Women s Studies International Forum, Vol. 24, No. 3/4, pp. 283 293, 2001
Copyright � 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd
Pergamon Printed in the USA. All rights reserved
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PII S0277-5395(01)00187-X
WHY A MATERIALIST FEMINISM IS (STILL) POSSIBLE
AND NECESSARY
Stevi Jackson
Centre for Women s Studies, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK
Synopsis  The title of this paper derives from Christine Delphy s (1980) rejoinder to her Marxist crit-
ics, formulated at a time when feminist theory was centrally preoccupied with material social inequali-
ties. Since then, we have witnessed the so-called  cultural turn as a result of which perspectives that fo-
cus on social structures, relations, and practices have been sidelined. Not all feminists, however, took
this turn, and there have recently been signs of a revival of materialist feminism. In assessing the effects
of these theoretical shifts, and in making a case for the continued relevance of materialist feminism, I
will focus on the analysis of gender and sexuality. Here, I will argue that a sociologically informed, ma-
terialist approach has more to offer feminism than more culturally oriented postmodern and queer
perspectives. � 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
Not all feminists, however, took the cultural
The title of this article is borrowed from Chris- turn or embraced postmodernism. Many contin-
tine Delphy s rejoinder to her Marxist critics: ued to work within broadly materialist frame-
 A materialist feminism is possible (Delphy, works and to address modernist preoccupations
1980). MichŁle Barrett and Mary McIntosh such as the pursuit of liberty, justice, and equal-
(1979), among others, had chastised Delphy ity. Moreover, in the early 1990s, when postmod-
for making free with Marxism, for borrowing ern feminism seemed to have become the estab-
Marx s method and some of his concepts while lished theoretical orthodoxy, materialist
not staying true to the letter of his texts and, feminism began to be revived or perhaps rein-
above all, for daring to suggest that the vented, especially in the United States (Hen-
method of historical materialism could be ap- nessy, 1993; Hennessy & Ingraham, 1997; Landry
plied to patriarchal productive relations within & MacLean, 1993). Recently even Judith Butler
family households. Significantly, Delphy s af- (1997) has drawn on historical materialism to
firmation of materialist feminism was made in contest the view that sexual oppression is
response to another, more traditionally Marx-  merely cultural. Because I wish to argue for
ist, version of materialism. Yet in a very few the continued importance of materialist perspec-
years many of those who saw Delphy as insuf- tives, I welcome this resurgence of interest in ma-
ficiently Marxist had abandoned materialist terial social relations. I am concerned, however,
analysis altogether as a result of the so-called by some of the forms it is taking, in particular the
 cultural turn, which MichŁle Barrett charac- tendency evident in Butler s (1997) article and
terised as a shift in feminism s emphasis from elsewhere1 to reduce the material to capitalist
 things (such as women s work and male vio- economic relations. This might bring us full circle
lence) to  words, to issues of language, repre- back to the least productive forms of 1970s
sentation, and subjectivity (Barrett, 1992). Marxism, in which every form of inequality that
This development, sometimes called the  lin- was not demonstrably functional to capitalism
guistic turn, is associated with the move, dur- was declared nonmaterial. This is precisely the
ing the 1980s, away from the  modernist form of Marxism that Delphy challenged.
agenda of early second-wave feminism to- Given that the term  materialist has been
wards postmodern perspectives. claimed from many competing theoretical po-
283
284 Stevi Jackson
sitions I should make it clear that I am using it the social, I am also seeking to reclaim some
to refer to perspectives deriving from Marx s fundamental sociological insights. My under-
historical materialism. My own theoretical al- standing of the social encompasses all aspects
legiance is to materialist feminism as it devel- of social life, from structural inequalities to ev-
oped in France from the 1970s, and particu- eryday interaction. It is concerned with mean-
larly the variant of it associated with Christine ing, both at the level of our wider culture and
Delphy. Materialist feminism originally as it informs our everyday social life. It in-
emerged in opposition both to conventional cludes subjectivity because our sense of who
Marxism and to feminisms of difference. Its we are in relation to others constantly guides
exponents included, in addition to Delphy, Co- our actions and interactions and, conversely,
lette Guillaumin, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, and who we are is in part a consequence of our lo-
Monique Wittig. These were radical feminists cation within gendered, class, racial, and other
in that the object of their analysis was prima- divisions, and of the social and cultural milieux
rily patriarchy rather than capitalism and we inhabit.
they refused to see the former as deriving from I will return to these different facets of the
the latter but they saw historical materialism social later in the paper. First, however, I will
as a method of analysing relations between give a very brief and necessarily sketchy out-
men and women as social rather than natural. line of the trajectory of the cultural turn, pay-
Materialist feminism is not a form of eco- ing particular attention to the issue of gender
nomic determinism. As Delphy and Leonard and the category  women. Finally, I will elu-
(1992) remind us, one of the original strengths cidate my argument further in relation to cur-
of Marx s materialism was that he did not con- rent debates on gender and heterosexuality.
