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Libidinal Economies

Libidinal Economies. Dr. Theresa Thompson ENGL / WGST 3330 Spring 2009. More key terms. Economy: a community’s system of using its resources to (re)produce wealth.

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Libidinal Economies

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  1. Libidinal Economies Dr. Theresa Thompson ENGL / WGST 3330 Spring 2009

  2. More key terms • Economy: a community’s system of using its resources to (re)produce wealth. • Reification: Berger and Luckmann, "the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms.” (Workers as units of production.) • Political economy: theory or study of the role of public policy in influencing the economic and social welfare of a political unit. • Libido: emotional energy or urge, especially that associated with sexual desire. Libidinal desire ≠ reproductive urge. • Libidinal economy: a community’s system of directing, controlling, and / or modifying sexual desire with the intention of producing (or reproducing) its resources and increasing its general wealth.

  3. Jean-François Lyotard: Political economy is charged with desire and desires are infused with politics. • Whether feudal, capitalist, fascist, or socialist, a sex-gender system and a system of economic discrimination operate simultaneously and inseparably. • Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty. • Contract: A “contract presupposes in principle … free consent” • Christian baptism constitutes a contract: agreement to obey Christian “laws” regarding marriage, chastity and birth control, homosexuality. • Institution: “…the institution is of a very different order in that it tends to render laws [contract] unnecessary….” • Emma Goldman on “Marriage and Love” • The symbolic moral order: A body of unwritten social mores and conventions which serve to maintain societal order • Religious institutions create different symbolic universes. • Judaism and abortion; Buddhism and abortion; Islam and abortion.

  4. A “profitable” future requires control over desire. • What constitutes the most significant resource of any given community? • The future. • P. D. James, Children of Men: What happens if women do NOT reproduce? • How does a group insure that its ideology gets reproduced? • Louis Althusser: “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation” (1969) • You know the law only when the police call you by name. • Example: Don’t ask, don’t tell…

  5. Sex Economy? • Sex Economy & Wilhelm Reich: “the most immediate consequence of private property is the interest for chastity before marriage and marital fidelity to the husband.” • Myron Sharaf, Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich, p. 166: "Reich coined the term 'sex-economy' around 1930. . . . The use of the word 'economy' also reflects a Marxist influence: The safeguarding of the distribution of goods requires a rational economic policy.  A rational sexual policy is not different if the same obvious principles are applied to sexual instead of economic needs."

  6. Desire & the Marketplace • Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (1983):Desire is pre-personal because it is “immanent to a plane which it does not pre-exist.” We are born into an existing and ongoing set of interactive discursive practices. • “desiring-production” = desire is production • Totalitarianism: Hitler and Woman • From Mein Kampf: “In the education of girls in the German state the emphasis must be placed primarily on physical education; only after that should the spiritual and mental values be considered. The one goal always to be kept in mind when educating girls is that some day they aim to be mothers.” • What’s love got to do, got to do with it? • ABC: “Concern with supporting marriage and with trying to increase the number of children reared by their married parents is vital to the future of the nation.” • Religion: Control the inside and master the outside?

  7. Patriarchal Libidinal Economies • Patriarchal institutions give men greater access to and mediation of the resources and rewards of authority structures inside and outside the home. • Patriarchal economies institutionalize the (re)production of male power and authority over the sources of (re)production. • To insure reproduction, institutions must control male desires. • To insure patriarchal control, institutions must control female desires.

  8. Patriarchal Institutions & Contracts • Actual (F)acts • Control “market” for productive male sexual desire. • Real men desire many (and only) women. • Secrecy is imperative for unacceptable (unproductive?) desires. • Other sexual desires are “unnatural,” sinful, or “sick”. • Does humor enforce or divorce the institution’s power? Sometimes both. • Financial Perks for (all?) men.

  9. Salary Differences: U.S. Census2005

  10. Patriarchy and Women • Control female sexual desire. • Control sexual pleasure • Double-standard. (Fem 64, 66) • FGM. • Debase “other” outlets for female sexual expression. • Control female body (Fem 91) • Help her land the “right” man--make her desperate to do so. • A Wife’s duty is to be submissive--or else? • (Un)natural law: A long history doesn’t make patriarchy natural. • Handicap divorced women with children. • Can single women be happy? • Reports to the contrary are overplayed in (patriarchal) media? (Fem 90) • What makes women’s happiness possible? (Fem 73, 85, 94) Questions?

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