Dependency denial in crisis: Revisiting feminist critiques of dualism

Abstract

Social theories – from classical accounts to more recent relational theories to feminist and postcolonial approaches – have characterized modernity as an age of proliferating dependency relationships, which, however, enable autonomy as a central value of this very modernity. This tension at the heart of modernity has led societies to deny these dependencies. Recently, crisis dynamics have precipitated abrupt realizations of dependencies on phenomena that are invisibilized, inferiorized and devalued in modern societies. The respective ‘other of reason’ on which autonomous subjectivity depends – including nature, reproduction and the body – increasingly makes itself felt. The underlying logic of dependency denial can be illuminated by revisiting the feminist critique of dualism that offers three ways to overcome dualist thought: dialectics, entanglement and tension. The article discusses these three options in order to develop a normative compass facilitating a critical perspective on dependency denial and its failure in light of current crises.

The state of dependence has a bad reputation throughout most traditions of social theory. As the opposite of independence and autonomy, relations of dependency typically appear as states of domination or inferiority. Nevertheless, dependence is a (hidden) key concept in many social theories. Sociological classics, including the work of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel, use the category of dependency to analyse the specific condition that has come to be called modernity. They observe an intensification of relations of dependence associated with the dependence on wage labour in the course of the rise of capitalism (Marx, 1986 [1867]), the multiplication of dependence on more and more anonymous others due to the emergence of the monetary economy (Simmel, 2004 [1900]) and the increasing reliance of social actors on one another in ever more complex systems of labour division (Durkheim, 1984 [1893]). Put to work as an analytic category, these considerations indicate that dependency is not necessarily a negative state, but rather the presupposition for individual freedom and social integration. However, all these sociological classics share an uneasiness with the intensification of dependency relations. Simmel, for instance, states: ‘[…] consider how many “delivery men” alone we are dependent upon in a money economy! But they are incomparably less dependent upon the specific individual and can change him easily and frequently all the time’ (Simmel, 2004 [1900], p. 298). For Simmel, dependence on interchangeable actors works as a motor for individual freedom; a freedom, however, that is impersonal and may therefore cause forms of alienation. As our dependence on ‘delivery men’ proliferates, the modern individual is increasingly reliant on denying its dependence on them in order to claim its sovereignty. Relative independence and autonomy remain central normative orientations of the modern. This in turn, as I argue, makes mechanisms of dependency denial an integral part of the modern condition. ¹ Feminist and postcolonial positions have problematized normative certainties in regard to independence and showed that the concept of autonomy (in combination with the value of independence) is gendered as well as racialized (i.e. Butler, 2020; Richardson, 2020). They have argued that the denial of dependency relations negates everyone’s reliance on care (Kittay & Feder, 2003) and have demonstrated how the modern idea of freedom negates its co-emergence with – and thus dependence on – slavery, colonialism and systematic racial discrimination (Stovall, 2021). Nevertheless, for most of these approaches, too, one normative vanishing point is independence: At the very least, one goal of feminist and postcolonial approaches is to assert independence from relations of domination.

As this cursory discussion shows, there is an interesting tension between dependency and independence at the heart of many social theories. This article sets out to explore this tension while focusing on feminist approaches, and in particular the feminist critique of dualism. In the wake of Bruno Latour’s influential critique of the ‘Great Divide’ between Nature and the Social, social theory has formulated problematizations of dualism that focused on questions of non-human agency, hybrid embodiment and the analysis of the modern ‘work of purification’ (Latour, 1993, pp. 10–12) that has obscured the interwoven character of nature–culture–relationality (Goldman & Schurman, 2000; Inglis & Bone, 2006; Law, 1991). The conceptual pair independence/dependence, too, is part of a network of dualisms that characterizes modernity but has received comparatively little attention in discussions about relational social theory or in feminist discourses. This is particularly surprising given current crisis dynamics. The ecological disaster, the pandemic, the ongoing wars with the accompanying crises in supply chains and energy delivery – all of these have brought about abrupt realizations of dependence. ² And particular forms of dependence are at stake here, namely, dependence on that which is invisibilized, inferiorized and devalued in modern societies. In the current crises, hegemonic mechanisms of dependency denial do not seem to work anymore, because the respective ‘other of reason’ – nature, reproduction, the body and so on – makes itself felt and is less and less easy to ignore.

The underlying logic of dependency denial in modernity is best understood from a feminist perspective. In order to carve out this analytical lens, I will first outline the general direction of a feminist critique of dualism and then analyse feminist strategies to overcome dualist thought in order to develop a normative compass enabling a critical perspective on dependency denial. I discuss three proposals for critical engagement with dualist thinking, with a focus on their engagements with dependency and independence: Regina Becker-Schmidt’s position that pleads for dialectics to exit dualist thought; Donna Haraway’s approach that puts forward a model of entanglement; and Jessica Benjamin’s proposal that seeks to make the tension between dependency and independence productive. I conclude by suggesting a strategic affirmation of dependency in theorizing as well as in political engagement and show how the feminist critique of dualism fosters a better understanding of current crises dynamics.

The critique of dualism and the problem of denial

Hardly any motif in feminist theory has undergone as many variations as the critique of dualism. Approaches as diverse as historical materialist feminisms (Federici, 2012), eco-feminisms (Mies & Shiva, 1993), new materialisms (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008), feminist psychoanalysis (Benjamin, 1988), queer theory (Butler, 1990), de- and post-colonial feminisms (Lugones, 2007) and feminist history of science (Merchant, 1980) – all of them formulate, in one way or another, fundamental critiques of those differences organized in the form of domination that have had such a lasting impact on modern epistemology and politics, such as nature/culture, mind/body, reproduction/production and so on. And these feminist approaches look for ways out of dualistic thinking in which the ‘other of reason’ is always set as inferior. Whereas dualist thought has been problematized for several reasons in the sociological tradition and especially in deconstructive approaches following Jacques Derrida, the feminist critique emphasizes its gendered dimensions and argues that it is one of the pillars of misogyny, a root of male domination. Programmatically, Simone de Beauvoir says of this rootedness: ‘To pose Woman is to pose the absolute Other, without reciprocity, denying against all experience that she is a subject, a fellow human being’ (De Beauvoir, 1956 [1949], p. 260). This initial observation is shared by critics in different feminist strands of thought: They start from the observation that dualisms are pairs of concepts in which one side is subject to systematic devaluation, which has grown historically and continues to have effects in different forms today. The hierarchical structuring of dualisms distinguishes them from simple differences: and it is these hierarchies that must be exposed, as Donna Haraway (1991, p. 161) has noted: ‘Some differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of domination. “Epistemology” is about knowing the difference’. Deciphering contexts of domination structured by dualisms is a central concern of feminist research.

The most influential (though not the only) function of dualism is to define one side of the distinction as passive and inferior. In her elaboration of an anti-essentialist ecofeminism, feminist philosopher Val Plumwood demonstrates this by arguing that women and nature are defined as passive in a structurally analogous way (but are not the same thing essentially). Nature is understood in modernity as a passive resource that can be appropriated, dominated, conserved, and exploited through culture and technology. It is a kind of foundation on which the actual (such as wage labour and growth) takes place. In a similar way, female-marked persons are treated as passive, or their activities are understood as taking place in the background – Plumwood hence calls these processes ‘backgrounding’ (Plumwood, 1993, p. 21). In these processes of devaluing, naturalizations play a crucial role:

To be defined as ‘nature’ […] is to be defined as passive, as non-agent and non-subject, as the ‘environment’ or invisible background conditions against which the ‘foreground’ achievements of reason or culture (provided typically by the white, western, male expert or entrepreneur) take place. It is to be defined as terra nullius, a resource empty of its own purposes or meanings, and hence available to be annexed for the purposes of those supposedly identified with reason or intellect, and to be conceived and molded in relation to these purposes. (Plumwood, 1993, p. 4; original emphasis)

A superior culture, conceived as rational and creative, is contrasted with nature, which has nothing of its own, no culture and therefore no value in and of itself. To be declared ‘terra nullius’ means being presented as something that has no history of its own, no will of its own, no value. These mechanisms are also colonially entangled: Either the ‘untouched’ land, the ‘uncivilized’ or ‘savages’ – nature feminized in one way or another – can be appropriated as objects or must be contained according to a colonizing logic (cf. Sawyer & Agrawal, 2000, pp. 79–80). In addition, of course, the dependency on that which has been backgrounded can be denied.

Dualisms such as culture/nature and mind/body are intertwined with a whole series of other conceptual pairs that perpetuate the logic of naturalization, subjugation and inferiorization of the ‘other of culture’ and the ‘other of reason’. That on which one depends is regarded as inferior. Thus, reproductive work or care work is subject to devaluation vis-à-vis productive or wage labour, the sphere of the private is devalued vis-à-vis that of the public and so on: ‘In practice these dualisms form a web or network. One passes easily over into the other, linked to it by well-travelled pathways of conventional or philosophical assumption’ (Plumwood, 1993, pp. 45–46). Devaluing the ‘other of reason’ – the body, necessity, nature, reproduction – has had foundational and far-reaching implications and structure-forming effects throughout modernity and continues to do so today.

The mechanisms rendering ‘the other’ inferior outlined here also and even centrally apply to phenomena that impose themselves in crises today and remind modern subjects with all their force of how dependent they are on them. This is especially true of so-called natural relations materializing more and more as disasters, but one might also think of our dependence on care work, healthcare, public infrastructures and energy supplies. However, precisely because naturalization as one mode of inferiorization has justified so much suffering, it is difficult to acknowledge the fundamental dependence on nature and on human as well as non-human others. Denial is one successful and influential coping mechanism to avoid such questioning of the autonomous self.

In some feminist discourses, too, dependencies have been implicitly ignored or devalued because independence is considered normatively desirable. The topos of the ‘independent woman’ serves as a normative vanishing point for many liberal feminisms, represented for instance by organizations such as the ‘Independent Women’s Forum’ in the US-American context. ³ In settings like this, the ‘independent’ women is imagined as a successful white career woman; in other sceneries, ‘independence’ is associated with the empowered but fully responsible woman or girl of colour in the Global South (Murphy, 2017, pp. 113–123). The value of independence is thus evoked in diverging contexts; but in all of them, it tends to keep the broader conditions of a good life out of view and reproduces exclusions by evoking the notion of an autonomous self that acts self-sufficiently. With this they buy into an illusion with manifest consequences for all those gendered and racialized bodies that do not represent ‘autonomy’ in this sense.

Though undoubtedly independence from husbands and fathers, financial independence and self-determination are desirable and politically important, invocations of the ‘independent woman’ tend to deny our dependence on general conditions that either enable or prevent flourishing. Social theory and feminist theory in particular – especially when they set out to understand current crises – should not make the mistake of denying dependence: For the devaluation of the ‘other of reason’ is based on just such a denial. This is why Plumwood identifies one crucial strategy of ‘backgrounding’ in denial:

Denial can take many forms. Common ways to deny dependency are through making the other inessential, denying the importance of the other’s contribution or even his or her reality, and through mechanisms of focus and attention. (Plumwood, 1993, p. 48)

Drawing on Plumwood and the detailed discussion of mechanisms of denial in Stanley Cohen’s States of Denial (2001), the specificity of denial can be seen in a state ‘in which we know and don’t know at the same time’ (Cohen, 2001, p. 5). This simultaneity captures the location of denial at the nexus between conscious and unconscious. Whereas Cohen focused on the denial of atrocities, the thesis that I would like to develop here concerns broader mechanisms of denial in modern societies; namely, the denial of dependence on relatively unavailable variables – such as nature, physicality and reproduction – through devaluation and suppression. Starting from the feminist critique of dualism, the hegemonic mechanisms of denial in modern societies that currently begin to fail can be understood as those mechanisms that deny dependence on the ‘other of reason’. As we investigate the workings of these mechanisms of denial, their current susceptibility to failure and the exact character of contemporary crises, the feminist critique of dualism can provide a normative compass. In the following sections, I discuss three paradigms that analyse the workings of dualisms and propose ways of breaking with dualist geometries. The focus is on their theorization of dependence and independence, which I understand to be part of the network of dualisms constitutive of structures of domination in modern societies that rely on collective practices of denial. I set out with a discussion of the strategy of dialectics represented by the works of German critical theorist Regina Becker-Schmidt; then I focus on the strategy of entanglement represented by US-American biologist and feminist theorist Donna Haraway; and, finally, tension represented by US-American feminist psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin. The discussion aims to demonstrate how dependency denial works, suggest how we might overcome it and illuminate current crises dynamics.

Dialectics: Regina Becker-Schmidt

Regina Becker-Schmidt’s feminist social theory is closely connected to the Frankfurt school of critical theory. Indeed, Becker-Schmidt can be considered one of the first theorists who have taken a feminist approach to this relational and materialist thrust of critical social theory. ⁴ The core of her theory is the insight that power imbalances in gender relations are supported by the hierarchization of social sectors and vice versa. She understands gender relations as ‘the ensemble of arrangements […] in which women and men are related to each other through forms of division of labor, social relations of dependency and processes of exchange’ (Becker-Schmidt, 2017c, p. 83). ⁵ This describes a constellation that she frames as double relationality: The androcentric accumulation of power according to this view is still ‘mediated by another relationality, namely that between social sectors’ (Becker-Schmidt, 2017c, p. 84). Not only gender relations themselves are hierarchical but also social structure is differentiated unevenly. Thus, Becker-Schmidt’s theory of the ‘double socialization of women’ (Becker-Schmidt, 2017c; Knasmüller et al., 2018) implies that in capitalist societies social structure is itself gendered. Societal hierarchies reflect the valuation of social sectors that appear to be smoothly detached from one another, meaning that consulting and economics are valued more highly than healthcare or education, for example. Becker-Schmidt emphasizes how strongly differentiation fantasies between social sectors and fields of practice contribute to the stabilizing of domination. It is not for nothing that one of her key essays is entitled ‘What is separated by power belongs together socially’. Here, she describes the ‘double character of dualisms’ (Becker-Schmidt, 2017b, p. 185):

Dualisms are, on the one hand, an expression of historical processes of separation, in which elements that belong to one and the same context become detached from one another. […] On the other hand, they mark a distorted social perception. Through polarization, differences are accentuated, while reciprocities are neglected. (Becker-Schmidt, 2017b, p. 185; original emphasis)

She therefore rejects an idea of social differentiation which understands divisions as clean and unmediated. This would produce an unrealistic and distorted picture of social realities, which are constituted by interdependent relationships. That is to say, neither radical dependence nor independence is ever achieved.

According to Becker-Schmidt, the dissociation of private and public and, linked to this, that of wage labour and reproductive labour is particularly significant with regard to the gendered dimensions of socialization. In the necessity of recombining unpaid domestic work and wage labour, which is performed by the figure of the double-burdened woman, it becomes visible that what appears separate and is valued differently belongs together socially. In the work of recombining and mediating between sectors, it becomes clear that the socially separate forms of labour actually stand in relationships of mutual dependence. In terms of a materialist approach, Becker-Schmidt accentuates the interdependent nature of production and reproduction and the work that the mediation between spheres demands especially of women who work in the factory (see Becker-Schmidt, 2017c, pp. 87–88; and on female factory workers see Becker-Schmidt et al., 1985). In particular, the work that mediates the different rationales and relates them to each other is not perceived by society, let alone conceptualized as labour. A situation that feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith also described and theorized with her concepts on adaptive and mediating labour (Smith, 1987). Here, one can think of all the efforts involved in mediating between public concerns and private needs, an example is the practice of helping a child with homework but also the mere effort it takes to switch modes. To replace the mode of the rational worker with the attitude of the loving mother for instance.

Particularly important for my argument is Becker-Schmidt’s approach to dualism through a critique of ideology, which extends her focus on the gendered division of labour. As I have shown, Becker-Schmidt argues that two kinds of linkage are subject to these supposed separations and that their overlaps become invisible as a result: First, the linkages between social sectors and, second, the processes and labour of recombining supposedly separate spheres. In this sense, the ‘functional separation of interdependent social elements […] goes hand in hand with the instrumental linking of the separated’ (Becker-Schmidt, 2017c, p. 86). Obscuring social interdependence also means obscuring the labour that processes, maintains and moderates interdependence, again: for example, the ‘private’ effort to fulfil the public needs in the school system. This recombining work is considered ‘instrumental’ whenever its benefits do not accrue equally to all who contribute to it.

In order to further understand the logic of such processes of valuation and devaluation of social spheres and practices, Becker-Schmidt therefore distinguishes between relations of interdependence and asymmetrical relations of dependency, which are shaped by social relations of power and domination and crystallize in dualisms:

In our modern western society, a form of relationality has historically developed that contradicts the logic of reciprocal dependence of social spheres: Interdependence is not the criterion for influencing social developments. Rather, power is enjoyed by those sectors that represent dominant political-economic interests and strategies of socio-cultural hegemony. (Becker-Schmidt, 2017c, p. 85)

Interdependence is not only rendered invisible, but sectors characterized by a noticeable degree of such interdependence also forfeit opportunities to exercise social power – their power is misjudged, and the fact that they provide the preconditions necessary for domination goes unrecognized. Sectors that serve the interests of domination are often those that claim relative social autonomy. One might think of the ‘laws of the market’ which are often invoked as a detached effective power and appear autonomous vis-à-vis other sectors. Sectors that obviously refer to relations of interdependency, such as healthcare, but also public services in general, are not only subject to devaluation, but their mediating work contributes to concealing the constitutive dependencies that exist, for example, between healthcare and the needs of the private sector.

