[FRA:] Adorno to Fromm on the Feminine

[matthew piscioneri]

Found this letter from Adorno to Fromm and look fwd. to 
explication/discussion from the List. In particular, i am not sure of 
Adorno's concept of *desexualization.*

{snip}

>And I assume
>that even the sexuality of the woman is largely desexualized, as if
>her fetish of herself?

This idea of a "fetish of herself" is also very interesting. A sense
of self-ownership, even self creation? Is there self-empowerment in
becoming one's own fetish? At the very least one is reclaiming one's
self from simply being the Other of man, as Beauvoir may have said.

Of course, it could be argued that the empowerment of a "fetish of
herself" to women is but a *devious* [patronizing] concession of a
patriachal capitalism that grants a faux existential niche to a
historically subjugated *class* [women] in order to satisfy
capitalism's internal logic that demands an ever expanding pool of
consumers. All the while, patriachal power structures continue to
deny women access to *real* power i.e the patriachy...
-------------------------------------
Adorno to Fromm

November 16, 1937

Dear Mr. Fromm:

I assume that you heard from Horkheimer or Leo about my idea for a
journal article—first—on the feminine character. I have not heard
from New York. Neither do I know whether this is feasible at this
point or whether it fits into Horkhekimer's or your work schedule.
It has been on my mind a lot, however, so that I can't stop help
indicating briefly what I am aiming at.

The initial interest is connected with the discussions that led to
the studies on authority and family [Max Horkheimer/Erich
Fromm/Herbert Marcuse (eds.): Studien über Autorität und Familie,
Paris 1936] some time ago; it is about the glue that holds current
society together even while it creates increased suffering and the
threat of catastrophe for its members. Back then the state, religion
and family authority were considered the foundations of this bond.
But for some time now it has appeared to me that these explications
are no longer appropriate. In fascist ideology the state plays the
main role: perhaps that is true in backward Italy but not at all in
highly industrialized Germany. On the contrary: in Nazi ideology any
etatism is disdained for the sake of the "people." It is clear to me
that, even in England, the vast majority is indifferent towards
religion. Regarding authority, much can be said: in the current
phase the crucial authority is not that of the family, however, but
that of fetishized collective groups. In view of these insights, I
think it necessary to pose the question regarding the glue that
binds society together anew. And I am inclined—to tell the most
important first—to see this glue in the economic principle even as
it affects both the conscious and the unconscious of the people, the
development of which defines the law of movement of society, and
drives it towards catastrophe: namely the commodity.

More and more I am convinced that the actual coincidence of Marxist
theory and psychoanalysis lies not only in analogies of
superstructure and base with ego and id etc., but rather in the
connection between the fetish character of the commodities and the
fetishized character of human beings. I believe that the
methodological difference between Marxism and psychoanalysis becomes
can be overcome only at the moment, in which it becomes possible to
show successfully how the economic fetishism turns into psychic
fetishism; this is something that—in a side note—also suggests
tracing back the economic fetish character beyond capitalist society
potentially to prehistoric times, in which the original facts of
economic fetishism found their first mental sources. But for now I
will leave aside this point that is probably connected to certain
tendencies of your interest in Bachofen and your going back to the
Oedipus complex.

The immediate stimulus for the idea of analyzing the feminine
character was a passage in Leo's [Löwenthal: "Das Individuum in der
individualistischen Gesellschaft." In Zeitschrift für
Sozialforschung vol. 5 (1936), 321-363] essay on Ibsen, in which he
attributes a lesser degree of reification and mutilated sexuality
and a lesser degree of repression to woman than to man. Immediately,
Leo's remark appeared to me to be somewhat romantic, and the more I
thought about it, and the more consciously I observed things, the
more it seemed to me that woman today is to a certain extent
dominated more by the commodity character than man and that she is—
now I am varying an old and nice formula of yours—functioning as the
agency of the commodity in society. Very closely related to this, it
appears to me that women and their specific consumer consciousness
must be regarded as the social glue to a far greater extent than,
say, family authority with its ascetic sexual morality, which is
already crumbling without having any significant effect on the
character of the middle-class.

(As you see, I strongly oppose Reich, as I do in other pieces, who
regressed to the pre-Marxist, Feuerbachian point-of-view
of "wholesome sensuousness" in, what is for a talented psychologist,
unbelievable naiveté and who via his detour through anarchism will
undoubtedly end up with reformism. Any observation could teach him
that even sexually uninhibited, or at least in the primitive sense,
completely uninhibited women bear the worst features of the
bourgeois character.)

