Four

It is by now commonplace among ludic postmodernists and feminists, including many socialist feminists, to dismiss the insistence on relations of production as economic reductionism and to discredit the concept of any determination of the "superstructure" (e.g., the cultural, ideological, representational, political, juridical, etc.) by the economic base. This is, for instance, the core argument against historical or dialectical materialism and for cultural materialism in Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean's Materialist Feminisms (e.g., 61-62). It is necessary to discuss this book at some length since it articulates many of the questions I have raised in this chapter — the problem of feminism, critique and materialism — in direct opposition to my own argument. A critique of their book, therefore, will provide a more open contestation between my argument and that of ludic feminism. Landry and MacLean's book attempts "to present a history of the debates between Marxist and feminist social and cultural theorists in the 1960's, 1970's and early 1980's, primarily in Britain and the United States, and to analyse what has happened to transform those debates in recent years" (ix). But as deconstructionists they are quite ambivalent about the project of writing a history and end up with what they themselves describe as a "schematic and inconsistent" "chronological narrative." Materialist Feminisms is especially representative of the discursive, post-Marxist turn in socialist feminism and demonstrates some of the limitations of this ludic mode.

They begin their book by saying that "this is a book about feminism and Marxism written when many people are proclaiming the end of socialism and the end of feminism.... We find these claims to be both premature and misleading" (vii). However, the authors are deeply invested in poststructuralism, especially deconstruction, as the ground of their knowledges, and this leads them to turn Marxism into a textuality that they try to deconstruct. In fact, the book expends considerable energy trying to displace and erase Marxism altogether from materialism and from feminism. Thus, while the book begins by treating Marxist, socialist, and materialist feminism as nearly synonymous, it concludes by saying: "Need materialism be only an alias for Marxism? We hope that by now the distinction between Marxist feminism and materialist feminism is clear" (229). But in writing a materialist feminism without Marxism, the book offers little more than a left-liberal, poststructuralist "identity politics of undone identities."

The core of Landry and McLean's notion of materialism is an adaptation of Raymond Williams' notions of "cultural materialism" and "green socialism" which they graft onto deconstruction. While they continue to call their position "historical materialism" (following Williams' revisions), they, in fact, fundamentally break with the tradition of historical materialism and instead subscribe to the, by now, dominant discursive conception of materialism:

the production of signs, of signifying systems, of ideology, representations, and discourses is itself a material activity with material effects. Instead of arguing that the material or economic base produces certain effects, like culture and ideology, as part of its superstructure, a cultural materialist would argue that ideology and the discourses generated by social institutions are themselves located in material practices which have material effects that affect even the economic structures of the base. (61)

This issue of the "materiality of the many signifying practices" and whether or not cultural, ideological and discursive practices (superstructure) are determined by the "material or economic base" is the basic conflict between a cultural/discursive materialism and historical materialism. As Landry and MacLean explain, "from a cultural materialist position, arguments for the determinism of the "base' suffer from economic reductionism" (61-62).

But it is not really "reductionism" that disturbs Landry and MacLean since they seem to have no trouble at all in accepting the post-marxist view of Laclau and Mouffe that "history and the real are discursive" (1 40), which is itself quite a reductionist and deterministic position. What Landry and MacLean, like other poststructuralists and postmarxists, are doing is simply replacing "economic reductionism" with a "discursive reductionism" and calling it a new non-deterministic materialism.

