[FRA:] Adorno to Fromm on the Feminine

[FREDWELFARE at aol.com]

The privileged and authoritarian father-son relation, as well as the father  
as authority in the family (replicated as sovereign power or as the political  
power of those who inherit the power of their class position from their 
lineage)  and hence with absolute power over the family members must be related to 
the  'femininity' or the fetishization of the female.  Fetish can be  defined 
as 'object of reverence' but Freud's definition as symbolic displacement  of 
an imagined attribute does not address the objectivation of the female as  
exchange value, and her subsequent role as consumer. 
 
 In any case, the absence of equality, made obvious in the norms  (Foucault's 
definition, not Habermas') related to ritual courtship and the  vortex of 
monogamous matrimony is not only the same across classes but differs  only in the 
alignment of the woman's exchange value with the "selection" (I dare  not say 
training) of a mate from the class (lineage) which can finance the  expected 
level of exchange value.  In this situation, the actual use value  of the 
woman, by which Adorno seems to mean her natural behavior and attitude  towards 
intimacy and not her ability to socialize children or labor, should  refer to 
her identification and hence similarity of interest with her  mate when we 
normally consider their relationship complementary.  (Perhaps,  symmetrical is a 
better term, here.)
 
Perhaps, Adorno is complaining that the capitalist politicization of  
relationships: statutes and injunctions requiring and demanding pairing and  
coupling, matrimony and consummation, reproduction and family, has taken  differing 
forms in the West from repressive and backwards forms to sex  industrial forms, 
but that in any case, the female's desexualization or  infantilization or 
fetishization is somehow the unacknowledged "social  glue."  
 
So, the question now is what relation does the daughter have to the father  
that is so different from the relation of the son to the father which is  
absolute obedience.  In a way, I see an image of the daughter as an inverse  of 
'sacer' as described by Agamben (sacer may be killed but not  
sacrificed/executed): she may marry but not fuck...if she is married she  should not fuck/be 
fucked...  Ritualized sex (lousy head!?) within the  matrimonial context of 
wife-husband is acceptable (citified) for the wife but  not natural (for Adorno), 
not sexual.  There are two issues here which seem  to contradict his verdict: 
the threshold or passage from homosexual to  heterosexual does raise issues 
concerning 'traits' which are present in one  encounter but not in another; the 
symbolization of the woman as fetish, or even  fetish of herself in the role of 
consumer of feminine commodities (and services)  seems to relate to the myth 
of the State as imaginary symbol whereas the father  also relates to the myth 
of the State as political leader, hence powerful?
 
FredW
 
In a message dated 8/26/2005 6:23:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time,  
mpiscioneri at hotmail.com writes:

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



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