Intersectionality and the ‘Taboo of

Abstraction‘ in Feminist Theory

How the value-dissociation-theorem can
help us to delineate
foundational mechanism of oppression

Elmar Flatschart
University of Vienna
Content

 Intersectionality – Metatheoretical underpinnings

 The Taboo of Abstraction

 Abstracting: The System Debate

 Value-Dissociation: The dialectic of oppression

Intersectionality
 Important motive – highlighting the plurality of oppression
• Marxist Feminism
• Black Feminism
• Post-Colonial Studies
• Queer Feminism
 Intersectionality as approach in specific context
• Post-structuralist revolution
• Abandonment of structural questions
• Treatment of problems of identity
• Impact of oppression rather than sources
• Micro-theoretical focus
Intersectionality
 The Character of Intersections
• Originally: how different discriminations affect a person
• Kimberlé Crenshaw – categories of oppression
• Structure ≠ category, category taken for granted
 Three approaches (McCall 2005)
• Inter-categorical
• Intra-categorical
• Anti-categorical
 Dominance of anti-categorical approach
• Focus on position, identity, subjects – insufficiency of categories
• Deconstructive subtext puzzled by positivity of structures
• Lack of connection of relationality/change and structure/stasis
• Flat ontology restricted to consequences not causes
The Taboo of Abstraction
 Meta-theoretical consequences of flat ontology
• Structures/categories not explainable without emergence
• Relations between structures are mystified in focus on results
• Abstraction and emergent hierarchization impossible
 Twofold relevance of abstraction
• Epistemology – the one-way movement from ‘lower’ to ‘deeper’ levels
of abstraction (linear abstraction – take away concrete)
• Ontology – indication of a specific character of the social patterns, that
licence or deny abstraction (circular-cumulative abstraction)
 Concept of Real-Abstraction
• Connection of reality and thought with special categories
• Value-form, labour-form, money-form, capital (circular definition)
• Necessity to think social totality
The Taboo of Abstraction
 Intersectionality: (Real-abstract) totality anxiously evaded
• Fear to ‘abstract’ some concrete feature
• Fear to establish ‘grand theory’
• Fear to not represent difference (universality of system)
 Consequence:
• (Self-)Relativization
• (Self-)Particularization
• Safe-haven of the ambivalent individual case
 Problem:
• Reproduction of ‘older’ gender-roles?
• Remaining with particularized result of oppression, not its causes
The Taboo of Abstraction
 Georg Simmel on Abstraction:
“This is why the male endeavour to unify existence and the idea in the
most diverse substantive areas is often unintelligible to the woman.
In many cases, she possesses directly what for the man is the
result of abstraction: in other words, a result of the reconstitution of
what was formerly divided. In these cases, what we call the female
instinct […] is only this unmediated unity of the psychic process with
the norms and criteria which are differentiated from it, and which
provide the basis for the validity that is ascribed to it.” (On Women,
Sexuality and Love: 122)
The Taboo of Abstraction
 Roswitha Scholz – ‘Taboo of abstraction’:
• Simmels essentialism is representation of traditional gender roles
• Male Androcentrism ascribes ‘inability to abstract’ and
‘perspective of difference’ to women – real efficacy of roles
• Thinking in ‘large scale categories’ is scorned
• Epistemological abstraction evaded
• Hints to ontic core of abstraction – male societal spheres are
abstract, abstract generality is symbolically ‘male’
 Patriarchal structures still prevalent
• Symbolic deep core of societal forms, relevant for material
aspects like ‘care mentality’, immediacy, Love etc.
• Patriarchal gender roles perpetuated THROUGH their anti-
categorical ‘deconstruction’/the affirmation of difference
Abstracting: The Systems debate
 Taking abstraction seriously means thinking totality
• Question of systemic determination of oppression
• Patriarchy vs Capitalism debate (Cinzia Arruzza: Indifferent
Capitalism, Dual Systems, Unified System)
 Problems of Dual Systems
• Class Exploitation logical and universal, patriarchal not
• Capitalism has ‘formal logic/telos’, patriarchy not
• Capitalism seems ‘material’, patriarchy only ‘ideological’
• Capitalism defines society, other oppressions parallel patriarchy
 Dualism itself hierarchical but deconstruction doesn’t work
• Multi-oppressions omits ‘economic laws’, implicit reproduction
• Abstraction: Totality of social reproduction = capital accumulation
Value-Dissociation: The dialectic of oppression
 Building on concept of Real-Abstraction
• Abstraction/the abstract have real basis in social relations
• Abstract, universal = male / concrete, particular = female
• Epistemic process has ontic representation in patriarchal forms
 Value-Dissociation: Taking contradiction to level of totality
• Universal domain is ‘male’, positive picture of totality is male
• Othering: relativism/particularism/’difference’ attributed to ‘female’
• Symbolical generalities, but socially material
• Materiality defined by dissociation real/imaginary
• Gendered/gender dialectic must be preserved trough abstraction
 Value-dissociation most abstract ‘dialectical logic’ of totality
Value-Dissociation: The dialectic of oppression
 Universal/particular basic pattern of social totality
• Unitary system not solely ‘capital accumulation’, but dialectic itself
• Universal telos (male) = value / particularized dissociation (female)
= patriarchal subjugation
• Abstract domination / concrete (effect of) domination
• Formal stasis that defines progress / historic contingency that
statically reproduces itself
 Necessity of negative dialectics
• Not about ‘positive (empirical) objects’, determination of forms
• Negative approach on forms
• Reproduction of epistemic universal androcentrism cannot be
evaded, but its dialectic can be (performatively) revealed
• Illustration of negative core of totality
Value-Dissociation: The dialectic of oppression
 Value-dissociation and the systems debate
• Not two systems, but one merged system
• Old patriarchy (direct oppression) transformed to mediated form
• Capital genuinely new, but dependent on patriarchal reproduction
• System = commodity producing patriarchy
• Driving force of system = value-dissociation
 Value-dissociation and intersectionality
• (Non-positive) logic of value dissociation responsible for difference
• ‘other Others’ negatively related to, but not reducible to value-diss
• Macro-Abstraction necessary to explain meso-/micro-levels
• Multiplicity of oppressions ‘real’, but causal relation to totality
• Difference is produced and maintained by value-dissociation
Value-Dissociation: The dialectic of oppression
 Overcome taboo of abstraction, theorize totality dialectically
• Gender is relevant to understand (seemingly neutral, ‘male’)
functionality of totality
• Terrain of ‘male’ abstract theorisation of totality can’t be shunned
• Intersectionality approach meta-theoretical step away from totality

“Thereby, the nexus of value-dissociation represents not just a narrow-

minded sociological concept of gender relations, it is an ever-present
all encompassing overall context that defines social totality; at the
same time, it is itself fractured and therefore cannot be a ‘main-
contradiction’ (Hauptwiderpruch) in the common understanding. […]
Out of itself it thereby represents differences and that which is
dissociated. Only thereby can it – paradoxically – prevail in itself. And
in itself, it is as determination of the negative, overarching foundational
principle irrecusable. (Scholz, 2011, 38)
Thank you for your attention!

elmar.flatschart@univie.ac.at