ceive of the economic as an abstract system
with its own internal laws, but as a realm of so-
THE CULTURAL TURN AND THE
cial relations, constructed through social activ-
PROBLEM OF  WOMEN
ity. I want to argue for a version of materialist
feminism that foregrounds the social social Until the early 1980s the dominant perspec-
structures, relations, and practices but that tives within feminist theory derived from the
does not reduce all social structures, relations, social sciences and were generally informed
and practices to capitalism. From my perspec- by, or formulated in dialogue with, Marxism. It
tive patriarchal or gendered structures, rela- is these perspectives that were displaced by the
tions and practices are every bit as material as cultural turn and subsequently brushed aside
capitalist ones, as are those deriving from rac- or dismissed as a source of past errors. Be-
ism, colonialism, and imperialism. And, of cause these theories focused on social struc-
course, all these intersect and interact, often in ture, analysing women s oppression as the
unpredictable and contradictory ways, so that product of a patriarchal and/or capitalist social
the social order is not some seamless mono- system, they have often been depicted as
lithic entity. Hence, adopting a materialist flawed by foundationalism and universalism,
stance does not preclude awareness of differ- suspected of being essentialist, racist and het-
ences among women: on the contrary, a full erosexist (see, e.g., Flax, 1990). Yet this early
understanding of those differences requires feminist theorising gave feminism some of its
that we pay attention to material social ine- most important and lasting insights, most sig-
qualities and everyday social practices. Nor nificantly the idea that sexuality and gender
does materialism ignore issues of language, are socially constructed, as well as an emanci-
culture representation, and subjectivity, but it patory politics of social transformation.
does entail locating them in their social and In Britain, and to a lesser extent in the
historical context. Above all, materialist femi- United States, it was Marxist feminists who
nism does not reduce women s oppression to a spearheaded the move away from social struc-
single cause; it eschews attempts at totalising tural to cultural, literary, and philosophical the-
grand theory and transhistorical, universalistic ories.2 They had been resistant to those per-
claims (see Delphy, 1984, pp. 17 27). spectives, such as French materialist feminism,
For me, a materialist perspective is neces- which radically reformulated Marxism (Barrett
sarily a sociologically informed one; hence, in & McIntosh, 1979), but were more receptive to
reasserting the importance of the material and ideas that might extend Marxism s reach with-
Materialist Feminism 285
out challenging its central tenets. The problem proach, treating  women and  men as  fluc-
was that Marxism, despite its strengths as a sys- tuating identities (Riley, 1988) or the binary
tematic theory of social oppression, could not divide of gender as a  regulatory fiction to be
account for all aspects of gender relations. subverted (Butler, 1990). In so doing, how-
Even in areas that were within Marxism s tradi- ever, they lost touch with material social struc-
tional remit, notably women s labour, it was tures and practices. It became impossible to
difficult to explain why it should be women think of  women and  men as social catego-
who occupied particular niches in the capitalist ries, products of a structural hierarchy the
order for example, as reproducers of labour perspective that materialist feminists were de-
power or a reserve army of labour. veloping and that questioned, just as radically,
This latter problem was central to the project the idea that gender categories were natural
of the Marxist feminist journal m/f, which was and presocial (Delphy, 1984, 1993; Wittig,
launched in 1978. The editors saw the question 1992). The cultural turn effectively sidelined
of  how women are produced as a category as this materialist analysis and emptied the con-
the key to explaining their social subordination cept of gender of its social import as a hierar-
(Adams, Brown, & Cowie, 1978, p. 5). This jour- chical division between women and men.
nal was highly influential in Britain in expanding During the 1980s there was another, compel-
the boundaries of what counted as Marxist fem- ling, reason for questioning the category
inism, but it was not a lone voice. Others were  women, in that it served to conceal differences
becoming interested in ideology, psychoanaly- among women and to privilege definitions of
sis, and the work of French structuralists such as womanhood framed from White Western view-
Althusser, Lacan, and L�vi Strauss (see Coward points. Once this ethnocentrism was exposed it
& Ellis, 1977; Mitchell, 1975). At first, these new became clear that  women has never been a
approaches remained loosely connected to unitary category (Brah, 1991). Increasingly it
more traditional forms of Marxism via Althus- was recognised that feminists needed to con-
ser s conceptualisation of ideology as relatively front the complexities of women s lives in a post-
autonomous from economic relations. This colonial era with its global economy, its history
made it possible to theorise women s subordina- of colonial diasporas, and its current labour mi-
tion as ideological and cultural without having grations and displacements of refugees. All of
to relate it to the capitalist mode of production. this was taken by some feminists as a further
As poststructuralism replaced structuralism, mandate for postmodern theorising, seen as a
however, the concept of ideology gave way to means of avoiding the exclusions of an imagined
discourse, and structural analysis to deconstruc- universal womanhood (Flax, 1990).