Thus Becker-Schmidt’s critique of dualism critically examines the processes in which interdependencies between social sectors and fields of practice are concealed. Critical interventions building on this theoretical background make the mutual dependencies visible: the ambivalent structure of separation and linkage that characterizes modern societies according to Becker-Schmidt requires an articulation of relations of interdependency in order to successively shift social values. The break with dualist thought is accomplished through a movement of dialectics resolving into a third: Whereas neither dependence nor independence are ever realistically achieved, interdependence has to be recognized and affirmed; most importantly, independence of social sectors and practices have to be exposed as an illusion.

Entanglement: Donna Haraway

Donna Haraway’s intervention, too, aims to recognize dependency: At the heart of her critique of dualism lies the problematization of a rigid separation of matter and discourse, and nature and culture. Like Becker-Schmidt, she is concerned with making dependency relations visible where separateness is claimed – albeit with an eye for more-than-human constellations. Indeed, the problem of human exceptionalism is understood as an ongoing practice of dependency denial:

[Human exceptionalism] is the premise that humanity alone is not a spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies. Thus, to be human is to be on the opposite side of the Great Divide from all the others and so to be afraid of – and in bloody love with – what goes bump in the night. (Haraway, 2008, p. 11)

Hence, Haraway discusses what it could mean to break with the ‘Great Divide’ between nature and the social, and between human and nature.

She sets out to elaborate her critique of dualism beginning from a critique of social constructivism, or of what she calls ‘productionism’ (Haraway, 1992, p. 297), a paradigm in which it is assumed that the social (human labour, language, etc.) ultimately produces the natural. In particular, a naive social constructivism does not do justice to the intractability and relative unavailability of the world and nature. Rather, many constructivist figures of thought repeat a gesture that is profoundly shaped by dualistic and anthropocentric assumptions. The constructivist thesis that humans, culture, language or the social constitute the world serves to display their contingency and historicity, but at the same time it ‘denaturalizes’ the body and nature (see Haraway, 1992, pp. 297–298). Critical strategies of denaturalization are undoubtedly a sociological and feminist concern, but for Haraway, it is also important to recognize that materiality, bodies and what we call ‘nature’ have an inherent effectiveness. ⁶ An understanding of bodies, entities and nature as a ‘blank page for social inscriptions’ (Haraway, 1988, p. 591) ultimately gives up their reality, because it obscures the fact that they take action and resist total exploitation however partial this resistance may be. Against this background, Haraway argues that it is necessary to grant previously passively conceived ‘objects’ the status of actors. With the recognition that objects have an active status, it is possible to break with the productionist logic of dualisms, that is, their structuring via an active and a passive side: Epistemologically and politically, it opens up the possibility of leaving behind a world in which nature is the raw material of culture and the other of reason is devalued over and over again (see Haraway, 1988, pp. 591–593; Haraway, 1992, pp. 298–300).

Radicalizing this idea, in her late works Haraway proposes the concept of ‘naturecultures’ (Haraway, 2003, p. 1) to describe the interwovenness of nature and culture that finds expression in the fact that animals, humans, technologies and so on are connected with each other in co-constitutive processes of becoming. She elaborates the thesis of such entanglement in the sense of a relational ontology, taking her critique of dualism in an even more rigorous post-anthropocentric direction. It is the concept of ‘companion species’ that encapsulates this ontological understanding of naturalcultural relationality:

Beings do not preexist their relatings. […] The world is a knot in motion. […] There are no pre-constituted subjects and objects, and no single sources, unitary actors, or final ends. […] A bestiary of agencies, kinds of relatings, and scores of time trump the imaginings of even the most baroque cosmologist. For me, that is what companion species signifies. (Haraway, 2003, p. 6; original emphasis)

Companion species describes the co-constitutive becoming of heterogeneous bodies, animals, organisms and entities, which finds expression in various differentiations. This mode of being-in-relation is foundational for Haraway’s works. However, constitutive relationality across species is neither thought of as good per se nor as all-encompassing: ‘Nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something’ (Haraway, 2016, p. 31). Furthermore, relations appear in specific modes, such as dependency or independence. Haraway notoriously theorized the co-constitution of species starting from human–dog relationships. She was therefore not infrequently accused of romanticizing worldly becoming and the entanglement of nature and culture (Dwyer, 2007; Hayles, 2006; Nast, 2006). However, Haraway insists not only on the specificity of relational assemblages but also on their ambivalence, destructiveness and messiness. It is precisely the post-anthropocentric implications of her thought that allow us to consider relationality as ambivalent and always potentially destructive. According to Haraway, the relations commonly associated with ecology or nature by no means merge into something like harmonious wholeness (Haraway, 1991). On the contrary: ‘Sheer contagion. Companion species infect each other all the time. Bodily ethical and political obligation are infectious, or they should be’ (Haraway, 2016, p. 115). The vocabulary of ‘infection’ may be alienating, but Haraway points to a central insight one has to take seriously in conceptualizing not only worldly relationality, but dependency in particular: The normative reference to a re-enchanted relationship to nature and interdependence is problematic because it carries with it a purity requirement that tends to exclude queer embodiments and hybrid identities. Destructiveness, infectivity and queerness belong to ‘nature’, and it must be asked how one can live with and in these ambivalences, at what price and under what circumstances (see also Barad, 2012). A price, according to this perspective, always has to be paid. This is due to humanity’s deep implication – its entanglement – in the world.

Overcoming dualism by highlighting the entanglement of nature and culture requires careful analyses of specific differences, which can always also materialize in destructive ways. Hence, the concepts of dependency and interdependence are not as clearly normative as in Becker-Schmidt’s account. While Becker-Schmidt sees dependency relations as hierarchies of domination and interdependencies positively, as the often invisible interweavings that keep society running, Haraway’s conception of relationality is less clear. Although her critique of dualism is also concerned with clarifying the interdependence of the supposedly external poles, – that is, understanding reproduction and production in their mutual dependence on each other – interdependence can always also be destructive and, conversely, one-sided dependency relations do not always have to mean domination. What a consideration of entanglement does not mean, however, is a peaceful and undifferentiated relationality of species living together happily ever after. Quite the reverse: Haraway emphasizes the ‘mortal entanglement’ (Haraway, 2008, p. 226) of interspecies becoming. Such destructiveness is, on the one hand, to be understood in very basic terms, in the sense of destructive potentials that are inherent to natural cultural processes and are not completely governable but relatively unavailable. But on the other hand, destructiveness in the form of domination is also inherent in the practices of denial that are necessary to reproduce a dualistic world view with all its consequences. However, Haraway’s account does not pay much attention to analysing or explaining the genesis of such practices of denial in formations of structural domination. While Becker-Schmidt points out how interdependence is denied at the level of societal sectors and Haraway shows that interdependence and dependency relations are always accompanied by destructive potentials that can be grasped by analysing dimensions of natural–cultural entanglement, the effects of domination that result from the denial of dependency on the level of the subject can be better understood from the perspective of feminist psychoanalysis, which emphasizes the tension between the two poles of dualism.

Tension: Jessica Benjamin

In The Bonds of Love (1988) and related works, Jessica Benjamin presents an interpretation of early childhood development that argues strongly from the perspective of intersubjectivity. In contrast to positions of ego psychology such as those of Margaret Mahler (1975), and also in contrast to Sigmund Freud, Benjamin understands the detachment of the child less as a linear process of individuation than as a movement in loops that has to establish a balance between self-assertion and recognition by others again and again (Benjamin, 1988, pp. 33–36). However, the aim of her analysis is not only to expand developmental and attachment psychology but above all to investigate the social effects stemming from the privileging of a linear model of individuation. Her thesis is that the privileging of individualization, rationalization and detachment contributes fundamentally to the consolidation of relations of domination and, in particular, hierarchical gender relations.

Against this backdrop, Benjamin’s critical intervention focuses on the effects of dualisms as well. She argues that autonomy (independence) and dependence exist in a relationship of tension that is usually resolved in one direction, whereby historically the preference for independence has prevailed. Against this backdrop, Benjamin is interested in how the tension between dependence and independence can be maintained, both in terms of individual psychology and in society, in order to mitigate or at best dissolve the dominating effects of dualisms (Benjamin, 1988, pp. 48–50). She argues that maintaining this tension could contribute decisively to a reduction of relations of domination as well as to more balanced self-relationships.

Her argument sets out from developmental psychological considerations. Early childhood, according to Benjamin, is characterized by the challenge of understanding and enduring the intersubjective dimension of recognition. By intersubjectivity she means successful forms of agreement in which ‘we know that others exist who think and feel as we do’ (Benjamin, 1988, pp. 29–30). In relations of mutuality, in contrast with the infant being younger it ‘more consciously recognizes the other as like and different’ (Benjamin, 1988, p. 30). This recognition is a key psychological achievement because the other does not have to be split in the child’s perception (in the sense of only bad or only good), and nor does the child have to retreat to fantasies of omnipotence or claims to absoluteness: according to Benjamin, for the experience of authentic intersubjectivity or recognition (and thus psychological development), claims to absoluteness have to be given up in the process of recognizing others as different in their significance for the self. Taking this seriously, the overvaluation of the aspect of detachment and differentiation in many models of developmental psychology, including Freud’s, must be countered, because it perpetuates a ‘dualistic view of the individual’ (Benjamin, 1988, p. 50). The formation of the individual as mere detachment suggests that others only endanger one’s independence and do not enable it in the first place. According to Benjamin, such denial of the enabling aspects of dependency on others is closely linked to specifically modern forms of domination:

When the conflict between dependence and independence becomes too intense, the psyche gives up the paradox in favor of an opposition. Polarity, the conflict of opposites, replaces the balance within the self. This polarity sets the stage for defining the self in terms of a movement away from dependency. It also sets the stage for domination. Opposites can no longer be integrated; one side is devalued, the other idealized (splitting). (Benjamin, 1988, p. 50)

The lack of integration of opposites is consequential, though ‘integration’ – in the sense of ‘completion’ – may not be the right word here. For Benjamin is not concerned with the creation of a harmonious unity of self and other (which never existed); rather, she insists on a productive tension that must be maintained, which is why she calls neither for a dialectics resolving into a third nor for entanglement. The current

structure of individuation which permeates our culture, and which privileges separation over dependence, cannot simply be countered by its mirror opposite. Rather, it must be criticized in light of a vision of a balance in which neither pole dominates the other, in which the paradox is sustained. (Benjamin, 1988, pp. 82–83)

Benjamin sees an increasing social inability to endure the paradox of being dependent in order to achieve states of relative independence, or: forms of ‘relational autonomy’ (Mackenzie & Stoljar, 2000). To maintain the tension between dependency and independence would mean breaking with tendencies towards polarized desires, in which we long for ‘perfect oneness’ (Benjamin, 1988, p. 173) on the one hand or for complete independence on the other: However, the two idealized desires of ‘unity’ or ‘independence’ are exaggerated in a culture in which maternal care is relegated to the private sphere and appears to have no justification in the public sphere. The dualism of the private and the public is therefore strongly enmeshed with that of dependence and independence:

I believe that this insistence on the division between public and private is sustained by the fear that anything public or ‘outside’ would merely intensify individual helplessness, that only the person we have not yet recognized as outside (mother and wife) can be trusted to provide us with care, that the only safe dependence is on someone who is not part of the struggle of all against all, and indeed, who is herself not independent. Thus we can only protect our autonomy and mask our vulnerability by keeping nurturance confined to its own sphere. (Benjamin, 1988, p. 202)

The very ideology of the private sphere as something like a ‘safe haven’ is the instrument and effect of a fear of being at the mercy of others and a hatred of everything that shows itself to be needy and thus reminds us of our precariousness. Care needs its own sphere in a society that exaggerates autonomy and camouflages its own vulnerability, because the memory of early childhood dependence can hardly be endured (cf. Benjamin, 1988, pp. 202–203; see also Butler, 1997). The psychoanalytical perspective on dualisms thus shows that efforts at denial in modern societies do not only have an economic basis, but are also interwoven with self- and gender relations, whose self-assertion is itself linked to the denial of dependency. Where Becker-Schmidt calls for a recognition of the interdependencies that keep society running and Haraway asks us to theorize their entanglement Benjamin proposes practices that uphold a tension between dependency and independence.

Conclusion: Towards a critique of dependency denial

The three strategies for overcoming dualist thought discussed here (dialectics, entanglement, tension) can be comprehended as different strategies to address the modern denial of dependency. Feminist positions demonstrate how dualist thought continues to have effects that stabilize relations of domination understood as practices of denying dependency. This is the shared starting point of the critiques developed by Regina Becker-Schmidt, Donna Haraway and Jessica Benjamin, but their solution strategies differ significantly in their normative implications. For a critique of modern mechanisms of dependency denial, there is something to learn from each of them. Becker-Schmidt’s strategy of dialectics resolving into a focus on interdependencies calls to render interdependencies visible and to valorize them. The favour for interdependency comes with a relative normative certainty and clearly valorizes interdependency as an alternative to the dualism of independence and dependence that are both rejected as illusionary states. In this way the tension, Benjamin and Haraway call for, is tendentially ruled out. What gets lost is the insight that ‘contradictions […] do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically’ (Haraway, 1991, p. 149). In Becker-Scmidt, however, interdependence comes into play as a kind of ‘good third’ and ‘larger whole’ – the good version of dependency, understood as a form of interwovenness which maintains society and nature. But even though this complicates the picture, the mere revaluation of interdependence vis-à-vis independence leaves the framework of reference untouched. This problem has been referred to by Plumwood (1993, pp. 31–32), who vehemently rejects such a ‘reversal’ of dualism as a critical strategy. And it is true: the mere celebration of interdependence and connectedness leaves out the ambivalent character of human and more-than-human relations that is emphasized by Haraway's strategy of entanglement. Interestingly, though, Becker-Schmidt criticized strategies of entanglement for a similar reason:

The preference for gradual nuances and the rejection of difference seems to owe itself to a hope in the binding power of the similar. Being connected to what is close obviously promises sisterhood, kinship, non-alienation. The opposition of similarity and difference, however, exposes itself to the accusation of dualization. (Becker-Schmidt, 2017a, p. 127)

Whereas Becker-Schmidt’s dialectical strategy leaves the framework of valuation intact, the emphasis on entanglement may appear to outlaw difference. This, however, does not do justice to either one of the approaches. The strategy of entanglement does not favour similarity but a focus on processes of specific differentiations in their ambivalent and destructive character; and the strategy of dialectics as put forward by Becker-Schmidt allows dependency, connectedness and dedifferentiation to be seen at all on an analytical level and on a normative level to be valued strategically. Though relations of dependence cannot and should not be affirmed across the board, they cannot be seen as merely negative or detrimental. Rather, their functioning has to be analysed closely in order to distinguish not so much between dependency and independence, but between different forms and degrees of dependency, such as the afore-mentioned mode of interdependence. Thinking with and through dependency cannot mean just defining a line between dependency and its alleged opposite (be it superior or inferior); rather it means thinking dependencies as a set of heterogeneous relations that have to be taken into account sociologically. A strategic affirmation of dependency relations, however, can be of help to realize Benjamin’s vision of subjects as well as societies that endure the tension between dependency and independence. Moreover, taking psychoanalysis as a starting point sheds light on the fact that not only self-assertion in modern societies is very much structured by dependency denial (see Amlinger & Nachtwey, 2022) but is also linked with the phantasies regarding the omnipotent workings of market exchange (Feiner, 1995).

Using feminist critiques of dualism as the basis for an analysis of dependency relations makes visible the effort at denial within late-modern societies and subjects on different levels. Of course, contemporary societies must rely on some practices of dependency denial and most mechanisms function very well: The entirety of dependencies on supply chains, healthcare systems, caregivers, natural resources, the air, other people, bacteria, viruses, infrastructures and so on cannot all be thought about all the time – a certain degree of denial is necessary. Current experiences of crises, however, bring about realizations of dependency, and it becomes increasingly clear how dependency denial fails. As I have argued here, the intensity of crisis experiences is fed in particular by the experience of substantial and not directly governable dependence on reason’s other, above all ‘nature’ but also healthcare, more-than-human others, bodies and so on. These experiences remind people of their own vulnerability, physicality and dependence on human and non-human others. Whereas contemporary crises are to a significant extent crises of the mechanisms of dependency denial, current practices of crisis management mostly aim to (re)establish independence – meaning that they disregard the potential of an affirmative politics of dependency and maintain the status quo and with it the hegemonic practices of dependency denial. The dependencies, which become visible in environmental and economic breakdown, are of course not affirmable as such but continuing to deny them will only fuel the crisis dynamics further. Their negative force – the destructive force of flood disasters, for instance – paradoxically often leads to an even fiercer fight against dependency and strengthens its denial in the effort to overcome the respective crisis. Against such failed – reactionary – crisis management, which leads to further crises, it is important not just to think and act against dependencies, but to think in more differentiated ways about forms of dependency and how they are entangled. A politics that builds on the necessity of critically working through dependency relations confronts the task of asking which dependency relations contemporary societies want to afford. Painful as it may be, this question forces societies to debate and think about how to deal better with finitude, necessity and our ‘nature’ – as one fundamentally dependent on otherness and others.