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We are rejoined by actresses Lucy Lawless and Emily Perkins to discuss Aristophanes's bawdy play. Listen to us perform it first.
Supplementary readings included Jeffery Henderson's introduction to his 1988 translation
We discuss the play in terms of a clash between the oikos (home) and polis (city). Women were taken to have rights and responsibilities in the oikos, but none in the polis. Unlike in tragedies like Antigone, where the female lead adopts assertive, "male" traits to "intrude" into the polis, Lysistrata exerts political power by making use of oikos values, i.e., by encouraging women to use the the type of power traditionally associated with women, and so ultimately her "revolution" is not revolutionary at all.
We explore the various feminist and anti-feminist elements in the play, and try to relate it to the present: Women were oppressed because sex was (and is!) seen as inherently dangerous, as disruptive to political life. Can "make love, not war" be a politically effective slogan now? Given that women are now much less restricted to particular roles, what do we make of claims that are still made now that if women ran things, we'd have a lot less war? What would it be for a woman in politics now to exert her "feminine attributes" to gain power in the way Lysistrata does? Given how messed up Ancient Greek society was, does this play have anything to teach us?
Early on we talk about four different translations of the same passage; here's where you can find what we were looking at.
Here's the trailer for Chi-Raq, Spike Lee's modern take on the play.
Continue with part two, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!
I’ve only listened to half of part one so far…so I don’t know to what degree the discussion comes back around to the points raised by Emily Perkins about gender “pluralism.”
At any rate, the points raised reminds me of one of Zizek’s critiques of Deleuze (sorry to clumsily name drop…just trying to give context and note that these aren’t my original ideas). In the critique, Zizek called Deleuze “the ideologist of late capitalism.”
In an essay called, “The Ongoing Soft Revolution,” Zizek discusses this critique of Deleuze – a critique which might be interestingly extended to the notion of gender “pluralism” – by directly quoting Brian Massumi who says with regard to today’s capitalism having already overcome the logic of totalizing normality and subsequently adopted the logic of the erratic excess:
“The more varied, and even erratic, the better. Normalcy starts to lose its hold. The regularities start to loosen. This loosening of normalcy is part of capitalism’s dynamic. It’s not a simple liberation. It’s capitalism’s own form of power. It’s no longer disciplinary institutional power that defines everything, it’s capitalism’s power to produce variety–because markets get saturated. Produce variety and you produce a niche market. The oddest of affective tendencies are okay–as long as they pay. Capitalism starts intensifying or diversifying affect, but only in order to extract surplus-value. It hijacks affect in order to intensify profit potential. It literally valorises affect. The capitalist logic of surplus-value production starts to take over the relational field that is also the domain of political ecology, the ethical field of resistance to identity and predictable paths. It’s very troubling and confusing, because it seems to me that there’s been a certain kind of convergence between the dynamic of capitalist power and the dynamic of resistance.”
I think that last sentence articulates one of my own concerns quite well. With that in mind, I wonder if anyone else has some ideas/thoughts regarding the notion that gender pluralism/multiplicity is symptomatic of the logic of capitalism, the monetization of affects whose origins might be rooted in a resistance to capitalism.
Also, to what degree can we ultimately celebrate any pluralism when those pluralities are still rooted in, as well as contextualized, encouraged, and made possible by capitalist relations of production which are necessarily oppositional and hierarchical relations of domination?
If nothing other than our own “humanness” is truly “essential” (certainly a view that I tend to lean towards), then how is picking and choosing communicative affects and acts that suit our tastes all that different from buying this or that pair of jeans?
Has the logic of capitalism merely reduced us to banal consumers of a multiplicity of identity affects?
Do such choices still retain any “revolutionary” potential despite their embedded-ness within the logic of capitalism? Does the horizon of a networked economy hold any promise to undermine these oppositional and hierarchical modes of being? idk.
…just some random thoughts.
I certainly find Zizek entertaining (he’s the ‘Elvis of philosophy’ after all, right?), but find his arguments oftentimes dubious. With all due respect, it seems like a lot of speculative, deterministic talk about capitalism. I don’t think we can give credit for gender pluralism even to some masterly invisible hand, but it rather might just be a natural outgrowth or byproduct of Western individualism (i.e. Occam’s razor adequate here?).
Anyway, even if we wanted to project this phenomenon onto macro-economic machinations beyond our individual control, it seems like capitalism could probably do better for itself honestly. Every new niche market created slices marginal utility that much thinner, making the surplus-value logic increasingly trivial with every subsequent split of the gendered atom.
Also, and finally, gender pluralism just has a slight whiff of ephemerality to it. I will concede that LGBTQ identities are probably here to stay, but eventually that vanguard will become its own establishment, and look just as puzzled at the newbie generation as traditionalists do to them today. Seemingly, the gates will ultimately close to the accepted range of gender identity. Just my hunch, though; I’m willing to be proven wrong.
