Further materials towards a theory of the man child

[curryeater]

thenewinquiry.com/essays/further-materials-toward-a-theory-of-the-man-child/

Just wanted to put this here, nice piece

I think Patriarchy is a problematic theory in some way in which some feminist use the term, that's all, but useful shorthand in the right context.

Patriarchy literally means rule of the father in a male-dominated family. It is a social and ideological construct which considers men (who are the patriarchs) as superior to women. Around this grew up laws and institutions to protect the rights of the patriarch and the property laws of men. Women are subordinated to men because men create value/wealth, they produce and women reproduce, the products of their wombs being male property.

Of course much has happened and we now have a situation where women's experiences in the first world seem far removed from this. But for me key to understanding why patriarchal relations exist is to A) understand what patriarchy is in very specific terms B) understand how property relations are key to understanding social relations. Patriarchy as a theory seems to me incomplete if you divide it from class relations, ie property/social relations. So for me class is a more useful theoretical framework. But, I am boring on this point and many feminists wouldn't agree with me.

Property, in some of the ways you are talking about Mini, links into reproductive ownership. Lots of the customs around sex and marriage are related to the imperative that the man knows his offspring are his own and not some usuper.

Buffy, if you're interested, a lot of this comes from evolutionary physcology (sorry, bit of dirty word on these boards).

I see where you're going. Some EP is gumph but the better stuff makes predictions that then then turn out to be supported by the evidence. What makes me crazy is how the press and other 'interested' parties like to interprete it as 'biological determinism': the debate has been had - our understanding of the brain (as it is at the present moment) does not support this.

But it is the male pride that needs assurance or is it to do with patrilineal inheritance?

Must read Foucault, never have, adds to the to do list.

I have just read all of the Nina Power piece. She says "What, ultimately, would it mean to let the Young-Girl speak for herself and not through the categories imposed upon her by a culture that heralds her as the metaphysical apex of civilization while simultaneously denigrating her, or even the categories that Tiqqun mobilize to take her apart in a subtly different way? Behind every Young-Girl?s arse hides a bunch of rich white men: the task is surely not, then, to destroy the Young-Girl, but to destroy the system that makes her, and makes her so unhappy, whoever ?she? is" I don't know but so far reading the material, I haven't yet encountered the notion that the "young girl" is responsible for the predicament. Instead it seems to say that as people become more invested in themselves, more introvert, anxious, depressed "exist­ence has become a battleground upon which neuroses, phobias, somatizations, depression, and anxiety" are played out, that capital again seeks to fill the void with promises of fixes, more consumer products to cure the individuals malaise.

In fact Tiqqun seems to liken the colonization of the person by capitalism to a drug rather than as a social system that values everything and nothing. The condition isn't social in the respect that it is about relations between people, but maybe that is the point. maybe relations between people have been obscured, are no longer visable because we are all becoming narcissistic and self absorbed. Not only does it prevent people from understanding the exploitation inherent in capitalism but stops anyone from noticing the inequality in the first place.

To say that the young girl is the apex of civilisation and then to denigrate her, seems to mirror the conflicting messages women receive, go to work and make use of your education, stay at home with the children, we know you feel guilty. Women is needed as worker, consumer and mother. We must invest to realise social, emotional, sexual capital. We must also invest our energies into the next generation, this requires working, consuming and mothering. Men really are superfluous to the needs of capital and yet we still have the rich white men.

So if the history of humanity is driven by property relations and competition between men, they really have started an end game. mmmm, I may of course got this all wrong!

I don't know anything about Evo-Psych, there was a poster a while back who knew quite a bit about it.

My starting point is always historical materialism. Some feminist have tried to develop a historical materialism that is more feminist, critiquing Marx and expanding upon his theory. I'm not certain that the undertaking was necessary, except that Marx was taken up by men, analysed by men, understood and explained.......by men. So you end up with a male centric reading, ho hum, as with everything I suppose!