tion. Later, postmodern scepticism about truth There is no doubt that the ways in which gen-
claims and metanarratives further discredited der intersects with other forms of inequality, es-
the analysis of systematic economic and social pecially those founded on racism and colonial-
oppression. Ultimately, then, these forms of the- ism had hitherto been undertheorised. What is
ory led feminists away from a socially grounded more questionable is whether postmodernism
materialism altogether. provides the best corrective to this situation.
The issues that precipitated these shifts, Certainly postmodern, postcolonial theorists
however, were well worth pursuing. In particu- speaking from the location of the previously
lar, the category  women certainly needed to marginalized  other have played a major role
be problematised rather than taken as given. in reorienting feminist theory (see, e.g., Spivak,
In the first place, it was important to  denatu- 1987). However, as some critics have noted,
ralize women, to emphasise that women were many postmodern writings perpetuated the
a social and cultural category. Yet within the same exclusions as other theories, themselves
logic of the cultural turn  women could only presumed to speak for the excluded or professed
be thought of in limited ways;  women and concern with diversity while refusing directly to
the  feminine were cultural constructs, repro- confront racism (Modleski, 1991; Stanley, 1990).
duced through the symbolic or through our Postmodernism, moreover, has no monop-
psyches, with the emphasis on sexual differ- oly on theorising diversity and complexity.
ence rather than social hierarchy. While Like Sylvia Walby (1992), I see no reason why
some embraced feminisms of difference, oth- social structural analysis, provided it is not
ers sought a less essentialist deconstructive ap- crudely reductionist, cannot address the di-
286 Stevi Jackson
verse locations occupied by women within local materialist implications of postmodernism, a
and global contexts. There are dangers, too, in recognition of the continued need for a  cri-
turning our backs on structural inequality in tique of social totalities like patriarchy and cap-
the name of scepticism about universalistic italism (Hennessy, 1993, p. xii). Some of this
truth claims. Those  differences, which preoc- recent work reaffirms basic Marxist principles
cupy postmodernists, are often more than just (Hennessy & Ingraham, 1997), but some de-
 differences  the most significant of them are rives from a revisioning of Marxism through
founded upon real, material inequalities. Insti- the lens of postmodernism. For example, J.K.
tutionalised racism, the heritage of centuries of Gibson-Graham (1996)3 treats Marxist ac-
slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, along counts of capitalism as a discursive construc-
with local and global divisions of labour, are at tion, not to deny the material, but as a means of
least as important as culturally constituted dif- focusing on contextualised and localised pro-
ference. Moreover, if we neglect the structural, cesses and practices. Gibson-Graham suggests
material dimensions of social life, we may risk that by dismantling the hegemonic representa-
valorising differences that are products of op- tion of capitalism as a monolithic global system
pression and inequality. Meera Nanda (1997) we can reveal what this representation con-
makes this point in her critique of ecofeminism ceals: the persistence of noncapitalist processes
in the Indian context. She suggests that cele- and practices. In this way she is able to analyse
brating Indian women s supposed embedded- the appropriation of women s labour within
ness in nature fails to question the divisions of households as a noncapitalist class process. The
labour that accord them this  privileged access idea that men appropriate their wives labour
to nature, which consign them to work that is deemed heretical by Marxists when Delphy
unpaid and unvalued. Ultimately, she argues, (1977) first expressed it can now, it seems, be
this emphasis on cultural difference as a site of respectably refloated as post-Marxist.
resistance to global capitalism, an emphasis Many materialist feminists, while still
that ignores local patriarchal relations, serves favouring structural analysis, have moved
to glorify women s status as underdogs. away from  grand theory towards empirically
Materialist analysis of systematic inequalities grounded work on specific issues and contexts.