Hi Luke T,
Thanks for the response!
I lack the philosophical background necessary to be able to accurately analyze Zizek’s arguments for myself, but I have certainly come across similar assessments of his work – that is, ones that question the coherence of his arguments and the facticity of some his claims, among some other criticisms. Entertaining and provocative though he is for some of us, your point is well taken!
I agree that that we shouldn’t give exclusive credit to the “invisible hand” for the emergence of gender pluralism – that perhaps its possibilization is also connected to Western individualism, but I still feel like its connection to political economy is still not totally out of place either.
The mainstreaming of underground and/or “alternative” ideas and/or modes of being is often directly connected to their materially based economic viability. For example, one might argue that there is a direct and dialectical connection between the emergence of broader acceptance of LGBTQA+ and popular television programs like “RuPaul’s Drag Race” or “I Am Cait” – in the sense that as more and more advertisers recognized the profit potential of those shows, the larger their audiences have become, and the more “familiar” and “acceptable” LGBTQA+ lives have become to the American public, thereby stoking affective desires that can be monetized and “consumed.”
That seems like a fairly mundane observation though.
Beyond that – assuming that you accept the logical coherence of one version or another of surplus-value logic to begin with, I tend to disagree that surplus-value logic becomes, as you said, “increasingly trivial with every subsequent split of the gendered atom,” I would want to argue that the size of the “slice” of marginal utility is less the point; rather, the point of emphasis is more that the logic of capitalist extraction of surplus-value expands into and permeates more and more of our relationships/ways of being with each other. As Massumi stated, “The capitalist logic of surplus-value production starts to take over the relational field that is also the domain of political ecology, the ethical field of resistance to identity and predictable paths.”
One problem – and one more mundane observation I suppose, might be to question how an economic system that is necessarily oppositional/antogonistic (ie, pitting bosses against workers, the one against the many, etc.) and hierarchical is able to dissolve, neuter, subsume, integrate, and monetize the “revolutionary” potential of relationalities that emerged from egalitarian inclinations and/or communitarian pluralisms. In other words, what is to be done when non-capitalist and anti-capitalist relationality becomes monetized and imbued with the logic of capitalist consumerism vis-a-vis becoming a source surplus-value?
“Revolutionary” potential just becomes another commodity to be bought and sold – just another hat to try on, minus its potential to actually change relations of production, domination, and/or discipline.
With all of that said, I appreciate your final sentiment about the “new guard” just becoming the “old guard” and generally tend to agree, I just hope that the gates just stay as open and wide as possible!
Hey Athena and Luke,
I feel like here Zizek might be confusing multiplicity with the concept of “many” (as in the many/one dichotomy). “Many” is about this or that, this or that jeans, or as capitalism might prefer, this AND that jeans: an excess of jeans.
Multiplicity, at least qualitative multiplicity, requires a more radical shift in thinking, A pair of jeans, an expression of gender or what have you, is not just a discrete entity, it is in a state of flux and part of all kinds of potential assemblages. The single pair of jeans ALREADY constitutes more jeans uniquely in itself. Gender multiplicity or plurality isn’t something that arose out of prior oneness and is destined to return to that oneness… infinite potential combinations of genotype, phenotypic expression, and cultural coding are present in the apparent individual. If gender multiplicity is ephemeral it’s in the sense that all things are always coming into being.
Hi Emily!
Thank you so much for being on this podcast, raising really excellent points, and taking the time to respond!! (especially to comments – speaking for myself – that might not be especially well-informed!)
I am not totally certain that I fully understand your comment, but I think that I understand it at least on some kind of minimal level – especially in the sense that, as you said, “Gender multiplicity or plurality isn’t something that arose out of prior oneness and is destined to return to that oneness,” and “If gender multiplicity is ephemeral, it’s in the sense that all things are always coming into being.”
That said, I don’t know that I totally understood what you meant by, “The single pair of jeans ALREADY constitutes more jeans uniquely in itself.” Is this meant in the sense of generalities and particulars – like this single pair of jeans is just an example of jean-ness, or are you suggesting something more like the single pair of jeans always already anticipates its own being. (idk…and I don’t really understand what I myself am talking about or referring to). …or am I just missing the point completely.
Also, thank you(!) for making the distinction between “many” and “multiplicity” and the binary of one/many – they are certainly distinctions that I hadn’t considered previously.
Now, I don’t mean to sound totally dim, and perhaps I just haven’t read Massumi or Zizek intelligently and closely enough – your comments are making me rethink how I understand them, as well as whatever it is that I’ve been going on about……
…on one level, I kind of take them to be saying that perhaps the “disciplinary” power of capitalism is instantiated in its ability to intensify and/or diversify affect and desire such that human multiplicity is reduced to a kind of “intelligible” “many-ness,” at least to the extent that such a reduction effectively and profitably generates an “extractable” surplus value. If such was the case, then multiplicity is flattened out and its radical openness to human potential just becomes another vulgar commodity as various “typologies” of being (or “lifestyles”) are packaged and sold back to and purchased by us in the form of the “many.”