Thus, Landry and MacLean claim that the "more adequately materialist feminist reading" is one that reads both Marx and the world "as texts," for the world and history are "always discursively constructed" (139-140). Their main argument against Marx (and for deconstruction), thus involves reading "Marx's concept of value," following Gayatri Spivak, "as a catachresis or pun," which "not only shifts the grounds of debate from a tendency towards economic reductionism but opens potentially productive contradictions in Marx's texts" (64). But "surplus value" in Marx is the profit gained from the appropriation and exploitation of the contradictions in the social divisions of labour in production. To turn it into a linguistic pun, not only erases a powerful explanatory concept, but it also "shifts the grounds of debate" from social contradictions over the exploitation of people's lives and labour to the play of textual differences. The ultimate goal of such readings of the "labour theory of value" in Marx is to turn it into a concept analogous to "value" in Saussure (Course in General Linguistics 111-122). However, "value" in language is a "local" condition of meaningfulness (Saussure 116). Signs acquire their "value" by "opposition," to use Saussure's own term, but this "opposition" is itself the outcome of prior material oppositions which Voloshinov effectively discusses as the oppositions of classes: language is "an arena of class struggle," that is, a site in the struggle over the extraction of surplus value (Marxism and the Philosophy of Language 23). The meaning of the sign "black," in other words, is not determined simply by a local, immanent "opposition" to white but by the way "black" and "white" are constructed and given meaning in the process of production. immanently it would be difficult to explain why "black market" is a term of derogation and 'white lie" is a term of justification and thus acceptance. "Black" in black market is negative because of what is outside discourse: the race and class antagonisms over the social divisions of labour and expropriations of surplus value — antagonisms which are made intelligible and fought out in the arena of discourse. "Surplus value" in the labour theory of value, in short, determines not only the value of the sign but of all systems of intelligibilities in class societies (Alex Callinicos, Race and Class 16-39).

However, for discursive materialists, in spite of their formal protests, discourse in their practices determines not only the "real" but also social and political change. Materialist feminism, then — as put forth by Landry and MacLean and the majority of ludic postmodernists and feminists — becomes a discursive "politics of difference" sensitive to the "leaky distinctions" among questions of race, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, post-coloniality, religion, and cultural identity, as well as class and gender" (90). Materialist feminism is reduced, in short, to what Landry and MacLean celebrate as a poststructuralist "identity politics of undone identities." But such an identity politics completely displaces the transformative struggle against "interlocking systems of oppression — racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression," called for by earlier materialist feminists, such as those of the Combahee River Collective (145). This substitution of a politics of difference reunderstands power relations, following Foucault (History of Sexuality, l, 85-102), as reversible relations of difference and rearticulates binaries, oppositions and hierarchies as discursive categories and practices that can be "reversed ... [and] displaced" by a "deconstructive reading." But such a rhetorical displacement of binaries does not eliminate the real existing social and historical binaries between exploiter and exploited. it simply covers them over, concealing their grounding in the social divisions of labour and the relations of production.

It is by now commonplace among ludic postmodernists and feminists, including many socialist feminists, to dismiss the insistence on relations of production as economic reductionism and to discredit the concept of any determination of the "superstructure" (e.g., the cultural, ideological, representational, political, juridical, etc.) by the economic base. This is, for instance, the core argument against historical or dialectical materialism and for cultural materialism in Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean's Materialist Feminisms (e.g., 61-62). It is necessary to discuss this book at some length since it articulates many of the questions I have raised in this chapter — the problem of feminism, critique and materialism — in direct opposition to my own argument. A critique of their book, therefore, will provide a more open contestation between my argument and that of ludic feminism. Landry and MacLean's book attempts "to present a history of the debates between Marxist and feminist social and cultural theorists in the 1960's, 1970's and early 1980's, primarily in Britain and the United States, and to analyse what has happened to transform those debates in recent years" (ix). But as deconstructionists they are quite ambivalent about the project of writing a history and end up with what they themselves describe as a "schematic and inconsistent" "chronological narrative." Materialist Feminisms is especially representative of the discursive, post-Marxist turn in socialist feminism and demonstrates some of the limitations of this ludic mode.

They begin their book by saying that "this is a book about feminism and Marxism written when many people are proclaiming the end of socialism and the end of feminism.... We find these claims to be both premature and misleading" (vii). However, the authors are deeply invested in poststructuralism, especially deconstruction, as the ground of their knowledges, and this leads them to turn Marxism into a textuality that they try to deconstruct. In fact, the book expends considerable energy trying to displace and erase Marxism altogether from materialism and from feminism. Thus, while the book begins by treating Marxist, socialist, and materialist feminism as nearly synonymous, it concludes by saying: "Need materialism be only an alias for Marxism? We hope that by now the distinction between Marxist feminism and materialist feminism is clear" (229). But in writing a materialist feminism without Marxism, the book offers little more than a left-liberal, poststructuralist "identity politics of undone identities."

