Florida State University Department of Philosophy

The Concept of Alienation and Feminism

Author(s): Janet Trapp Slagter
Source: Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 155-164
Published by: Florida State University Department of Philosophy
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23559011
Accessed: 06-04-2016 23:51 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Florida State University Department of Philosophy is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access to Social Theory and Practice

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Concept of Alienation and Feminism

Sandra Bartky has pointed out that many socialist feminists do not
agree on what their subject matter should be called. In some part this
is due to the differing degrees of allegiance these writers exhibit
towards Marx and Marxist interpretation of categories that socialist
feminists find relevant to women's experience. Bartky describes
some of the shortcomings of Marxist orthodoxy these feminist
theorists have analyzed.1
In addition to these, Professor Bartky finds Marx's theory of
alienation inadequate to express women's special alienation which
shows itself in the male domination of culture, in sexual suppres
sion, sexual objectification, and estrangement from bodily poten
tial.2 The fragmentation of the person and prohibition against ex
pressing human creativity that these forms of estrangement express
present a paradigmatic case of Marxian alienation. Using body parts
and functions to represent and evaluate women is parallel to repre
senting, by the products and activities of coerced production, the
value of laborers. Women, as genitally sexualized bodies, and
workers, as machines for production, are equally prevented from
realizing their full humanity (Marx's "species-being"), from pro
ducing freely and reciprocally, for their own needs.
Having argued for the condition of women in contemporary
society as a special example of alienation, Bartky considers
whether, in fact, women's alienation counts when many women
apparently find their lot satisfying. Women, unlike workers, seem to
love their chains. In order to complete the account of alienation
begun with Marx, Bartky turns to Simone de Beauvoir's existential
analysis of alienation for a credible account of the feminine es
trangement that displays itself as chain-worship.

Copyright © 1982 by Social Theory and Practice Vbl 8. No. 2 (Summer 1982)

155

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
156 Social Theory and Practice

Existentialists seem to think that we can't escape internalizing the

presence of the gaze of the Other. For Beauvoir, feminine narcissis
tic alienation, or any other such fragmentation, represents a person's
failure to take up her own freedom and create her own essence. If
one is alienated, it is as a result of choice, not of the circumstances
or conditions (for example, social or economic) within which choice
is made. Beauvoir states: "At a given epoch of history the
techniques, the economic and social structure of a society, will
reveal to all its members an identical world, and there a constant
relation of sexuality to social patterns will exist; analogous indi
viduals, placed in analogous conditions, will see analogous points
of significance in the given circumstances."3 But this fact does not
let us off the hook, even though the "tendency of the subject toward
alienation" is an "existential fact. "4 We try to flee from our freedom
and to find ourselves in some shape that we make our own.5 There is
an aspect of the nature of our consciousness that favors the flight
into alienation. It is "the imperialism of the human consciousness,"
for consciousness includes both "the original category of the Other
and an original aspiration to dominate the Other. "6
There seems to be a problem in Bartky's attempt to combine
concepts developed by Marx and by Beauvoir into a unitary theory
of alienation that includes the particular forms women experience.
To what extent is alienation an integral part of the human condition
and to what extent can we overcome it? Beauvoir grounds alienation
in human nature and Marx grounds it in the social relations of an
historical period.
In addition, there is another dimension of alienation which neither
Bartky nor Beauvoir treats and that Marx discusses briefly. Besides
alienation from the product and activity of labor, Marx speaks of a
third form of alienation, the alienation from nature. We are depen
dent on nature in two ways. It provides the "direct means of life,"
our existence, and it is also the material, the object, and the instru
ment of our activity. Our fullness of power, our universality proceed
from our labor of transforming nature. Nature provides us with
something on which to work our science and our art, activities we
must be able to engage in freely in order to realize our "species
being."7 Humans are the only species whose activity is conscious,
which directs itself to function apart from need alone. "Man pro
duces even when he is free from physical need and only truly
produces in freedom therefrom. "8 Estranged labor has the effect of