Hence, things like path-breaking gender multiplicity become mutated and denatured and re-emerge within the framework of “lifestyle” commodity fetishism wherein the market exchange of “lifestyle” commodities thereby obscures and ignores the true economic character of the human relations of production.
Consequently, from a certain vantage point, (the broader acceptance of and outright social participation in/recognition of) gender multiplicity seems to somehow dialectically mirror capitalism’s dynamic multiplication of any many affects and desires, or vice versa.
…
quasi-random quote from the Zizek essay mentioned earlier…
“So, when Naomi Klein writes that ‘neo-liberal economics is biased at every level towards centralization, consolidation, homogenization. It is a war waged on diversity,’ is she not focusing on a figure of capitalism whose days are numbered? Would she not be applauded by contemporary capitalist modernizers? Is not the latest trend in corporate management itself ‘diversify, devolve power, try to mobilize local creativity and self-organization?’ Is not anti-centralization the topic of the ‘new’ digitalized capitalism? The problem here is even more ‘troubling and confusing’ than it may appear. As Lacan pointed out apropos of his deployment of the structural homology between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment, what if the surplus-value does not simply ‘hijack’ a preexisting relational field of affects. What if what appears an obstacle is effectively a positive condition of possibility, the element that triggers and propels the explosion of affective productivity? What if, consequently, one should precisely throw out the baby with the bath water and renounce the very notion of erratic affective productivity, and so on as the libidinal support of revolutionary activity?”
,,,
At any rate, I tend to think of Zizek’s notion of gender as reasonably nuanced, though he definitely makes some cringe inducing comments on a seemingly regular basis.
idk.
I also don’t think that I am saying anything all that interesting either…it’s just a bunch of dressed up nonsense.
The fundamental point is just that capitalism (and of course other economic arrangements) can really make a mess of things and that businesses will sell you whatever they can if it stands the chance of making a profit.
…the secondary notion (I think) being that capitalism can survive and thrive with multiplicity just as much as anything else, so long as nothing disturbs the fundamental antagonisms embedded in the relations of production.
I’ve kind of lost my train of thought and what my point was (if I ever had one)…
but, thank you again Emily (and Luke) for the comments and ideas!!!
I really appreciate being forced to re-evaluate these ideas!
Hi, Emily & Athena.
I might be out of my depth here, but I’ll take another crack at things in good faith. To Emily’s point first. Supposing there is a genuine biological (or anthropological) argument to be made about the fluidity of gender in humans. Can we assert confidently that social convention puts limits on its expression, and that – over the arc of our species’ history – most of the time one has had to make a simple, binary choice: Identify as a man (if you are anatomically male) or identity as a woman (if you are anatomically female)?
If you accept my premise, what are your personal opinions about why that range of choice has recently (and, over this considered stretch of time, we are indeed talking very recently!) expanded to include categories such as LGBT and Q? Secondly, if one can conceivably migrate between different valences of gender (over the course of a lifetime, let’s suppose) what do you expect the limits – if any – are to doing so?
Regarding Athena’s Massumi critique. I guess I can see how, yes, a capitalist ethic would certainly try to profit on the commercial expression of pluralized identity, but only so successfully as enterprising sorts can convince the consumer their product fulfills some psycho-social need. In which case maybe we can say the effect is benign. I don’t know Massumi’s philosophy very well, but I’m reluctant to embrace theories that seem (to me, anyways) to enervate the core unit of that system, which is individual agency.
Can well-meaning players be conned, co-opted, or commoditized? Sure they can. But capitalist norms ultimately have to live within an agreeable social framework. And if either surplus-value extraction, or highly-eccentric forms of gender expression, ever get out ‘over their skis’ – as it were – it’s just my intuition that a point of intolerability would set in and countervailing forces (not necessarily flattering or redeeming ones) would push back and reinstitute more traditional social expectations.
Well, anyway, there is a bunch of my speculative thought, for what’s it worth. Your turn. : )
regards,
Luke
Hi Luke,
Thanks again for your response!
I am afraid that I don’t really have too much more to add, not in any kind of novel way at least.
As to why gender multiplicity has gained more recognition and acceptance in recent times, I really don’t think that I have any special insight beyond a normal sort of socio-historical accounting of facts that likewise acknowledges the history of ideas, etc.
In some ways, I guess I was clumsily attempting to analyze the notion of gendered “forms/typologies” as being overdetermined vis-a-vis something like historical materialism.
