

Instead, adopting a "quasi-Weberian dualism of status and class," Fraser
defines the oppression of homosexuals as "status injury" inflicted by
"misrecognition: the _material_ construction through the
institutionalization of cultural norms of a class of devalued persons who
are impeded from participatory parity" (144 in NLR; 283 in ST).

While Fraser's argument that it is important to look for gaps in what may
look like a seamless monolith appears sound, it seems to me that her
'quasi-Weberian' approach forgets the best insights of feminism, queer
theory, and social history: heterosexism is _more than_ a matter of the
oppression of gays and lesbians, urgent issue though it in itself is.
Critique of heterosexism involves larger questions of how genders are
produced, how the 'family' gets naturalized, how the 'nuclear family' gets
held up as ideal, how sexuality becomes dehistoricized, how reproductive
labor gets privatized, how the division of labor gets gendered and
sexualized, and so on, all of which are intimately connected to the
reproduction of social relations of capitalism. Also, Fraser (at least in
this essay) has little to say about how + why the "pattern of
interpretation that constructs heterosexuality as normative and
homosexuaity as deviant" has become institutionalized, "denying
participatory parity to gays and lesbians" (144 in NLR; 283 in ST).
Finally, when she says, "Change the relations of recognition and the
maldistribution [for gays and lesbians] would disappear" (144 in NLR; 283
in ST), it begs more questions. How do we change the "relations of
recognition"? Isn't there a material base for the current "relations of
recognition" that needs to be changed?

Yoshie Furuhashi

Have you guys read the exchange between Judith Butler ("Merely
Cultural") and Nancy Fraser ("Heterosexism, Misrecognition and
Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler") in _New Left Review_ (227 +
228) and _Social Text_ (Fall/Winter 1997)? Their essays pose important
questions that should interest Foucault readers: what is the nature of
heterosexism? How is it linked to capitalism? How do we 'synergize'
struggles for anti-heterosexism and anti-capitalism? 


To clarify the common ground between Butler and Fraser, both argue for
the importance of fighting both capitalism and heterosexism. Both are
critical of the left conservative drift. For instance, Butler writes:


<paraindent><param>right,right,left,left</param>In Fraser's recent book
_Justice Interruptus, she rightly notes that "in the United States
today, the expression 'identity politics' is increasingly used as a
derogatory term for feminism, anti-racism, and anti-heterosexism. She
insists that such movements have everything to do with social justice
and argues that any leftist movement must respond to their challenges.
(P. 39 in NLR; p. 270 in ST)

</paraindent>

What they disagree on is how to conceptualize the linkage between
capitalism and heterosexism. Butler argues:


<paraindent><param>right,right,left,left</param>Nevertheless, she
[Fraser] reproduces the division that locates certain oppressions as
part of political economy and relegates others to the exclusively
cultural sphere. Positing a spectrum that spans political economy and
culture, she situates lesbian and gay struggles at the cultural end of
this political spectrum. Homophobia, she argues, has no roots in
political economy, because homosexuals occupy no distinctive position
in the division of labor, are distributed throughout the class
structure, and do not constitute an exploited class. "[T]he injustice
they suffer is quintessentially a matter of recognition" (17-18), she
claims.... (P. 39 in NLR; p. 270 in ST)


</paraindent>Drawing on Marx (e.g. _The German Ideology_), Engels (_The
Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State_), and socialist
feminists, Butler argues for an expansive conception of the material
that includes reproduction of persons, genders, and the 'heterosexual
normative family":


<paraindent><param>right,right,left,left</param>many of the feminist
arguments during that time [the 70s and the 80s] sought not only to
identify the family as part of the mode of production, but to show how
the very production of gender had to be understood as part of the
"production of human beings themselves [in Engels's words]," according
to norms that reproduced the heterosexually normative
family....[Socialist feminists] maintained that a specifically social
account of the family was needed to explain the sexual division of
labor and the gendered reproduction of the worker. Essential to the
socialist-feminist position of the time was precisely the view that the
family is not a natural given and that, as a specific social
arrangement of kin functions, it remained historically contingent and,
in principle, transformable.... (39-40 in NLR; 271-272 in ST)

</paraindent>

With regard to the separation of the cultural and the economic, Butler
reminds us of Marx' account of "how the cultural and the economic
themselves became established as separable spheres...how the
institution of the economic as a separate sphere is the consequence of
an operation of abstraction initiated by capital itself" (42 in NLR;
274 in ST).


In response to Butler, Fraser says that in her view, the aspects of
socialist feminist scholarship Butler ressurects are "the overtotalized
view of capitalist society as a monolithic 'system' of interlocking
structures of oppression that seamlessly reinforce one another. This
view misses 'gaps'" (147 in NLR; 285-286 in ST). Fraser also criticizes
Butler for being 'functionalist' and argues that
"[e]mpirically...contemporary capitalism seems not to require
heterosexism. With its gaps between the economic order and the kinship
order, and between the family and personal life, capitalist society now
permits significant numbers of individuals to live through wage labor
outside of heterosexual families. It could permit many more to do
so--provided the relations of recognition were changed" (149 in NLR;
285 in ST).


Instead, adopting a "quasi-Weberian dualism of status and class,"
Fraser defines the oppression of homosexuals as "status injury"
inflicted by "misrecognition: the _material_ construction through the
institutionalization of cultural norms of a class of devalued persons
who are impeded from participatory parity" (144 in NLR; 283 in ST).


While Fraser's argument that it is important to look for gaps in what
may look like a seamless monolith appears sound, it seems to me that
her 'quasi-Weberian' approach forgets the best insights of feminism,
queer theory, and social history: heterosexism is _more than_ a matter
of the oppression of gays and lesbians, urgent issue though it in
itself is. Critique of heterosexism involves larger questions of how
genders are produced, how the 'family' gets naturalized, how the
'nuclear family' gets held up as ideal, how sexuality becomes
dehistoricized, how reproductive labor gets privatized, how the
division of labor gets gendered and sexualized, and so on, all of which
are intimately connected to the reproduction of social relations of
capitalism. Also, Fraser (at least in this essay) has little to say
about how + why the "pattern of interpretation that constructs
heterosexuality as normative and homosexuaity as deviant" has become
institutionalized, "denying participatory parity to gays and lesbians"
(144 in NLR; 283 in ST). Finally, when she says, "Change the relations
of recognition and the maldistribution [for gays and lesbians] would
disappear" (144 in NLR; 283 in ST), it begs more questions. How do we
change the "relations of recognition"? Isn't there a material base for
the current "relations of recognition" that needs to be changed?


Yoshie Furuhashi