Materialist Feminism

During the 1980s, capitalism secured its global reach, post-Marxist hammered home socialism's failure, and the New Left shifted into the professional middle class. As a result, many feminism's earlier priorities became marginalized. Out of the changes emerged "identity politics"--often formulated in terms of social constructionism, or multiculturalism, and marked by discourse analysis and cultural politics.Materialist Feminism: A Reader In Class, Difference, And Women's Lives speaks out against the retreat to identity politics. Instead, the contributors argue in favor of making visible again the material links among the explosion of meaning-making practices in highly industrialized social sectors, the appropriation of women's bodies, and the exploitation of women's labor, all of which are undergirded by the scramble for profits and state power in multinational capitalism.By making available an archive of classic and ongoing work, this Reader is a valuable resource for a new generation of feminists committed to explaining and changing the material conditions of women's lives in late capitalism.