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Alienation and Feminism 157

making us like the other natural species who produce only for
immediate need. Estranged labor reduces us to animals because it
robs us of free access to nature. When we are reduced to seeing our
activity as merely the means of staying alive and not as the source
that produces more life, we are alienated. So, though Marx says,
"That man's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means
simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature,"9
his emphasis is on the fact that nature helps us realize our nature.
Estrangement from nature is a component of human alienation,
and a theory of feminine alienation would be incomplete without an
account of it. The analysis of the character of human alienation from
nature needs to broadened, made more comprehensive. The discus
sion of alienation from nature benefits from being set in the context
of what is not a product nor an object of our labor, as well as from
what is. (I think it is the latter that Marx considered.) The tendency
has been to collapse these two categories into one and conceive of
all of nature as at our disposal, as designed for human manipulation.
The quality of air and water and soil that has resulted pays tribute to
our efforts. In becoming focused on production, we (European
based cultures) have lost the power of our peripheral vision10 to
encompass the setting in which production takes place. Many resi
dents of urban centers find the open country dangerous, threatening,
and alien, but distrust of uncultivated, unsettled places pre-dates
industrial society; it appears, for example, in our conception of
"wilderness," a description of feeling vulnerable in relation to
untamed natural spaces. Such feelings have been part of our con
sciousness since Roman times.11
As we are alienated from nature, so are we alienated from our
animal natures. The forces of capital and patriarchy, puritanism, and
a kind of consumer-hedonism (as well as the dualistic metaphysical
heritage that Bartky referred to) combine to estrange us from bodily
well-being. We generally regard our "work" as what we get paid
for, what we do in order to survive. Since our work does not involve
all our physiological, intellectual, and artistic capacities, our powers
are diminished.
Since this is the case, for women (as well as men) to seek to
cultivate physical development is not narcissistic in character, but
health-producing and thereby freedom-producing. A being with
greater physical strength, flexibility, and range of movement lives a
qualitatively different life, with a broader range of possible choices,

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
158 Social Theory and Practice

than a being with less strength and agility. To move to gain or regain
physical power is integrating, anti-alienating. It is to move away
from over-indulgence in certain life-threatening goods and services.
What seems to have happened in contemporary society is that alien
social forces have been developing the means to take over health
affirming motives and make them serve the needs of patriarchal
capitalism. Physical fitness is made over into something to be
consumed, into products and services and images without which,
we are told, our goal cannot be reached. The capitalist patriarchs
have many of the eggs in their basket. We are used to taking the
consumer pathway to reach our ends; for them, it is merely a matter
of changing the products we turn out. The fashion-beauty complex
is partner to the military-industrial complex in this business venture.
Our desire for physical freedom is channeled towards serving the
ends of the enemy. Our quest for physical competence will, they tell
us, make us better: better mothers, lovers, wives, workers, insur
ance risks, and more pleasing to behold. They create a market for
products and services to counteract the ones which have brought us
to a debilitated state in the first place.
Perhaps it would be accurate to say that a woman's participation
in a program of physical exercise is narcissistic when she undertakes
it not for the purpose of defining her own goal but in order to please
the Other, to coincide with an externally originated measure that she
has internalized. It is, of course, a problem to determine in a given
situation whether a woman is exercising for herself or in response to
an Other, and requires deciphering the jumble of cultural messages
and psychic codes that affect, if not determine, being-in-the-world.
Weight-lifting presents an example. Several years ago, as a large
number of women began lifting weights, articles in icon-building
magazines emphasized that women should train for muscle tone and
"plastic beauty. " These magazines sold us images of this (accept
able) kind of woman to serve as our guides. Many women, however,
set their own goals and have chosen to develop strength or muscular
ity or both. Now the same magazines have co-opted these goals and
present us with a much more muscular prototype.
Sandra Bartky denounces "punishing exercises. " From my view
point exercises punish women in three ways. Exertion of any kind is
punishing to an individual who was socialized into being passive
and is unfamiliar with the experience of challenging her physical
abilities. By being directed to perform specialized tasks, in both the