I go round a bit in circles: one minute I am in despair at an implication that women can be saved by work because of the implicit evil of capitalism and the exploitation entailed in earning within it; the next minute I consider the alternative, and look at women I know whose childbearing, illness, or a combination, or other things, have excluded them from the labour market and how desperately vulnerable they are relative to those who can get jobs, and I am despair at the plight of the workless and economically dependent (there is one friend in particular whose story is just haunting me because I have only just found out how badly she is being abused by her husband)

I suppose within capitalism you have to support the system to get anything at all out of it (however meagre) and you can't just sack it all off unilaterally, and I have leftie guilt about that, about being in the system, but goddammit I will not be made any more vulnerable than I am

No, unfortunately ended with Marxist feminists and materialist/socialist feminists in different camps. And I think you have nailed it really, if you go back to the writings and read it, you won't come away with a different understanding that is particularly female centric . The odd thing is though because men have been dominant they develop a position that is often exclusionary to women. Or to turn that on its head, is it that feminists in the late 70s felt that they needed a different theoretical starting point. But then men as producers focused on production and couldn't see how the theory extended to reproduction.

Marx employed the concept of class more flexibly than many socialists do now. He referred to women as a class,

He compared the position of women to ?slaves,? within the bourgeois family. ?In private property of every type, the slavery of the members of the family......always implicit since they are made use of and exploited by the head of the family.?

Classical Marxist theory [insert male centric and reconstituted for male approval, trade unionist misogynists etc] defined class in terms of exploitation, how surplus product/surplus labor was appropriated from the workers.

Classical Marxism applied this concept of class to former modes of production, feudal etc, but that would also include slave labour, which of course is unpaid labour, the slave is owned and exploited for no pay. Much as women were historically seen as property that reproduced a product (child) the value appropriated by slave owner (husband) in ways such as dowries and exchange of property between families and inheritance.

And I totally get what CurryEater says, what else can we do but just keep plodding on.

Are there any liberal democracies that aren't also capitalist in essence? I wonder how these things go hand-in-hand...if we can't get away from people exploiting other people then we just have to plod on, working away from inside the system to make improvements.

Are there viable alternatives to capitalism?

Shot answer: No
Male or female no one wants to be average. We inherently judge people, we want status.
That's what give people the drive to improve on themselves thus making the world a slightly more comfortable place to live.

I'm sure the ancient Egyptians, the Assyrians and those isolated tribes think that they have reached the pinnacle of human civilisation too I'm sure slave owners thought that they had reached a stage of economic development that couldn't be improved as well.

I'm sure at some point humanity will look back on this age and think we are savages for allowing people to starve, for exploiting Africa and other nations, allowing child labour so we can wear cheap clothes, privatising water and health and all the other many things we are driven to accept so that the wheels stay on this outdated and barbaric system, one we wage war to extend and protect, killing many millions of people.

This thread is very interesting (just about hanging in there understanding it ). I've been reading about the theory of peaceable societies and liberal democracies going hand-in-hand - and by extention, these socities are (all?) capitalist. I think this reflects human nature pretty fundamentally - we all want to keep our slice of the cake. And obviously, peaceable socties are good for everyone - I can't imagine women's rights would be bettered if we were constantly in a state of war.

This reminds me of a debate I have on an unrelated theme - my friend thinks the world will come to protect the planet/natural ressources etc through the force of education. She's committed to this. I always argue that people are fundamentally too selfish to ever do this. At times, an intellectual elite may agree or campaign to do this but it's an idea that can't 'spread'.

In terms of capitalism, people would have to stop consuming (in excess of their basic needs). I've seen very few people who would even accept to give up their yearly holiday!

The viable alternative to capitalism will be those systems that replace it when it collapses. Some of them will probably not be very nice. it's a good idea to try and work on the nicer alternatives now rather than running around in a state of complete trauma and misery when the inevitable collapse happens.