File spoon-archives/marxism-feminism.archive/marxism-feminism_1997/marxism-feminism.9710, message 1


Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 19:20:51 +1000
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: RE: M-FEM: Habermas, the lifeworld, and the feminine


[G'day Martha and Anna,]

>I am afraid that I am leery of Habermas views as cited by Rob Schaap.

[You're not Robinson Crusoe on this one, Martha.  For all I know poor
Habermas himself might be leery of the Habermas I've painted you.]

>I find the distinction between system and lifeworld a replication of
>functionalist sociology's distinction between modern and traditional
>societies and even of the distinction between nature and culture;  a sort
>of conservative romanticized view of that which is perceived as an
>antithesis or a negation of culture/modernity/capitalism in which women
>are relageted to the realm of the exotic, the untouched, the traditional
>and presumably more humane (albeit patriarchal, etc) realm of social
>relations.

[I was trying to argue this isn't the only reading possible.  Guess I blew it.]

>This assumes, like the distinction between the public and the
>prvate some feminist theorists make, that it is possible to live in
>capitalist society and remain untouched by its effects.

[No it doesn't, Martha!  Capitalism touches all who live under it.  For the
recalcitrant humanists among us, it never exhaustively defines them.  The
(ever agentic) 'superstructure' is always a fluctuating mix of residual,
ascendant and emerging cultural elements (so Raymond Williams would have it
- and who am I to disagree?).  To look to those who seem most marginalised
for ways of seeing other than that encouraged by the ascendant hegemony
strikes me as a worthwhile gambit.]

>This is false on
>theoretical and empirical grounds.  Theoretically, women are born within
>social classes and strata within classes and their lives are shaped by the
>opportunities that their class and strata afford;

[I'm old-fashioned enough to believe rich women are more like rich men than
they are like poor women, if that's what you're getting at ... ]

>empirically, working
>class, propertyless women have always combined their domestic labor with
>some form of paid labor (e.g., taking in boarders, providing services,
>producing goods for sale in the market or as waged workers in factories or
>salaried workers in educational institutions and offices); the family wage
>that allowed working men to support their wives as full time wives has
>never been available to the working class as a whole anywhere.  Even in
>the developing nations women's lives are affected by market considerations
>in the rural areas and smaller cities where they would appear to be
>living in a traditional, non-commodified "lifeworld."

[Not 'always', I'd suggest, but I take your point.  I'd also suggest that
the women you describe above still led very different lives from their
husbands.  And self-identification (and therefore relation-definition)
would be, at least potentially, broader.

And g'day Anna.  Yep, it's just the sort of stuff you're talking about that
kick-started these musings.  I'm no historian either, but our understanding
on this is pretty adjacent, I think.  Ta.

Cheers,
Rob.]


************************************************************************

Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
Fax:    02-6201 5119

************************************************************************

'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

************************************************************************




   

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