A relevant quote from Marx in the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Volume I of Capital seems apropos here. There he states:
“My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, …the process of thinking which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos (creator) of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought [which subsequently become manifest and produce material effects that are then re-represented in various human conceptual schema…and on and on].”
So – I might clumsily (and perhaps unconvincingly) try to argue that…the fracturing of “tradition” made possible and expressed by the Capitalist “mode” – especially as it moved beyond institutional forms of discipline to incorporate more explicitly affective ones – somehow “allowed” for the creation of an opening that could fracture and destroy the common historical “regime” of the gender binary.
Subsequently, I’ve heard it argued (reasonably/convincingly) that we are at the end of the second industrial revolution and that we are now entering a third industrial revolution that is premised on an emergent inter-connectivity and a very real inter-dependence on non-centralized technologies that manage, power, communicate, and move economic life in new and novel ways.
So…the question becomes, to what degree is it reasonable to attribute “new” ways of being/modes of thinking as somehow being reflections of these new material realities.
…Can we draw a line from the networked nature of our technological and material reality to an emerging ethics of inclusion, such that multiplicity and pluralism are valued only to the extent that they are premised on a recognition of (inter-dependent) inclusivity?
…idk…just a crude exercise in historical materialist thinking.
As far as gender limits, I hope things never stop opening (and being included)! Personally, I don’t really see gender ever becoming more limited again – but perhaps that is just naive, or it’s just because of where I am sitting…idk. Genders will always change and modulate; however, I might try to add the caveat that gender possibilities are also necessarily materially over-determined and hence – limited – different material epochs will allow for different conditions of possibility…and those conditions will inform the next set of possibilities (which is just another way of saying that nature and nurture both over-determine each other).
I am ever hopeful, but I do really take your points to heart – I think that we are currently and unmissably witnessing reactionary, ideological revanchists who are obviously angry and threatened by the fracturing of gender norms. I don’t think that they are correct, and I don’t think that their world view will prevail – it’s just not in alignment with the trajectory that the world itself is on.
Also, I really like your comment – “I’m reluctant to embrace theories that seem (to me, anyways) to enervate the core unit of that system, which is individual agency.” I hadn’t thought of things along those lines in such an explicit way – it’s absolutely a vital point to make. I would just want to add to that that individual agency is also always already over-determined by its material conditions – interdependence seems to necessarily be the case.
Hi again, Athena.
Well, I think you’ve introduced enough new thought here for us to continue to pull this thread. With your patience, therefore, let me offer a respectful rejoinder.
First, I would ask you to consider developing a little more your nods to over-determinism. You mention it several times immediately above and, although I’m generically familiar with the term, it would be great to have some specific illustrations or examples to draw on. Maybe I’m just being dense, but if you are feeling generous.
Next, I want to say something broad about Marxist analysis, and then return directly to our gender discussion. I willingly concede that Marx was a serious philosophical thinker, and obviously has had a huge impact on history and the world of thought. It’s difficult for me personally to play his analytical game, however, for so many of his conclusions seemingly emasculating human peculiarity, resilience, resourcefulness, and inscrutability.
I explicitly DON’T want to purport that interdependence is not an important analytic category, or that there are not genuine macro-economic, social, and political forces that prevail upon us mere human atoms. But hopefully – as the yin to your argument’s yang – I will continue to gently push back on its (to me) apparent determinism.
Great, so score one to me for being repetitive. Let me offer some more substantive critique now and, in that spirit, put more of my cards face up on the table. The unfolding story we are witnessing right now around gender strikes me as (1) thematically teleological/Whiggish, (2) contemporary to a liberal, industrialized Western cultural narrative, and (3) arguably threatening, or just bizarre, to the rest of the civilized world.
Why? Well, though we might both perhaps lean more towards a social libertarian disposition, if we even casually study significant portions of the rest of the population of the United States/West, much less the more traditional norms held by (most of) the rest of the global population, we might say that the Capitalist mode has either not done its proper homework – to enable and profit on this fractured gender affect – or that there is just something sui generis going on in our milieu, to allow for this current sociological phenomenon.
Maybe even that’s a straw man, since capitalism is not homogeneously or uniformly distributed across the world, and in many places is emphatically thwarted and rejected. But the very Whiggish, or ‘arc of history bending towards justice’ element I sense here – that definitely seems romantically inspired, and not at all an empirical safe bet.
I have to think some more yet about the ‘networked nature of our technological and material reality,’ and what that means for this story we are interrogating. You might be onto something there, I just haven’t batted it around enough to offer any thoughts at this time.
My final piece here is that, “Well, hey.” I want to purport that there’s this unique gender story going on in the rich West, and everyone else is doing well by their de facto status quo. But a different objection to this argument is that maybe the same thing is in fact going on everywhere else, and we either can’t see it, or it’s being deliberately quashed, or – admitting it to not be organic – is still being inspired by the dominant mode of global culture (meaning us).
And this speculation seems to me the most plausible of all, because if capitalism is a real or central push/pull to the story, then unquestionably its impact is going to be felt disproportionally where populations eagerly (and naively?) embrace capitalist impulses for their refreshing and novel taste.
More after your reply, and after consideration of networked effects.
For now,
Luke
Luke,
Thank you again for taking the time to respond! I would say that you likewise have provided a great deal to consider.
First, I decided to break my overall response into 2 separate responses. The first response mainly deals determinism and agency. The second response is more general.
1. Determinism & Agency
Also, let me apologize at the outset for the length of this response. I am always struggling with being succinct!
So, if you once more have the necessary fortitude to slog through my ramblings and don’t mind looking past my bastardized philosophical misinterpretations, I’ll attempt to clarify my position and address some of the points that you’ve raised…I do just want to note that I really am not very knowledgeable with regard to philosophy writ large or its history and arguments. At best, maybe my “ideas” more closely resemble the shambolic nest of some derelict bowerbird. At worst, well…
…At any rate, this is just a long way of saying that while I recognize the technical language of “philosophy,” I most definitely am misusing and misunderstanding that technical language itself. That said, I’ll try to do my best.
So first, let’s look at “over-determinism.” You mentioned that you are generically familiar with it, so I hope that my “expansion” of it is worthwhile, rather than redundant. As you may know, it’s an idea developed by Louis Althusser. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – it’s a theory in which he argues “that every element in the total productive process constituting a historical moment is determined by all the others.” The SEP also mentions that over-determinism is closely related to his notion of “structural causality,” which is an idea that says that “each individual productive process or element stands in relation to and plays a part of a complexly structured whole, none of which is reducible to being the simple or essential cause of the others.” Hence, the SEP further suggests that Althusser’s position was such that “any isolable element of the total structure, be it a person, a social class, an institution, or the state, in some way reflects and embodies these practices [or modes of production] and these antagonisms and as such each is said to be ‘overdetermined.'” Somewhat tying these ideas together, he also developed the notion of the “structure in dominance.” Again from the SEP:
“This concept [of structure in dominance] designates that major element in a structural whole that tends to organize all of the other practices. In much of the contemporary world and inasmuch as it tends to organize the production of moral values, scientific knowledge, the family, art, etc. this structure is the economic practice of commodity production and consumption. However, in another era and in other places, it may be the production and dissemination of religious beliefs and practices that dominates and organizes the socio-economic structure.”
…I hope that that was somewhat helpful – an essential point being that economic structures and cultural structures are not wholly and causally separable “entities.”
Now, I am not well-informed enough to comment directly on his sense or version of Marxist “determinism” that might, as you suggested – seemingly emasculate “human peculiarity, resilience, resourcefulness, and inscrutability.” That said, a final worthwhile perspective on Althusser’s thought from that same SEP article seems helpful here:
“by examining a political order not from the perspective of its necessity but with an awareness of its contingency, [a materialist] philosopher may be able to think the possibility of its transformation. If chance smiles on her, if someone listens and if effects occur, then elements might recombine and a new political might take hold. This is, to be sure, a very limited and unpredictable power attributed to the philosopher.”
So, I think that while Marxism very definitely deals with various determinisms, I don’t think that *all* of those determinisms are necessarily meant in a sense that utterly eviscerates free will or the human peculiarity, resilience, resourcefulness, and inscrutability that you mentioned. For example, “apart from the necessity of human beings to engage in productive relations with other human beings and with their environment in order to produce their means of subsistence,” Althusser rejected the existence of there being a human “nature” or “essence.” Likewise, he argued that “though some order must exist in order to allow for the production and reproduction of social life, there is no essential or best form that this order must take.” …in other words – at least in his view (and my own), capitalism doesn’t necessarily lead to communism or even anything specific. I would like to think that something like Althusser’s Aleatory Materialism still leaves adequate room to human agency – of course, I really don’t know enough about this subject to make that claim with any sort of real confidence or deep understanding of the arguments that might support such a claim.
With a more explicit regard to agency, we might also look at the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte wherein Marx states: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
Finally, and perhaps more succinctly to the point, I think that probably you are correct in your assessment of the Marxist understanding of agency, that is if we view that sense of Marxist agency strictly through the lens of classical Marxism.
In this classical formulation of Marxist agency, “the motivations of individual action are traced to the interests of class and the positions in the classes determine individual behavior, while individuals act in a ‘rational’ way, pursuing their own interests. The agent is the class which transmits goals and desires to the individuals” (“The Mutual Interdependence between Human Action and Social Structure in the Evolution of the Capitalist Economy” by Alessandro Morselli).
