Rematerializing Feminism

Abstract

The “cultural turn” in feminism has isolated issues of gender and sexuality from their material conditions. This article addresses this turn by engaging such issues as “gender,” “history,” “agency,” “modernity,” “postmodernity,” “essentialism,” “theory,” “class,” “sexuality,” “identity politics,” “labor” and the “concrete” in their materiality. While “post” theories have treated these and related practices as “cultural” effects and regarded them as (semi-)autonomous acts of resistance, culture is never isolated from its material base and cultural resistance, in and of itself, is not capable of transforming social totality. The most effective way to undertake such a transformation is by class struggle, which brings about “root” changes through reorganizing the relations of labor and capital and puts an end to social class. All social differences, such as gender, are the effect of class — the inequality of labor.