[FRA:] Adorno/Fromm (Fred)

[matthew piscioneri]

Fred,

Great post. Thanks. The totalizing *power* of the patriarchy has always 
intrigued me. Partly because it is not so much of my *liberal* 
self-experience, but also because my social and class experience has 
revealed less of a totality than you describe. This is NOT to demean or 
dispute your analysis, rather I sense there are cracks in the patriarchy. 
Could something of a public/private, north/south distinction be applicable? 
Probably the cracks run more along class lines.

“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.”
--------------------------------------------
Thanks for this:

“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.”

[snip]
“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.”

Yes, this is what I suspected. I don’t think Adorno was including an erotic 
aspect to his notion of *desexualization*.

“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?”

Very lateral and interesting interpretation of the issue of the “fetish of 
herself”. The important nuance is that of “self-fetishization”. It’s the 
“self” that opens up resistance possibilities. Given you mention Foucault, 
again I wonder if there are not complements between the “SELF-fetishization” 
(albeit via consumerism, and albeit the self-fetish {self-reverence} taking 
a commodity form) and Foucault's ideas on self-resistance strategies?

Mattp