However, since at least Althusser (if not before), various strands of Marxist thinking have emerged that reject determinism completely. For example, the two American Neo-Marxists Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff theorize the rejection of any form of determinism, basing their analysis on the Althusserian concept of “overdetermination.” Similarly, Morselli’s essay mentioned above advocates for a combination of Marxist theory and the theory of Evolutionist Institutionalism to solve the issues associated with what he calls the agency/structure problem. To that effect, he writes, “There is a twofold interaction between individuals and institutions: institutions affect individuals, constraining choices and actions, shaping goals and desires. Individuals influence institutions, creating and changing habitual thought and social rules, until new institutions are created which adapt pre-existing institutions to emerging needs.”
He further notes that the the capitalist’s economy can be described as “a socio-economic system based on the commodification of labor, in which there exist conflicts between capital and labor [that] are the driving force of development, and where change is rooted in institutions, while the system moves along a path marked by history. …[In this context,] social structures produced by the interaction between agents, adapt and transform into a set of rules that condition and enable human action.”
So, I am not sure where that actually leaves things, but from a fairly crude level of analysis, it all seems fairly reasonable and non-controversial to me. Individuals have agency. Their agency helps create and maintain social structures that allow for the reproduction of daily life. Those social structures simultaneously condition, limit, and enable human action. Hence, the human lifeworld and environment is shaped by, reproduced by, and reflective of both human agency and the social structures that are valued and nurtured through specific modes and relations of production.
I suppose the larger, more open ended, and perhaps more controversial question is to what degree can we reasonably find a reflection of economic structures within cultural, ideological, and/or philosophical structures and vice versa. Beyond that, I hope that it goes without saying that Marx’s Labor Theory of Value (and Surplus Value), as well as Marxist interpretations of exploitation and oppression remain controversial.
Hello again Luke,
Here is my second response.
2. General Response
Beyond perhaps our differing assessments of the value of Marxist theory/analysis, I would say that I largely agree with much of what you said. You are right to point out that my own hopefulness easily gives way to some kind of naive romanticism, but sometimes it’s fun to dream!
At any rate, you said, “The unfolding story we are witnessing right now around gender strikes me as (1) thematically teleological/Whiggish, (2) contemporary to a liberal, industrialized Western cultural narrative, and (3) arguably threatening, or just bizarre, to the rest of the civilized world.”
My response, if I am understanding you correctly, is that I generally agree.
You also stated, “we might say that the Capitalist mode has either not done its proper homework – to enable and profit on this fractured gender affect – or that there is just something sui generis going on in our milieu, to allow for this current sociological phenomenon.”
I guess it is here that maybe I never did a very good job at articulating my claim(s). I didn’t mean to suggest that the capitalist mode must always, necessarily and deterministic-ly lead to the dissolution of (oppressive) gender binaries, et al. Rather – and I hope that I am not being a revisionist here – the capitalist mode, through its intensifying and diversifying of affect vis-a-vis the logic of surplus-value production/extraction, conditions the human lifeworld in such a way as to help bring into being, establish the contingent conditions of possibility for the fracturing of gender norms.
To rephrase, I would want to argue that this *potential* (to fracture gender norms) is immanent to the capitalist mode, especially since it seems to be the case to me that this mode evolves and is sustained through its intensification and diversification of affect (ie, desire, et al within the libidinal economy).
For example, how are commodities sold generally? They are generally sold by appealing to not simply our everyday needs, but also to our desire for some kind of “extra” fulfillment. So, certain formations of desire are created to encourage us to buy and consume. Over time, new and novel variations emerge in order to hold our attention and keep us consuming. In such a way, the entire capitalist mode sustains itself.
Additionally, as Emily rightly pointed out, gender multiplicity is an immanent feature of being a human. Its broad-based recognition and acceptance is obviously contingent on a variety of factors.
Moreover, I think that you rightly point out that there are always socio-cultural limits to capitalist commodity production…suggesting that “allowable” gender expressions can absolutely be socio-culturally limited within a capitalist economy.
Consequently, I absolutely agree that a broad-based recognition and acceptance of gender multiplicity is more common in most of the countries described as “Western.” Why is that? Other than simple mindedly and superficially pointing towards the liberal enlightenment tradition (that you mentioned), I really don’t have the answer. Suffice to say that the contingent potential for recognition and acceptance of gender multiplicity is immanent (I would say) in the human condition and the capitalist mode. Of course, it goes without saying that what sells in one place, won’t necessarily sell every place.
You said, “[the] ‘arc of history bending towards justice’ element I sense here – that definitely seems romantically inspired, and not at all an empirical safe bet.”
I totally agree. Though in some instances certain things are probable, I absolutely accept that nothing is certain.
You said, “My final piece here is that, ‘Well, hey.’ I want to purport that there’s this unique gender story going on in the rich West, and everyone else is doing well by their de facto status quo. But a different objection to this argument is that maybe the same thing is in fact going on everywhere else.”