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Alienation and Feminism 159

economic and sex/gender modes, and to conserve ourselves to this

end, women are punished with a reduced capability for physical
activity. Secondly, we are punished when we are sold a regimen
designed by someone else rather than exercizing through imagina
tive, playful activities of our own making ("exercise" vs. "exer
cises"). In the third place, when we do undertake physical activity,
we are punished with the pain attendant on using atrophied muscles,
pain that is usually short-lived unless we try to build Rome in a day.
Bartky thinks the women's movement "has put a very high
priority on the development of the female body as instrument." To
consider the body as instrument is to affirm a dual existence of an
"I" and a "my body" in one creature, a dualism that plays into the
hands of dominant social forces. We live our bodies, and the experi
ence of well-being is satisfying in itself, not instrumentally, for the
sake of something else. Developing or attending to bodily-being for
the sake of another person or end is fragmenting, an instance of
narcissistic alienation or repressed satisfaction. I think the priority
expressed by participants in the women's movement is to enrich my
existence-as-a-body.
There is a very puzzling statement in that part of the paper where
Professor Bartky makes the transition from what is required of a
socialist-feminist theory of alienation to a consideration of whether
feminine pleasure in objectification means women are not alienated.
She says: "That structuring of the unconscious both in men and
women which facilitates the reproduction of alienated modes of
existence will have to be revealed. " But she does not draw out for us
the implications a theory of the unconscious might have for
socialist-feminist alienation theory. Are we to assume from what
follows that narcissism is, or is part of, that structuring of the
unconscious? To know its structure, we need first to have revealed
what the unconscious is. Whose interpretation of the unconscious
are we to follow? In light of the framework of Marxism and
existentialism in which this discussion is taking place, how can we
know the unconscious, as existence? As essence? Is it compatible
with the theory of alienation as developed so far?
It seems as if it might be just what we are looking for. "Psychoan
alysis," according to Chodorow, "provides an analysis and critique
of the reproduction of sex and gender. "12 Its "fundamental contribu
tion lies in its demonstration of the existence and mode of operation
of unconscious mental processes."13 The most widely known and

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
160 Social Theory and Practice

influential version of the unconscious comes from Freud. In his

usage it is that set of instincts that represent the sexual, the id,
pleasurable gratification, as distinguished from the conscious in
stincts, which involve self-preservation, the ego, and the renuncia
tion of immediate satisfactions for long-term ones.14 Together, these
compose the libido, one's instinctual forces, the energy quotient of
which cannot be changed, only redirected. According to Freud,
civilization only develops in proportion to the strength of the
superego or individual conscience in repressing and sublimating
libidinal forces. Usually such repression goes unrecognized.
Chodorow says that "the literature does not make either a theoret
ical or empirical argument for the exhaustiveness or inevitability of
the tripartite division, though it proceeds as if such arguments had
been made."15 Socialist feminists, too, need to examine this divi
sion to see whether it corresponds to women's experience. Beyond
accepting the tripartite division of psychic structure, psychoanalytic
interpretations of experience are diverse. "Psychoanalysts use terms
in common to describe most psychological processes. But their
conceptions of these processes and their explanations of their origins
often differ. These differences are reflected in theories of personality
and development that give varying weight to innate and social
factors."16 Most feminists have rejected Freud's conceptions of the
structure of the unconscious (as does Bartky his description of
narcissism). Freud's theories show ideological and methodological
limitations. Chodorow stresses that his findings about women are
sometimes descriptions of female development, sometimes merely
unsupported assertions, and are sometimes prescriptions about what
should constitute proper feminine behavior.17 In Freudian psychoan
alytic tradition, women's disadvantaged position in society is treated
as though it is inevitable because it is thought that our unconscious
instincts are biologically based,18 whereas psychoanalysis can affect
change only in psychic structure. Chodorow expresses the need for a
systematic refutation of Freud's unwarranted assumptions, a refuta
tion in the form of "a coherent alternative theory."19 Besides the
tradition (in various formulations) that emphasized innate instincts,
there is the psychoanalytic school of cultural determinism and that
of object-relations. The latter focuses on the effects on unconscious
structure and process of social structures and processes. Chodorow
finds this approach the most promising.20
To the extent, however, that psychoanalysis accounts for human