is as relevant now as it ever was, and remains These trends are in keeping with Mary May-
necessary to grapple with the complexities of a nard s (1995) suggestion that feminists should
postcolonial world, with the intersections of develop what some sociologists have called
gender, ethnicity, and nationality. We live today  middle range or  middle order theories.4
within a global context characterised by ex- Such theories bridge the divide between the
tremely stark and worsening material inequali- abstraction of  grand theory, which is often
ties and it is often women who are most disad- remote from daily social life, and untheorised
vantaged by the intersections between global empiricism. They focus on the specifics of
and local exploitation (see, e.g., Mohanty, given social contexts, institutions, and relation-
1997). Within the wealthy Western nations, too, ships, offering grounded generalisations rather
gender class and racist inequalities are still with than universalistic, totalising models of entire
us (see Walby, 1997). The  things that femi- societies and are more easily integrated with
nists identified as oppressive in the 1970s male empirical research. Here, the emphasis is on
violence, the exploitation of women s domestic theorising, rather than producing  Theory
labour, and low-paid waged labour continue with a capital  T. It suggests a more open,
to shape what it means to be a woman, although eclectic approach rather than an insistence on
the precise constraints we face and their mean- theoretical purity, making use of conceptual
ings for us vary depending on the specific social tools that seem useful for a particular purpose
locations we each occupy. rather than being guided by a dogmatic alle-
giance to a particular set of concepts. Hence,
we can analyse women s everyday existence
BACK FROM THE  CULTURAL TURN ?
and the meanings women give to their lives
While many feminists resisted the seductions without losing sight of structural patterns of
of the cultural turn, others are beginning to find dominance and subordination.
a way back to materialism. In the 1990s, there Empirically grounded theorising that pays at-
were signs of a retreat from the extreme anti- tention to the local material conditions of
Materialist Feminism 287
women s lives is enabling us to see connections fabric of our daily lives, and cannot be under-
between aspects of the social once thought of as stood as separable from the social practices and
discrete spheres of enquiry, such as sexuality relations in which it is embedded. Yet it was to
and work. For example, Lisa Adkins (1995) has cultural theories, to linguistic, and semiotic
drawn our attention to the sexualisation of structuralism and then to poststructuralism and
women s labour in the service sector. Analyses postmodernism, that many Marxist feminists
of gendered labour markets have largely ig- turned to explain those aspects of life that con-
nored sexuality or, where is has been consid- ventional Marxism failed to address.
ered, it is often treated as an aspect of workplace These theories were often sold to feminists
culture unrelated to the gendered structuring of as a means of combating essentialist thinking
jobs. Her empirical investigations of a hotel and about the human subject and the social and
a leisure park enabled her to see that the persis- cultural world she inhabits. For example, ac-
tent sexualisation of women s labour their use cording to Chris Weedon (1987), poststructur-
as display, the particularities of dress codes, the alism reveals that there is no essential preso-
expectation that coping with sexual harassment cial self, that language is not a transparent
from customers was  part of the job  was far medium of communication, that meanings
from incidental. This  heterosexualisation was shift as they are contested and renegotiated,
coded into the gendered division of labour: it that knowledge is a social construct rather
was a covert aspect of the  person specification than a revelation of absolute truth. None of
for particular jobs and the everyday practices of this is news to those with sociological memo-
recruitment and work discipline. She is thus able ries reaching back to the 1960s and 1970s, be-
to argue that sexuality may play a much larger cause all of these ideas were, by then, familiar
part in the structuring of gendered labour mar- tenets of certain microsociological theories,
kets than is usually assumed. i.e., theories that focused on the interpretative
processes underpinning everyday life rather
than on social structure. These included sym-
EVERYDAY SOCIAL LIFE
bolic interactionism and forms of phenomeno-
As we shift our focus to the everyday, localised logical sociology, such as ethnomethodology.
contexts of women s lives it becomes clear that These neglected theories may offer feminists
the material and the social cannot only be un- a more nuanced understanding of the many fac-
derstood in terms of social structure. We need ets of social and cultural life, enabling us to re-
also to account for subjectivity and agency; for late meaning and subjectivity both to the every-
patterns of gendered interaction in everyday day actualities of women s lives and to the wider
life as well as the institutional hierarchies within social and cultural contexts in which those lives
which they take place; the ways in which such are lived. During the 1970s and early 1980s,
interaction is endowed with, and shaped by, the these perspectives informed analyses of the so-
meanings it has for participants; the micro levels cial construction of gender and sexuality (Gag-
at which power is deployed and resisted, as well non & Simon, 1974; Jackson, 1978; Kessler &
as the macro level of systematic domination. McKenna, 1978; Plummer, 1975; Stanley, 1984)
Taking account of all of this requires a level of and critiques of mechanistic concepts of  role
social analysis that does not reduce every aspect and  socialization (Stanley & Wise, 1983, 1993).
of our lives to an effect of social structure and A number of feminists continue to work produc-
that enables us to appreciate the extent to tively within the traditions of interactionist and
which social structures are themselves perpetu- phenomenological sociology, utilising them to
ated through human practices. address such contemporary theoretical issues
Displacing the social in favour of the cultural, as embodied sexuality and gender (DeNora,
however, does not necessarily provide the an- 1997; Lindemann, 1997) and gender ambiguity
swers. Of course, the social world includes the (Kessler, 1998). Although there are some very
cultural but the cultural is not all there is to the well-known feminists who have drawn on these
social. Whether we define culture narrowly, as theories, such as Dorothy Smith (1987, 1993),
the symbolic and representational, or more work of this kind has generally been a minority
broadly, as the shared way of life of a given soci- endeavour, little known outside sociology.5
ety or community, cultural practices are also so- Why is this? And why, given that these per-
cial practices. Culture is woven into the social spectives were available and known to femi-
288 Stevi Jackson
nists, were they not drawn upon to address the self, an idea which has roots in both the socio-
lacunae in Marxist theory that inspired the cul- logical tradition of interactionism and in more
tural turn? In part, this was simply because they recent discourse analysis (Jackson, 1998; Plum-
were not, in the 1970s and early 1980s, in vogue, mer, 1995; Whisman, 1996). Such a perspective
because their emphasis on everyday social prac- allows us to think of subjectivity as a product of
tices was out of tune with the structural analysis individual, socially located, biographies but
predominating at the time. Thus, the critical in- not in the same sense as the old idea of sociali-
sights they offered were ignored and later by- sation where the present, adult self was con-
passed in favour of newer forms of theorising. ceived as a product of a past, child self. Rather,
For example, interactionists had effectively cri- the present significantly reshapes the past as we
tiqued the concept of sexual repression by the reconstruct our memories, our sense of who we
early 1970s (Gagnon & Simon, 1974), but such are through the stories we tell to ourselves and
arguments were ignored until they were given others. Experience is thus constantly worked
credibility by Foucault s (1981) critique of the over, interpreted, theorised through the narra-
 repressive hypothesis (see Jackson, 1999). Su- tive forms and devices available to us (Jackson,
zanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (1978) of- 1998). These cultural resources are, of course,
fered one of the earliest critiques of the sex- historically specific; hence, particular modes of
gender distinction, arguing that there is no pre- self-construction become available at different
given sex, only socially constituted gender. Fol- historical moments (Plummer, 1995).
lowing Garfinkel (1967), they saw gender as What makes this conceptualisation of the
produced and sustained through a process of self potentially congruent with a materialist
performance and attribution (or  reading of perspective is that it locates individual subjec-
others embodied being). Again, this was all but tivities and biographies within specific histori-
ignored. By the time Judith Butler (1990) made cal, social, and cultural contexts, linking the self
the idea of performative gender fashionable, to the actualities of social existence. If we were
the ethnomethodological roots of this idea had to be theoretically purist, there might still be a
been largely forgotten.6 problem in that the symbolic interactionist tra-
There is another reason why these ap- dition in which this conceptualisation is rooted
proaches were not more widely adopted during does not allow for analyses of social structure.
the cultural turn. Although they offered a so- However, in keeping with Mary Maynard s
cial theory of subjectivity, they lacked any (1995) call for middle-order theorising, for
ready-made mode of articulation with Marx- greater pragmatism and eclecticism in our use
ism unlike psychoanalysis, which could be of concepts and perspectives, we can surely
linked to the Marxist project via Althusser s now admit that social life is multilayered, mul-
(1971) notion that ideology constitutes us as tifaceted, and that contradictory processes are
subjects.7 Moreover, a sociological conception often at work within it. We can see ourselves as
of subjectivity does not, at first sight, fit with located within social structures and cultural
the poststructuralist critiques of essentialism in categories (of gender, class, and  race, for ex-
that it rests upon the idea of a reflexive social ample), but as nonetheless possessing agency,
self. This idea is sometimes resisted on the interpreting events, applying meaning to them,
grounds that it presupposes a presocial, or pre- acting on the basis of our everyday, practical
discursive  I, which does the work of reflexiv- knowledge of the world. On this basis, I would
ity. However, if we take this idea back to its or- suggest that the time is ripe for a reevaluation
igins in the work of George Herbert Mead and development of these microsociological
(1934), it does not assume an essential, inner perspectives, building on the contributions of
 I, but an  I that is only ever the fleeting mo- those feminists who have continued to explore
bilisation of a socially constituted self. There is their potential for the analysis of subjectivity,
no self outside the social; it exists and comes meaning, agency, and everyday social practices.
into being only in relation to the social  other.
This self is not a fixed structure but is always
REDEFINING SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
 in process by virtue of its constant reflexivity.
One way in which this reflexive self-con- These microsociological perspectives were the
struction has been analysed recently is through original source of the basic idea of social con-
the idea of gendered and sexual narratives of struction and later, in the 1970s, of its applica-
Materialist Feminism 289
tion to gender and sexuality. It is because this and hence finds its expression at yet another
has been forgotten that social constructionism level that of our everyday social practices,
is often mistakenly seen as a more recent, post- through which each of us negotiates and makes
structuralist, innovation. These more recent sense of our own gendered and sexual lives.
conceptualisations are, I would argue, often Here, too, gender and sexuality are constantly
not very social at all, and are more accurately in the process of being constructed and recon-
characterised as cultural constructionism. structed, enacted and reenacted, within specific
The way in which we conceptualise the so- social contexts and relationships. Gender and
cial profoundly affects our understanding of sexuality are thus socially constructed by what
the process of social construction and this is embodied individuals actually do. Finally, sexu-
something central to my understanding of the ality and gender are socially constructed at the
feminist project. Ever since Beauvoir made level of subjectivity, through complex social
her famous claim that  one is not born, but and cultural process by which we acquire sex-
rather becomes a woman (Beauvoir, 1972, p. ual and gendered desires and identities (see
295), feminists have argued that femininity is a also Jackson, 1999, pp. 5 6).
social and cultural construct rather than a nat- What cultural, as opposed to social, con-
ural one and that there is nothing inevitable structionism does is to exclude the first level,
about male dominance (or, indeed any other sys- that of structure, altogether. The all-impor-
tematic social inequality). If, as I have sug- tant hierarchical dimension of gender van-
gested, the social is many faceted, then so is ishes from view, as does the ways in which
the process of social construction, involving at gender hierarchy underpins heterosexuality.
least four intersecting levels relating to struc- Meaning becomes central, but primarily at the
ture, meaning, everyday practices, and subjec- level of culture and discourse rather than the
tivity. Here I will spell this out in relation to meanings actually deployed in everyday social
gender and sexuality, areas that have been settings. Sometimes practices are included in
much contested within feminism and where Butler s (1990) discussion of performativity,
cultural theories have made a major impact. for example but rarely are these practices lo-
At the level of social structure gender is a hi- cated in any social context. Finally, subjectiv-
erarchical relation, constitutive of social men ity is usually theorised through psychoanalysis
and social women, sustained through divisions that completely abstracts it from its social con-
of labour and other means, notably the hetero- text. It is this cultural, rather than social, ap-
sexual marriage contract. Here, gender inter- proach to gender and sexuality that has set the
sects with institutionalised heterosexuality, bol- agenda for much recent theorising, in particu-
stered by law, the state, and social convention. lar through the influence of queer theory.
The institution of heterosexuality is inherently
gendered; it rests upon the assumed normality
QUESTIONING HETEROSEXUALITY,
of specific forms of social and sexual relations
DESTABILISING GENDER
between women and men. Gender is also con-
structed at the level of meaning, through the Queer theory is not particularly easy to define,
cultural distinction between women and men, and indeed, the continued use of the term has
the unspoken and taken-for granted means by been contested. Generally it refers to a form of
which we embody and recognise each other as postmodern theorising influenced by decon-
women or as men as well as the more overt structive and psychoanalytical perspectives
norms of appropriate femininity and masculin- and, above all, by Foucault s (1981) analysis of
ity. Sexuality is socially constructed at the level sexuality. It has tended to concentrate on
of meaning through its constitution as the ob- texts, discourses, and cultural practices rather
ject of discourse and through the specific dis- than on the social conditions under which our
courses on the sexual in circulation at any his- sexualities are lived (see Seidman, 1997). In
torical moment; these discourses serve to the last decade feminists have also been en-
define what is sexual, to differentiate the  per- gaged in debates around heterosexuality,
verse from the  normal and to delimit appro- sometimes engaging with queer perspectives,
priately masculine and feminine forms of sexu- sometimes following quite different paths (Ri-
ality. However, meaning is also deployed chardson, 1996; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1993).
within and emergent from social interaction, Queer theory and feminism share some com-
290 Stevi Jackson
mon concerns: both question the inevitability mony (Hennessy, 1998; Ramazanoglu, 1995).
and naturalness of heterosexuality and both The social is thus reduced to the normative and
assume that neither gender divisions nor the what is normative goes unexplained.
