Abstract
In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Friedrich Engels highlighted an important fact: Any human group seeking to maintain itself must do more than what is necessary in order to keep its members warm and nourished. It must also produce “human beings themselves.” With this assertion, Engels recognized the social significance of reproduction, putting it on a par with that central preoccupation of historical materialism: the “production of the means of existence,” otherwise known as the economy. Over the last 50 years, understanding the relationship between production and reproduction has precipitated an encounter between Marxism, feminism, and psychoanalysis. This chapter charts that encounter, assessing the significance of psychoanalytic thinking for understanding “social reproduction”: the reproduction of human beings, the reproduction of workers, and the reproduction of society itself. Beginning with debates around patriarchy and capitalism of the second wave, and engaging with queer and black critical interventions, the chapter moves toward contemporary accounts of post-Oedipal, maternal, and postmaternal subjectivities and politics. Psychoanalytic thinking has been central to understanding the production and reproduction of human beings, in particular the forms of subjectivity, gender, and sexuality that they acquire, as they intersect and interact with structures of male dominance and capitalism. Analyzing reproduction also raises the question of how to reproduce differently. With this in mind, the chapter positions social and symbolic change as dialectically related and interdependent processes.
References
Althusser, L. (1969). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. Verso.
Baraitser, L. (2009). Maternal encounters: The ethics of interruption. Routledge.
Baraitser, L. (2015). Psychoanalysis and feminism and …. Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, 20(2), 151–159. https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2015.1
Baraitser, L. (2016). Postmaternal, postwork and the maternal death drive. Australian Feminist Studies, 31(90), 393–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2016.1278156
Barrett, M. (2014). Women’s oppression today: The Marxist/feminist encounter. Verso.
Beechey, V. (1979). On patriarchy. Feminist Review, 3(1), 66–82.
Benjamin, J. (1978). Authority and the family revisited: Or, a world without fathers? New German Critique, 13, 35–57.
Benjamin, J. (1990). The bonds of love: Psychoanalysis, feminism and the problem of domination. Virago.
Benjamin, J. (1998). Shadow of the other: Intersubjectivity and gender in psychoanalysis. Routledge.
Benjamin, J. (2000). Response to commentaries by Mitchell and by Butler. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 1(3), 308–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/15240650109349160
Brenner, J. (2014). 21st century socialist-feminism. Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes, 10(1). http://www.socialiststudies.com/sss/index.php/sss/article/viewArticle/355
Bueskens, P. (2014). Introduction. In Mothering & psychoanalysis: Clinical, sociological and feminist perspectives (pp. 1–72). Demeter Press.
Bueskens, P. (2021). Mothers reproducing the social: Chodorow and beyond. In P. Bueskens (Ed.), Nancy Chodorow and the reproduction of mothering: Forty years on (pp. 265–300). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55590-0_13
Butler, J. (1998). Merely cultural. New Left Review, I/227, 33–44.
Butler, J. (2000). Longing for recognition: Commentary on the work or Jessica Benjamin. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 1(3), 271–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/15240650109349159
Butler, J. (2002). Is kinship always already heterosexual? Differences, 13(1), 14–44. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-13-1-14
Butler, J. (2006). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.
Butler, J. (2011). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex”. Routledge.
Butler, J. (2012). Rethinking sexual difference and kinship in Juliet Mitchell’s psychoanalysis and feminism. Differences, 23(2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-1629794
Campbell, K. (2004). Jacques Lacan and feminist epistemology. Routledge.
Chodorow, N. (1978). The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. University of California Press.
Chodorow, N., & Contratto, S. (1989). The fantasy of the perfect mother. In N. Chodorow (Ed.), Feminism and psychoanalytic theory (pp. 79–96). Yale University Press.
Collins, P. H. (1994). Shifting the centre: Race, class, and feminist theorising about motherhood. In Mothering (pp. 45–66). Routledge.
Curk, P. (2020). Mothers and others. Studies in the Maternal, 13(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.16995/sim.281
Dalla Costa, M., & James, S. (1975). The power of women and the subversion of the community. Falling Wall Press.
Dinnerstein, D. (1999). The mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual arrangements and human malaise. Other Press.
DiQuinzio, P. (1993). Exclusion and essentialism in feminist theory: The problem of mothering. Hypatia, 8(3), 1–20.
Doane, J., & Hodges, D. (1993). From Klein to Kristeva: Psychoanalytic feminism and the search for the “good enough” mother. University of Michigan Press.
Dowling, E. (2021). The care crisis: What caused it and how can we end it? Verso.
Edholm, F., Harris, O., & Young, K. (1977). Conceptualising women. Critique of Anthropology, 9–10(3), 101–130.
Engels, F. (2010). The origin of the family, private property, and the state. Penguin Classics.
Ferguson, S. (2017, November 23). Social reproduction theory: What’s the big idea?. Pluto Press. https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/social-reproduction-theory-ferguson/
Ferguson, S. A., & King, T. C. (2014). Dark animus: A psychodynamic interpretation of the consequences of diverted mothering among African-American daughters. In P. Bueskens (Ed.), Mothering and psychoanalysis: Clinical, sociological and feminist perspectives (pp. 177–196). Demeter Press.