In this instance, I would want to agree somewhat. Just from reading the news, I do think that there are gender non-conforming people all over the world who are fighting for acceptance and recognition in different ways. Moreover – in a certain sense, I don’t think that that fight can be wholly separated from global capitalist forces.
In this historical moment, the conditions of possibility for such a fight seem to be reasonably contingent on the existence of the capitalist mode and what it has wrought globally. For example, in remote areas of the world that are relatively unaffected by the capitalist mode, it seems that traditions generally are comparatively more stable over time and less “inclined” to fracture.
Moreover, I am absolutely willing to concede that the enlightenment tradition planted some seeds for individual “liberty” (however we want to define that). It should be applauded for that. And, I am also absolutely willing to concede that those seeds have born fruits that have allowed for greater recognition and acceptance of gender multiplicity. I would just want to argue (perhaps ineffectively) that those seeds and that tradition are not wholly separable from the capitalist mode. At some level, it may be worthwhile to attempt to discern the reflection of the economic structure within the cultural structure and/or vice versa.
Lastly, to be as direct as possible, I am attempting to argue that 1) capitalism is somehow – if not a liberalizing force, at least a non-conservative socio-cultural economic force (though I am not sure how exactly to evaluate state capitalism and/or authoritarian capitalism); 2) in our current historical moment, the conditions of possibility for the broad-based recognition and acceptance of gender multiplicity are contingently over-determined (ie, both formed and forming) by the capitalist mode – in short, there is no rapidly emerging broad-based recognition and acceptance absent the possibility of gender multiplicity being/becoming a site of surplus value production/extraction/appropriation; 3) In this way, gender multiplicity becomes a commodity that can itself be both produced and consumed (eg, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Games of Thrones, Queer Eye, Orange Is the New Black, Mykki Blanco, Bec Sandridge, Against Me!, Big Freedia, gender neutral/plural clothing brands, jewelry, and collections, etc.); and finally we might say that…
4) arguably due to the antagonistic nature of class-based capitalist relations of production that situate different individuals as being appropriators/extractors/controllers of surplus value, resources, and property vs. those who are (generally) not – wherein oppression(s) is necessarily and simultaneously rooted in material deprivation, the capitalist mode incentivizes those excluded from socio-economic material “wealth” to bridge that gap and repeat the basic capitalist gesture (ie, appropriation of surplus value) via at least two separable and overlapping modes – 1) mimetic and isomorphic repetition of existing constellations of power (eg, the shoulder-padded pantsuit of the 80s, the “Gender Capitalism” of Rain Dove) and/or 2) the disassembling, subversion, and dissolution of those very same constellations of power …all as a means to gain “access” to surplus value and/or material “wealth.” From this perspective, it might be argued that within the fracturing of gender norms there is an over-determined reflection of the capitalist mode being both formed and forming.
Well argued, Athena; I’m coming more and more your way with this. I would say a couple things to complement and/or gently push back on your developing thesis.
To start, I think it’s important to acknowledge that, though modern capitalism will have originally developed in a particular historical context (i.e. in a post-Enlightenment, religiously and politically-decentralized Western European cultural climate), the logic of capitalism (or principles of capitalism, or norms, or values, or whatever term of art one prefers) are per se amoral and value-neutral, save the imperative to create material wealth where it didn’t previously exist (via something classical economics will recommend to us as ‘the multiplier effect’).
So, yeah, call it surplus value-extraction if we choose to, or just the basic profit-motive (I know their connotations are slightly different), but anthropological evidence seems to suggest that humans have liked to trade for a very long time, and when the conditions transpired for those (primate?) urges to finally be channeled into a highly-regimented and efficient system… well, poof! Voila! We have a sophisticated and (all else being equal) normatively fair method of distributing scarce resources in a heterogenous world. (And now I’m being Whiggish probably.)
Suffice it to say, though, that capitalism – when not leavened with other concepts of value (equity, justice, the non-material, ends, etc.) – can be and has demonstrated itself observably to be extremely abusive, something that I expect anyone with either an ounce of a heart, or theory-of-mind, is triggered with by their conscience, and which becomes emotionally-attuned to the extremities of its core ideology and excesses.
But, on its own terms, capitalism (or just organic trade) is a fairly benign sociological phenomenon, in my opinion, and so we can view class antagonisms as a particularly nasty outcome of industrial (or post-industrial) markets’ very structure, or perhaps instead we can just view them as the latest iteration of this most unfortunate byproduct of human tribes – broadly conceived – not (and seemingly never) having pathos for their out-group counterparts. That is to say, exhibiting a rank lack of empathy and sometimes ruthlessly exploitative behavior..
Bottom line? We are appetitive animals (homo sapiens sapiens, that is) and highly-efficient regimes of trade indeed aid and abet and magnify that appetitive spirit. I can definitely see how, therefore, in a universe constrained by less than solely seeking out and growing marginal material utility (i.e. profit), the possibility (or the potentiality, or the running room for) a wider social space for gender many-ness is conceivable.