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Alienation and Feminism 161

alienation deterministically, it will be incompatible with Marxism

and with existentialism. As Beauvoir remarks, "All psychoanalysts
systematically reject the idea of choice and the correlated concept of
value, and therein lies the weakness of the system. "21 (It remains to
be seen whether the most agent-oriented of the approaches, object
relations theory, can transcend its rootedness in the Other-defined.)
And Marx has argued that social change will take place only with
the development of revolutionary consciousness within the pro
letariat. Change comes not from the realm of repressed desires but
from the realm of reflective activity, so that even if the unconscious
changes, it cannot be the seat of social change. A satisfactory
combination of Marxism, existentialism, and psychoanalysis may
not be possible.
In the last few pages of her paper, Bartky begins the search for a
new, non-repressive narcissism. I feel there are certain questions
that must be entertained before such a project is undertaken: What
do we need to know if narcissism is ineradicable? What do we need
to know about human nature? Will we need a non-capitalist mode of
production to get rid of unhealthy narcissism, or can we develop
some satisfaction (healthy as opposed to repressed) in physicality
despite alienated labor? In regard to the first question, Beauvoir
seems to believe that narcissism disappears with the onset of sexual
maturity in women who act authentically, who take up their project
of freedom.22 In Freud and his tradition narcissism seems to be an
integral part of the personality, and its meanings are not confined to
those Bartky lists in a footnote (no. 12). In research on the definitions
of narcissism, Grunberger finds it described by psychoanalysts as
having "an almost biological character."23 It is a psychic agency
that always has a dual orientation, that operates dialectically in
movements healthy or pathological, mature or immature, cen
trifugal or centripetal.24 If we view narcissism this way, non
repressive narcissism is possible, whereas Beauvoir seems to think
we should aim to transcend narcissism.
In response to the second question, I side with socialist feminists
who believe that the system of domination under which we live is
both capitalist and patriarchal and not predominantly one or the
other. If we are successful in reducing the population of hostile
agencies that reside in our consciousness, we will damage economic
and other structures of the dominant system. Our attacks, nonethe
less, must be directed at all the centers of domination.

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
162 Social Theory and Practice

Assuming there could be non-repressive narcissism, what might it

be? Bartky speaks of a "need for new ways of imaging the body. "
My perception is that the need for sensual emancipation does not lie
in new "images"; nor is it sex-specific. Images are the material of
our visual sense, and in Western cultures this sense is dominant and
structures our interpretation of the world. Such an orientation
grounds, for example, Beauvoir 's formulation of the existentialist
point of view. Our being that is being-for-others is experienced by us
as the feeling of "the gaze" of the Other; through it the Other
identifies us and we in turn identify as their awareness of us. Vision
is abstracted out from and made to stand for our total sensory
awareness. Feminists need not preserve this limitation. We need also
to develop and claim the aural-oral and tactile, the olfactory and
savory.
George W. Linden has written an article on Dakota philosophy in
which he describes aspects of the structuring of consciousness in an
aural-oral culture. These are elements we might develop or attend
to, or recreate in our living in order to de-alienate ourselves from
each other and from nature. Aural orientation affects perception of
space. "Acoustic space," writes Linden, "is voluminous, non
reversible, intensively unified and not subject to division without
loss of quality. The auditor always feels at its center. Space radiates
from where he hears."25 Linden continues:

Vision arrests. Vision is spectation; sound is participation. Sound

engulfs, surrounds and envelops us. It unifies and unites accord
ing to interior relationships. It reveals presence with an im
mediate fullness that vision cannot. Images may reflect or refract;
sound resonates. Sound reciprocates. Sound centers. Sound en
genders simultaneity, not sequentiality.26

In "seen" objects dimensions, configurations, colors, and bound

aries are presented. Sight yields discontinous entities that start and
stop with their own skins. Sound, smell, and sometimes taste and
touch bespeak a milieu, where outlines are much fuzzier, less
abrupt. In the look, we experience the Other as more definitely
separate from us. Disharmonious feelings of self and other are
enhanced by the contrasts that vision provides. Our other senses are
more integrating than sight and better serve to, as Sandra Bartky
proposes, "create a new witness, a collective significant other," that
would revolutionize our entire cultural sensual orientation.