One could certainly object that we find here—and also with the
political-reactionary behaviour of the majority of women—a new
attitude, which was evoked directly out of fear in a catastrophic
situation. But I am inclined to doubt that. The history of the
unconscious has to deal with incomparably longer periods of time; I
rather suspect that Ibsen's Heddas and Noras are the illusions of a
desperate individual, and that he assumed the female childishness
produced by capitalist society for an immediate and natural trait.
If this were the case, then from a Marxist point of view, Strindberg
would be right against Ibsen in a sense in which I was not aware at
all of in New York, namely insofar as he destroys Ibsen's
anthropological illusion and shows that in modern society there is
hardly any refuge of "nature" left. My view was reinforced by my
work on my almost completed piece on Wagner. In his work, through
characters like Isolde and Brunnhilde, woman has all those accents
of romantic directness, and they seem to be unharmed by the evil
world forces, ready to sacrifice, even ready for their death. On the
other hand the characters of Fricka or Gudrune or even Elsa show
that Wagner unconsciously perceived specifically bourgeois traits in
women, and it was quite revealing to me that Siegfried in the
Twilight of the Gods misses the last chance to get rid of the
bewitched ring uttering: "If I wasted my property on you, my wife
would be angry with me!"

I now imagine one could attempt to show that woman, due to her
exclusion from production, developed special traits of the bourgeois
which, though different from those of man, do not transcend
bourgeois society as Leo seems to assume in the Ibsen essay—although
I don't think he would insist on this anymore. Yes, I'll even go as
far as to blindly assume that Horkheimer agrees with me when I claim
that especially the traits with which woman seems to maintain
her "directness" in reality are the stigmata that the bourgeoisie
inflicted on her; traits, that conceal in a veritable context of
bedazzlement what will be possible in terms of her actual nature.
Put analytically it is obviously the case, that with most women,
precisely due to their economic position, the formation of the ego
has remained incomplete. The higher amount of infantilism they bear
in comparison to men, however, does not make them more progressive
in comparison to men. The task now would be, though I wouldn't dare
to engage it as someone who is neither an economist nor an analyst,
to identify first a couple of specifically female traits as a way of
analyzing women's position in the economy; then showing exactly how
these traits work for the preservation of society, and finally how
these traits in particular lead into the fascist reproduction of
stupidity.

These traits seem to be closely connected to the relationship
between the consumer and the commodity that I cannot prejudge. One
should analyze thoroughly the completely irrational behavior of
women in dealing with commodities—shopping, clothes, hairdressing
etc.—and it will probably become evident that all those moments that
seem to serve sex appeal are in reality desexualized. The gesture of
the girl who, while giving herself to her lover, is dominated by the
anxiety that something will happen to her dress or her hair-do that
might ruin dress and haircut appears crucial to me. And I assume
that even the sexuality of the woman is largely desexualized, as if
her fetish of herself? Her character being a commodity, for example,
in the form of the often occurring sentiment of being-too-good-for-
it had constantly interjected itself between the women and her own
sexual activity, even in total promiscuity. Here a social theory of
female frigidity could be developed. This in my view does not stem
from the amount of sexual limitations to which women are subjected,
or from the fact that they do not find the right partner, but that
they even during coitus in their own perception continue to see
themselves in terms of exchange value for a naturally non-existent
purpose and that they will not be able to reach orgasm due to this
displacement. Even in sexuality, use value has been smothered by
exchange value. It would certainly be a dialectical point if one
could show that lust could only be reconstituted through the
complete implementation of exchange value; in other words: that the
only remedy against the fetishizing of sexuality is sexual
fetishism. Perhaps you could discuss this with Horkheimer with whom
I often discussed this issue—in any case from the standpoint of male
and not female psychology.

I imagine that this work will culminate in a critique of
the "feminine" in the way this term is affirmatively used today
society. After it has been reduced to the mechanism of its
production one could show what kind of ideological function this
term actually exerts and, by this, demonstrate even in psychology,
the system converts its real victims into a source for its
protection; thus, one could demonstrate the inescapable context of
bedazzlement that dominate the contemporary processes of society. I
could imagine the critique of Goethe's "eternal feminine" as a
blasphemous ending. Needless to say that this work should not be
seen as an "attack" on women but as their defense against a
patriarchal society that made them what they are today and that they
can employ for its own ends just because they are what they are.


The most useful approach to this project is perhaps to study Freud's
remarks on female psychology i.e. the inner analytical discourse, as
to whether female psychology is biologically characteristic of woman
or conditioned through her identification with man. I tend to
believe that the actual biological aspects are at least covered and
distorted within bourgeois female psychology; on the other hand, I
think, one can do without a substructure or a mechanism of
identification, which anyway would probably be hard to prove, if one
succeeds in reducing female psychology directly to the position of
women in the process of production and consumption. Probably the
identification with man occurs only via detours—via the commodities
whose worship seems the key to me. Whether commodities are being
identified in a very deep-seated way with male genitals I cannot
say, but it appears to me that there are many reasons to believe so.
I would also like to point out that certain phenomena in the Anglo-
Saxon world like "flirting" and "having a good time," running around
from one party to the next etc. seem to elucidate what I have in
mind much more effectively than how we know these things in backward
Germany or in France.

I would be glad if these preliminary and undeveloped annotations
were of use to you and if you could pursue this complex of issues. I
am certainly convinced that they contains key insights into the
current situation. Since this suggestion of mine is not a private
matter I took for granted your consent and sent a copy of this to
Horkheimer.


I hope to see you soon.

With kind regards

Yours,
Teddi Wiesengrund