MAKING FEMINISM MATTER AGAIN by Jennifer M. Cotter BA, Syracuse University, 1992 MA ...

283 Pages·2007·0.74 MB·English

MAKING FEMINISM MATTER AGAIN

by
Jennifer M. Cotter
B.A., Syracuse University, 1992
M.A., Syracuse University, 1995

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

University of Pittsburgh

2007
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

This dissertation was presented

by

Jennifer M. Cotter

It was defended on
April 5, 2007
and approved by
Jonathan Arac, Professor, English, University of Pittsburgh
Eric Clarke, Associate Professor, English, University of Pittsburgh
Barbara Foley, Professor, English, Rutgers University, Newark
Dissertation Advisor: Marcia Landy, Professor, English, University of Pittsburgh

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Copyright © by Jennifer M. Cotter
2007
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MAKING FEMINISM MATTER AGAIN
Jennifer M. Cotter, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2007

“Making Feminism Matter Again” analyzes new shifts in gender and their social
representations in feminist theory. I take as my point of departure the “crisis” of feminism and
the loss of its explanatory and transformative effectivity in the wake of the cultural turn, which, I
argue, was a class development in feminism brought on by the economic crisis of profit in
capitalism in the late 20th century. I question its main assumptions of gender, articulated in texts
by Derrida, Foucault, Negri, Fraser, Butler, Gibson-Graham, Sandoval, Probyn, Wiegman, Felski
and others, for the way they culturally rewrite materialist concepts such as “class,” “division of
labor,” “ideology,” and “history” and represent cultural shifts in gender as “constitutive” of
material change—and ultimately as progress—for women within capitalism.
“Making Feminism Matter Again” re-examines the historical significance of cultural
shifts, including shifts in feminist theory as well as new gendered forms of work (“caring” and
“service labor”), family, consumption, diet, clothing, sexuality, and love. In analyzing gender
now, I demonstrate that culturalism analytically dissolves gender into autonomous differences
and “ethics,” and uses cultural values to obscure over the crisis of transnational capitalism’s class
relations and deepening economic exploitation of women. As a result, cultural feminisms are not
an intervention but an affirmation of the way things are.
I argue for a historical materialist theory of gender in the tradition of Marx, Engels,
Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai, Eleanor Leacock, and such contemporary critics
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as Angela Davis, Delia Aguilar, Elizabeth Armstrong, and Teresa Ebert, which shows that
permutations in gender are not new because the wage-labor/capital relations that exploit women
have not changed. Instead the changes are an updating of gender to adjust women to changes in
the division of labor under which surplus-value is extracted.
In the intersection of labor theory and cultural theory, “Making Feminism Matter Again”
maps the material relations of gender now. This map is also a materialist re-mapping of feminist
theory and the development of a new model for a materialist analytics of gender as a way to
contribute to restoring the explanatory and transformative effectivity of feminism now.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE..................................................................................................................................VII
PART I: A WAKE FOR FEMINISM.........................................................................................1
1.0 FEMINISM IN CRISIS...............................................................................................2
PART II: CURING THE CRISIS (AS USUAL)......................................................................60
2.0 THE CULTURAL TURN AND LABOR IN TRANSITION.................................61
3.0 THE TEXTUAL HEALING...................................................................................130
4.0 THE “CONCRETE” BODY...................................................................................162
5.0 THE EMPIRE’S NEW MORALITY.....................................................................198
PART III. MAKING “CRISIS” (UNUSUALLY) CRITICAL.............................................241
6.0 HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND GENDER................................................242
BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................................................................................265

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PREFACE

Like all dissertations, this dissertation has benefited from the intellectual insights, analysis and
critiques of many persons. I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee—
Professor Marcia Landy, Professor Jonathan Arac, Professor Eric Clarke, and Professor Barbara
Foley—for their intellectual patience, advise, and critiques throughout the course of my doctoral
studies. I also owe special thanks to the Department of English’s Graduate Administrator
Connie Arelt for her administrative assistance while I completed my dissertation.
Research for this dissertation was made possible in part by a University of Pittsburgh
Provost’s Development Fund Dissertation Fellowship and a Lillian B. Lawler Dissertation
Fellowship.
For years of patience, their high regard for life-time learning and a critical humanities
education for all persons, and their practical wisdom and understanding of the economic, time,
and intellectual commitment required to complete one’s education, I am deeply grateful to my
parents, Venetia Cotter and Thomas Cotter, my grandparents (now deceased) Thomas Tortora
and Cabiria Tortora, and my siblings Bridget Cotter, Melinda Morris, Richard Cotter, and Steven
Cotter—all of whom have struggled against many economic contradictions in the course of their
own educations. I am especially grateful to Bridget and Steven for their economic help at very
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crucial times, despite not having many resources themselves. I am also thankful for the support
of Walter Otto and Pamela Otto, Christine Baron and Bruce Baron, and Virginia Murray.
The completion of my doctoral studies would not have been possible without the
encouragement of Jesie Sicklesteel, Eleni Anastasiou, Catherine Kelly, Richard Hawthorne,
Jennifer Hawthorne, Alpay Ulku and, especially, Jennifer O’Brien and Anne-Marie Gallagher.
Throughout my research and writing of this dissertation, I have learned and continue to
learn on a daily basis from the sustained intellectual support, solidarity, commitment to public
pedagogy, and rigorous critique from Kimberly DeFazio, Robert Faivre, Amrohini Sahay, Julie
Torrant, Stephen Tumino and Robert Wilkie.
Lastly, I am deeply indebted in all regards to the critiques, discussions, debates, and
unwavering support from Matthew Otto.

This dissertation is dedicated to my sisters, Bridget Cotter and Melinda Morris—who
know all too well the ruthlessness of capitalism on women and the need for feminism in the
interests of the working class..

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PART I: A WAKE FOR FEMINISM
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1.0 FEMINISM IN CRISIS
Along with the end of ideology, the end of history, and the end of socialism, feminism is also
said to have ended. The “end” projects are, of course, all grounded in a theology and their goal is
to to put certain practices such as ideology, history or socialism, outside the reach of history. My
goal here is not to offer a reading of the “end of feminism” as a supersession of the existing
material relations of economic exploitation and social injustice, and therefore a new opening to
history (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program) or a re-writing of the “ends” before this “end”
(Jean François Lyotard, “Re-writing Modernity”). Rather, I am interested in the specific project
of the “end of feminism” in the sense of an exhaustion. Feminism is said to have been exhausted
(“ended”) because, for example, it is believed that the project of women’s freedom is over. It is
over, the argument goes, because feminism is in “crisis.” Feminism has lost its way. Many
women have become successful and have abandoned projects concerned with women’s freedom,
others hope to become successful and talk about “post-feminism,” and many have simply given
up and have concluded that there is no feminism, the project is finished.
The notion that feminism is in “crisis” is, of course, by no means new and has been a
major theme of feminism itself, particularly in the decades following World War II and the
material conditions of the West at the end of “the long boom” of capitalism roughly from the end
of World War II to the oil crisis of 1973. In a sense, feminism has always been in crisis in that
historically it came to being in the material crisis of the so called “democratic” societies of
capitalism and their continuing social injustice, economic inequality, and exploitation. What has
changed is the way the “crisis” has been interpreted and the strategies deployed to deal with it.
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