boundary between heterosexuality and homo- More recently, Butler (1997) has made some
sexuality/lesbianism are fixed by nature. There concessions to social structural analysis, ques-
are also points of divergence between critiques tioning whether issues of gender and sexuality
that are primarily feminist and those that are are  merely cultural. In so doing she invokes a
primarily queer, notably that the former take form of Marxism incorporating L�vi Strauss s
male dominance within heterosexuality as a notion of the exchange of women. This, how-
starting point, whereas the latter are more con- ever, brings us back to an ahistorical and func-
cerned with destabilising the binary divide tionalist notion of kinship that avoids confront-
which sustains normative heterosexuality. ing the historical and cultural specificity of the
I have recently argued that an effective cri- various social practices through which gender
tique of heterosexuality must address both and sexuality are produced (see Fraser, 1997;
heteronormativity and male dominance (Jack- Hennessy, 1998). Butler does distance herself
son, 1999). I am not, however, proposing a from L�vi Strauss s universalism, suggesting
simple synthesis between queer and feminism, that queer studies might be a means of return-
but rather an analysis that follows from a ma- ing to critiques of the family  based on a mobi-
terialist feminist understanding of gender as a lizing insight into a socially contingent and so-
hierarchical social division rather than simply cially transformable account of kinship (1997,
a cultural distinction (see Delphy, 1993). Gen- p. 276, emphasis in the original). But what the
der is pivotal to a critical understanding of het- current structuring of gender and sexuality is
erosexuality. Not only is heterosexuality, by contingent on, apparently, is the functionality
definition, founded on gender polarity, but the of the heterosexual family for capitalism! But-
binary division between heterosexuality and ler has traced the history of the cultural turn in
homosexuality makes no sense without the reverse, back through structuralism to the most
prior existence of gender; to desire  the same reductionist form of Marxism.8
sex or  the opposite sex requires gender as a Butler also reduces the material to the eco-
social, cultural, and subjective reality. Without nomic, which as Nancy Fraser points out, de-
gender, heterosexuality, homosexuality, and nies the materiality of noneconomic social pro-
lesbianism could not exist (see Jackson, 1996). cesses (Fraser, 1997). What Fraser fails to
In developing this argument I will briefly notice, however, is Butler s reduction of the
discuss some aspects of Judith Butler s work, economic to capitalism, to class relations, a re-
which can be read as both queer and feminist, duction which Fraser herself replicates. This
and which engages, to some degree, with mate- strategy conceals the operation of noncapital-
rialist feminism (Butler, 1990, 1993, 1997). Like ist economic processes, such as men s appro-
most queer theorists, Butler seeks to destabi- priation of the labour of wives and dependants
lise heterosexual normativity. She also makes (Delphy, 1984; Delphy & Leonard, 1992).
gender central to her analysis but, in keeping Hence, neither Butler nor her critics link the
with her queer and postmodern perspective, oppression of lesbians and gays to the exploit-
gender figures more as a cultural difference ative gender order underpinning institutiona-
than a social hierarchy. Where her argument is lised heterosexuality. This omission is rather
most effective is in revealing the artificiality of surprising given Butler s early reliance on the
gender, its status as a construction with no nec- work of Monique Wittig, for whom the hetero-
essary relationship to particular bodies or sexu- sexual contract is a labour relationship, not
alities (Butler, 1990). She makes it clear that just a sexual one, and one that constitutes
gender is no ephemeral, voluntaristic perfor- women and men by their class-like relation to
mance, that it is coercive and constraining in its each other (see Wittig, 1992). In focusing on
effects, that it is no less material for being con- the narrowly sexual, however, Butler (1990)
structed (Butler, 1993). Yet she discusses the filters out most of Wittig s materialism (Jack-
 materialization of  sexed bodies almost en- son, 1995). This may help account for the enor-
tirely in terms of norms but with no sense of mous gulf in Butler s theorising between het-
where these norms come from or why they re- erosexuality s functions (for capitalism), the
produce gender divisions or heterosexual hege- norms that enforce it (asserted but never fully
Materialist Feminism 291
explicated), and the performances and perfor- its gendered parts that all we can achieve is a
mativity through which gender is produced in remix of identities and subjectivities constructed
everyday life. through gender division. From a more sociologi-
Gender and heterosexuality are sustained cally informed, materialist perspective this can-
not only through structural hierarchies and so- not be the case. If human beings are social be-
cial norms, but through our everyday sexual ings, then what we are depends on the society
and social practices. The gendered heterosex- and culture we inhabit. If men and women are
ual order thus requires our continual reaffirma- products of a hierarchical relation, in the ab-
tion for its continuance. As ethnomethodolo- sence of that relation very different subjectivi-
gists would tell us, most of the population  do ties, identities, and desires might emerge and
gender and  do heterosexuality every day these would have nothing to do with gender.
without reflecting critically on that doing. This
is accomplished through talk and action,
CONCLUSION
through the embodied practices of dress and
demeanour, through active participation in for- As Christine Delphy has commented,  we
mal institutional settings, through the mundane shall only really be able to think about gender
activities through which our everyday lives are on the day we can imagine nongender (Del-
ordered. Cultural approaches (Butler s and phy, 1993, p. 9). Much of what passes as radical
others) ignore not only the social structural un- these days is more limited in vision, so that the
derpinnings of gender, which help explain why end of gender hierarchy and the collapse of in-
it exists in its current form, but also the every- stitutionalised heterosexuality appear unthink-
day social practices that reveal how gender and able. If we are unable to imagine the social
heterosexuality are continually constructed and world as radically other than it is we restrict
reconstructed in routine social interaction. our ability to think critically about it. To make
Queer theorists, have, of course, said much this imaginative leap we need to see the social
about  undoing, or at least unsettling, the nor- order we inhabit more clearly, to remove the
mativity of heterosexuality and gender, of de- blinkers the cultural turn has imposed upon
stabilising male/female and hetero-/homosexual our vision. We can never, of course, focus on
binaries. This, however, is by no means the everything at once, never expect to grasp the
same as thoroughly undoing gender and hetero- full, kaleidoscopic, shifting complexity of the
sexuality themselves doing away with them. social and cultural world, but we can collec-
Butler s performative subversions, for example, tively try to see more. If we succeed, we may
are not so much undoing gender as doing it in recover feminism s transformative vision and
new ways (Butler, 1990).9 Transgressive sexual restore our ability to imagine the unimagin-
and gender performances, moreover, can have able: not only a world without gender, but also
little social effect without an erosion of material a world without the myriad inequalities and in-
inequalities associated with gendered divisions justices that constrain women s lives today.
of labour and resources and a dismantling of the
institutions through which heterosexuality s
privileged place in society is sustained.
ENDNOTES
There is another problem inherent in much
1. Materiality has quite other connotations in Butler s ear-
current cultural thinking on gender. Because of
lier work. In Bodies that Matter (1993) she discusses the
the preoccupation with deconstructing binaries,
processes whereby bodies are materialised within a Fou-
the subversion of gender is widely thought of as
cauldian framework and here the social and material is
a multiplication process: making the boundaries conceptualised as normative rather than economic.
2. For an account of similar theoretical shifts from a U.S.
between genders more fluid and creating more
perspective see Hennessy and Ingraham (1987). They
genders by moving between and combining ele-
argue that what has emerged is a post-Marxist feminism,
ments of the existing two. This does not chal-
characterised as cultural materialism, which denies sys-
lenge gender itself: you do not subvert a hierar- tematic oppression in favour of a focus on the local and
contingent, on culture, representation, and the body.
chy by introducing more ranks between the
3. This is a singular authorial voice adopted by two femi-
dominant and subordinate. Moreover, it draws
nists writing collaboratively. For convenience, I write of
back from the implications of a social construc-
them  as if they are one person.
tionist understanding of gender, assuming that
4. Maynard borrows this idea from Robert Merton (1968).
the whole of human potential equals the sum of She is well aware of some of the problems of Merton s
292 Stevi Jackson
work, but argues that this particular concept is nonethe- Flax, Jane. (1990). Postmodernism and gender in feminist
less useful for feminists. theory. In L. Nicholson (Ed.), Feminism/postmodern-
5. These perspectives can readily be integrated with more ism (pp. 39 62). New York: Routledge.
recent conceptualisations, such as the Foucauldian Foucault, Michel. (1981). The history of sexuality, volume
notion of discourse (Jackson, 1993; Plummer, 1975), but one. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
this ease of assimilation may contribute to their contin- Fraser, Nancy. (1997). Heterosexism, misrecognition and
ued invisibility: they are sometimes interpreted as post- capitalism: A response to Judith Butler. Social Text, 15,
structuralist, as in Deborah Lupton s (1998) reading of 279 289.
my (1993) article on love. Gagnon, John, & Simon, William. (1974). Sexual conduct.
6. Butler, of course, does not cite either Garfinkel or London: Hutchinson.
Kessler and McKenna. It is not possible to ascertain Garfinkel, Harold. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology.
whether she drew on their ideas or arrived at her analy- Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
sis by other means. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996). The end of capitalism (as we
7. Althusser s ideas, as I have already indicated, played a knew it): A feminist critique of political economy.
crucial role in the shift from structural Marxism to post- Oxford: Blackwell.
Marxism and poststructuralism. Hennessy, Rosemary. (1993). Materialist feminism and the
8. A much more nuanced Marxist analysis has been devel- politics of discourse. New York: Routledge.
oped by Rosemary Hennessy (1995, 1998, 2000). Hennessy, Rosemary. (1995). Queer visibility in commod-
9. Her reflections on a lesbian femme s claim that she likes ity culture. In L. Nicholson & S. Seidman (Eds.), Social
her  boys to be girls (Butler, 1990, p. 122) are illustra- postmodernism (pp. 142 185). Cambridge: Cambridge
tive of this. University Press.
Hennessy, Rosemary. (1998). Disappearing capital: The
queer material of sexual identity. Paper presented at
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