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Alienation and Feminism 163

Notes

Other socialist-feminist reconceptions of Marxist theory are the fol

lowing:
1) That patriarchy is a fundamental category of experience, to many,
as fundamental as the economic relations of capitalist production. See,
for example, Heidi Hartmann, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism
and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union," pp. 1-41; Iris
Young, "Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of the Dual
Systems Theory," pp. 43-69; and Sandra Harding, "What is the Real
Material Base of Patriarch and Capital?", pp. 135-63, all in Lydia
Sargent, ed., Women and Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1981).
2) That the relations of reproduction represent a basic category of
experience. See Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (New York:
Bantam, 1971), and the work of Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction
of Mothering, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), and
Linda Gordon, "The Struggle for Reproductive Freedom: Three
Stages of Feminism," pp. 107-35, in Zillah Eisenstein, ed.,
Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1979).
3) That class has been too narrowly defined and does not adequately
represent women and their special relations to capital. See Nancy
Hartsock, "Feminist Theory and Revolutionary Strategy," pp. 56-81,
in Eisenstein, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist
Feminism, p. 70.
4) That division of labor is as basic a category as class. See, for
example, Young, "Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of the
Dual Systems Theory," p. 70.
Another mode of alienation that applies specifically to women is the
atomization of our lives that arises from living in spatially and genera
tionally separate domiciles, so that women relate very little to other
women. See Barbara Ehrenreich, "Speech delivered at the National
Conference of Socialist Feminism," in Socialist Revolution #26, Vol.
5 #4 (Oct.-Dec., 1975): 85-93.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans, and ed. by H. M. Parsh
ley (New York: Bantam, 1952), p. 42.
Ibid.

Ibid., p. 51
Ibid., p. 52.
Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,
trans, by Martin Milligan, ed., with an Introduction by Dirk J. Struik
(New York: International Publishers, 1965), p. 112.
Ibid., p. 113.
Ibid., p. 112.

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
164 Social Theory and Practice

Though "vision" itself is a problem, as I discuss near the end of my

comments.

Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1967).
Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: Univer
sity of California Press, 1978), p. 40.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ann Foreman, Femininity as Alienation (New York: Pluto Press,
1980), p. 46.
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, p. 44.
Ibid., p. 45.
Ibid., p. 142.
Ibid., p. 153.
Ibid., p. 154. Juliet Mitchell, who is the other major socialist-feminist
writer to discuss psychoanalysis, comes out in defense of Freud. See
her Psychoanalysis and Feminism (New York: Random House, 1975).
She thinks Freud's view of the unconscious should be read as descrip
tive of the sexual relations of a particular epoch, not as universal, and
that a restructuring of social relations could remove the repression of
the unconscious. For Chodorow's criticisms, see p. 81 (footnote) and
pp. 141-42. In Femininity as Alienation, Foreman also criticizes
Mitchell's defense of Freud, pp. 46-50.
Ibid., pp. 44-49.
Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 40.
Ibid., p. 113.
Bela Grunberger, Narcissism, trans, by Joyse S. Diamant (New York:
International Universities Press, 1971), p. 103.
Ibid., p. 106.
George W. Linden, "Dakota Philosophy," in American Studies, 18
(1977): 20.
Ibid., pp. 20-21.
An earlier version of this paper was first read as a response to
Professor Bartky's paper at a session sponsored by the Society for
Women in Philosophy at the Western Division meetings of the Ameri
can Philosophical Association, April 1981. Ann Garry also read a
response to the paper.

Janet Tïapp Slagter

Department of Philosophy
Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale

This content downloaded from 132.239.1.231 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:51:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms