Feminism and the Frankfurt School

What is it about?

This paper aims to treat the sexual liberationist radical feminism of thinkers like Ellen Willis and Shulamith Firestone in terms of its resonance with the Critical Theory of the early Frankfurt School. In doing so, it will highlight the essentially countercultural nature of radical feminism as well as the link between this radical feminism and Marxism. The paper will argue that without a psychoanalytic reading of the sexual repressions of work and the family, best articulated by radical feminists, any critique of capitalist economics will miss how it is reproduced. The Frankfurt School integration of Marxism and psychoanalysis echoed through radical feminism in ways explicit and implicit; this paper will examine these affinities as an instance of a larger sexual liberationist strain in twentieth century radical thought, especially in the US.

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Why is it important?

Today’s American feminism is too often split between a “lean-in” economics of bourgeois professional achievement and a social reproduction theory that hews closer to Marxism but that looks to valorize women’s role as care-givers. The deficiencies of these two perspectives will be counterposed to the politics of a radical feminism that refuses work and self-sacrifice and thus links feminism meaningfully with the human emancipation that was at the center of Frankfurt School thought.

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