The core of Landry and McLean's notion of materialism is an adaptation of Raymond Williams' notions of "cultural materialism" and "green socialism" which they graft onto deconstruction. While they continue to call their position "historical materialism" (following Williams' revisions), they, in fact, fundamentally break with the tradition of historical materialism and instead subscribe to the, by now, dominant discursive conception of materialism:

the production of signs, of signifying systems, of ideology, representations, and discourses is itself a material activity with material effects. Instead of arguing that the material or economic base produces certain effects, like culture and ideology, as part of its superstructure, a cultural materialist would argue that ideology and the discourses generated by social institutions are themselves located in material practices which have material effects that affect even the economic structures of the base. (61)

This issue of the "materiality of the many signifying practices" and whether or not cultural, ideological and discursive practices (superstructure) are determined by the "material or economic base" is the basic conflict between a cultural/discursive materialism and historical materialism. As Landry and MacLean explain, "from a cultural materialist position, arguments for the determinism of the "base' suffer from economic reductionism" (61-62).

But it is not really "reductionism" that disturbs Landry and MacLean since they seem to have no trouble at all in accepting the post-marxist view of Laclau and Mouffe that "history and the real are discursive" (1 40), which is itself quite a reductionist and deterministic position. What Landry and MacLean, like other poststructuralists and postmarxists, are doing is simply replacing "economic reductionism" with a "discursive reductionism" and calling it a new non-deterministic materialism.

Thus, Landry and MacLean claim that the "more adequately materialist feminist reading" is one that reads both Marx and the world "as texts," for the world and history are "always discursively constructed" (139-140). Their main argument against Marx (and for deconstruction), thus involves reading "Marx's concept of value," following Gayatri Spivak, "as a catachresis or pun," which "not only shifts the grounds of debate from a tendency towards economic reductionism but opens potentially productive contradictions in Marx's texts" (64). But "surplus value" in Marx is the profit gained from the appropriation and exploitation of the contradictions in the social divisions of labour in production. To turn it into a linguistic pun, not only erases a powerful explanatory concept, but it also "shifts the grounds of debate" from social contradictions over the exploitation of people's lives and labour to the play of textual differences. The ultimate goal of such readings of the "labour theory of value" in Marx is to turn it into a concept analogous to "value" in Saussure (Course in General Linguistics 111-122). However, "value" in language is a "local" condition of meaningfulness (Saussure 116). Signs acquire their "value" by "opposition," to use Saussure's own term, but this "opposition" is itself the outcome of prior material oppositions which Voloshinov effectively discusses as the oppositions of classes: language is "an arena of class struggle," that is, a site in the struggle over the extraction of surplus value (Marxism and the Philosophy of Language 23). The meaning of the sign "black," in other words, is not determined simply by a local, immanent "opposition" to white but by the way "black" and "white" are constructed and given meaning in the process of production. immanently it would be difficult to explain why "black market" is a term of derogation and 'white lie" is a term of justification and thus acceptance. "Black" in black market is negative because of what is outside discourse: the race and class antagonisms over the social divisions of labour and expropriations of surplus value — antagonisms which are made intelligible and fought out in the arena of discourse. "Surplus value" in the labour theory of value, in short, determines not only the value of the sign but of all systems of intelligibilities in class societies (Alex Callinicos, Race and Class 16-39).

However, for discursive materialists, in spite of their formal protests, discourse in their practices determines not only the "real" but also social and political change. Materialist feminism, then — as put forth by Landry and MacLean and the majority of ludic postmodernists and feminists — becomes a discursive "politics of difference" sensitive to the "leaky distinctions" among questions of race, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, post-coloniality, religion, and cultural identity, as well as class and gender" (90). Materialist feminism is reduced, in short, to what Landry and MacLean celebrate as a poststructuralist "identity politics of undone identities." But such an identity politics completely displaces the transformative struggle against "interlocking systems of oppression — racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression," called for by earlier materialist feminists, such as those of the Combahee River Collective (145). This substitution of a politics of difference reunderstands power relations, following Foucault (History of Sexuality, l, 85-102), as reversible relations of difference and rearticulates binaries, oppositions and hierarchies as discursive categories and practices that can be "reversed ... [and] displaced" by a "deconstructive reading." But such a rhetorical displacement of binaries does not eliminate the real existing social and historical binaries between exploiter and exploited. it simply covers them over, concealing their grounding in the social divisions of labour and the relations of production.