Then add in an accommodative social (meaning, classically liberal) environment, and we are off to the races with the same, none of which – importantly – has to obtain from either a romantic, or teleological, or world-gradually-getting better/more fair worldview. Point of fact, if we reverse any of these constituent ingredients – for example, taking away the accommodating environment, or putting socially-imposed limits on pure capitalist flourishing – it’s conceivable that the expressed gender diversity moves in the opposite direction.
This is the remarkably contingent nature of circumstances that I think we both well recognize here, and are of a common view about. It just so happens that, in the short history of modern capitalism, the noble profit motive was inextricably-linked with Protestant notions of industriousness and righteousness (see Max Weber), and that Protestants – writ large – have had fairly traditional notions of gender and gender roles through time. As a result, heretofore unrealized gender expression has been muted by legacy and path-dependent group norms. Passing the smell test?
Pivoting slightly now – and following the same logic – I want to agree with you that global capitalism could be informing any echo or reflection of the same phenomenon above, to the extent it exhibits in more traditional environments (socially and economically) where we might not expect as much. Just to say that, if unalloyed capitalism is allowed to run its course – well, it still needs widespread social libertarian values to enable it – but pockets of mirrored gender diversity arguably could pop up in, say, urban environments consistently commingling with these cosmopolitan values.
That leaves the ‘immanence of gender multiplicity in the human condition’ to talk about. I’m less confident writing about this, honestly, because I don’t feel like I have anything really original (or even derivative) to offer. I would like to know more from you (and especially Emily, if by some miracle she’s made it this deep into our rabbit hole) about where this intuition comes from, and what experientially may be reifying it. I’m not excluding the possibility, mind you, just prudentially skeptical of such a claim.
I can recognize, trivially, that people I know (male and female) concurrently manifest dispositions, behaviors, and traits that we would stereotypically consider manly and womanly, but that’s about as far as I go. And I definitely think some individuals are homosexual by default; they are not taught to be so. How much of that is ultimately nature and how much is nurture; who knows? Maybe it’s irredeemably overdetermined. : )
But gay, transsexual, bi-, questioning? How many permutations do we admit before it becomes an utterly confusing, self-parodying blur? India has some history with this subject matter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia), so it’s not a completely contemporary or novel puzzle.
But that civilizational seed-bed might contain its own sort of pluralistic exceptionalism (I conjecture), based on its remarkable history in successfully absorbing and co-opting such a wide world of dissonant thought and practice. I demur for now.
Really enjoying this, Athena; thank you.
Luke
Greetings again, Athena.
I think you demur way too much, by the way. It’s obvious you can hold your philosophical own. You should consider becoming a PEL member. There’s more content available and earlier, and you can sometimes engage directly with the hosts outside of the public interface (they did not pay me for this free advertising, fyi). : )
Anyway, yeah. I will once more reflexively express my discomfort with Marxist frameworks, but you have made the yeoman’s effort to show that there is more nuance about agency and contingency here than my caricature (?) would recommend. So hats off!
I’m going to make this reply fairly brief, because I still owe you thoughts on networked effects, and want some time to learn a little bit more about the additional theorists you’ve introduced in your latest reply. Failing all else, maybe one of the PEL hosts will even casually peruse this thread, feel inspired by one of your theory name-drops, and consider an episode based on as much.
So my quickies on over-determinism and aleatory materialism. The way you describe over-determinism here has sort of gestalt feel to it. Meaning the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that breaking the phenomenon apart into its component parts – while perhaps technically possible – might be destroying the whole conceit, or at least be besides the point. Do you expect this is one fair summary of the problem?
Regarding aleatory materialism (and related concepts), honestly it’s the first time I had heard of it, but it definitely strikes as a more flexible and accommodating theoretical framework than, as you correctly state, classical Marxism is. (I also have problems with ‘false consciousness,’ incidentally, but since that has not been directly part of our discussion, and is kind of a sidebar to this particular back-and-forth, we can kick that piece forward to a future thread.) I would like to read some more about aleatory materialism before holding forth on it conjecturally.
I also don’t know what to do yet with ‘structure in dominance,’ but – if indeed there is something to be said about the way that the economic practice of commodity production and consumption organize the rest of our contemporary human lives, the way that, say, religious belief and practice will have done in a previous epoch – it makes me really curious about what the theoretical conceit would say about places where the two modes intersect presently as a live issue (for example, in a theocracy like Iran).
Well, I’ll close for now by saying that – though I can tell these explanatory frameworks help inform your philosophical worldview – I’m happy you are wiling to actively take a critical eye towards them, and identify empirical gaps and theoretical grey areas. A valuable practice and reflection for us all!
Back later hopefully,
Luke