Flax, J. (1991). Thinking fragments: Psychoanalysis, feminism, and postmodernism in the contemporary west. University of California Press.
Fletcher, J. (1992). The letter in the unconscious: The enigmatic signifier in Jean Laplanche. In J. Fletcher & M. Stanton (Eds.), Jean Laplanche: Seduction, translation, drives: A dossier (pp. 93–120). Psychoanalytic Forum, Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of feminism: From women’s liberation to identity politics to anti-capitalism. Verso Books.
Freud, S. (1913) Totem and taboo. In J. Strachey, A. Freud & A. Richards (Eds.). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, volume 13 (pp. 1–161). London: Hogarth Press.
Frosh, S. (1999). The politics of psychoanalysis: An introduction to Freudian and post-Freudian theory. Macmillan.
Himmelweit, S. (1991). Reproduction. In T. B. Bottomore (Ed.), A dictionary of Marxist thought (2nd ed., pp. 369–371). Blackwell Reference.
Hollway, W. (2006). The capacity to care: Gender and ethical subjectivity. Routledge.
Hollway, W. (2015). Knowing mothers: Researching maternal identity change. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hunt, T. (2010). Introduction. In I. F. Engels (Ed.), The origin of the family, private property, and the state (pp. 3–30). Penguin Classics.
Irigaray, L. (1991). The bodily encounter with the mother. In M. Whitford (Ed.) (trans: Macey, D.), The Irigaray reader (pp. 34–46). Basil Blackwell.
James, J. (2016). The womb of western theory: Trauma, time theft, and the captive maternal. Carceral Notebooks, 12, 253–296.
Kellond, J. (2022). Donald Winnicott and the politics of care. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91437-0
Kristeva, J. (1985). Stabat mater (trans: Goldhammer, A.). Poetics Today, 6(1/2), 133–152. https://doi.org/10.2307/1772126.
Lacan, J. (2006). Ecrits: The first complete edition in English (trans: Fink, H., & Fink, B.). W.W. Norton & Co.
Laplanche, J. (1989). New foundations for psychoanalysis (trans: Macey, D.). Basil Blackwell.
Laslett, B., & Brenner, J. (1989). Gender and social reproduction: Historical perspectives. Annual Review of Sociology, 15, 381–404.
Layton, L. (2014). Maternally speaking: Mothers, daughters and the talking cure. In P. Bueskens (Ed.), Mothering and psychoanalysis: Clinical, sociological and feminist perspectives (pp. 161–176). Demeter Press.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969). The elementary structures of kinship (trans: Needham, R., Rev. ed.). Beacon Press.
Lewis, G. (2009). Birthing racial difference: Conversations with my mother and others. Studies in the Maternal, 1(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.16995/sim.112
Lewis, S. (2019). Full surrogacy now: Feminism against family. Verso.
McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. Sage.
Mitchell, J. (1974). Psychoanalysis and feminism: A radical reassessment of Freudian psychoanalysis. Allen Lane.
Mitchell, J. (2000). Psychoanalysis and feminism: A radical reassessment of Freudian psychoanalysis. Basic Books.
Mitchell, J. (2002) Reply to Lynne Segal’s commentary. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 3(2), 217–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/15240650309349197
Obedin-Maliver, J., & Makadon, H. J. (2016). Transgender men and pregnancy. Obstetric Medicine, 9(1), 4–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/1753495X15612658
Parker, R. (2005). Torn in two: The experience of maternal ambivalence. Virago.
Philipson, I. J. (1993). On the shoulders of women: The feminisation of psychotherapy. Guilford Press.
Power, N. (2014). Brief notes towards a non-nihilistic theory of non-reproduction. Studies in the Maternal, 6(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.16995/sim.2
Rubin, G. (1975). The traffic in women: Notes on the “political economy” of sex. In R. R. Reiter (Ed.), Toward an anthropology of women (pp. 157–210). Monthly Review Press.
Ruddick, S. (1995). Maternal thinking: Toward a politics of peace. Beacon Press.
Scott, J. W. (1986). Gender: A useful category of historical analysis. American Historical Review, 91(5), 1053–1075. https://doi.org/10.2307/1864376
Segal, L. (1997). Generations of feminism. Radical Philosophy, 83, 6–16.
Spillers, H. J. (1996). “All the things you could be by now, if Sigmund Freud’s wife was your mother”: Psychoanalysis and race. Boundary 2, 23(3), 75–141. https://doi.org/10.2307/303639
Stone, A. (2012a). Against matricide: Rethinking subjectivity and the maternal body. Hypatia, 27(1), 118–138.
Stone, A. (2012b). Feminism, psychoanalysis, and maternal subjectivity. Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Kellond, J. (2023). The Politics of Reproduction. In: Frosh, S., Vyrgioti, M., Walsh, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61510-9_57-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61510-9_57-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-61510-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-61510-9
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences