> Given the socialist-feminist effort to understand how the
> reproduction of persons and the social regulation of sexuality were
> part of the very process of production and, hence, part of the
> "materialist conception" of political economy, how is it that
> suddenly when the focus of critical analysis turns from the question
> of how normative sexuality is reproduced to the queer question of how
> that very normativity is confounded by the nonnormative sexualities
> it harbors within its own terms-not to mention the sexualities that
> thrive and suffer outside those terms-that the link between such an
> analysis and the mode of production is suddenly dropped? Is it only a
> matter of "cultural" recognition when nonnormative sexualities are
> marginalized and debased, or does the possibility of a liveli hood
> come into play?
This isn't "recognition" in the sense of Hegel and Marx. It also isn't Marx's "'materialist conception' of political economy"{" This is a conception of the process through which a capability for "freedom" and "mutual recognition" develops.
According to both Hegel and Marx, what develops within social relations is the individual capability for "freedom" understood as fully free self-determination by reason. All thinking, willing and acting are conceived as potentially "free" in this sense. The actualizaton of this potential via an "incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers" is required for relations of "mutual recognition."
"Impulse, appetite, inclination are possessed by the animal also, but it has not will; it must obey impulse, if there is no external obstacle. Man, however, is the completely undetermined, and stands above impulse, and may fix and set it up as his. Impulse is in nature, but it depends on my will whether I establish it in the I. Nor can the will be unconditionally called to this action by the fact that the impulse lies in nature." Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Introduction <http://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/hegel/index.htm>
"The will, which is will only according to the conception, is free implicitly, but is at the same time not free. To be truly free, it must have a truly fixed content; then it is explicitly free, has freedom for its object, and is freedom. What is at first merely in conception, i.e., implicit, is only direct and natural. We are familiar with this in pictorial thought also. The child is implicitly a man, at first has reason implicitly, and is at first the possibility of reason and freedom. He is thus free merely according to the conception. That which is only implicit does not yet exist in actuality. A man, who is implicitly rational, must create himself by working through and out of himself and by reconstructing himself within himself, before he can become also explicitly rational." Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Introduction <http://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/hegel/index.htm>
"Man as spirit is a free being, who need not give way to impulse. Hence in his direct and unformed condition, man is in a situation in which he ought not to be, and he must free himself." Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Introduction <http://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/hegel/index.htm>
“Freedom as the ideal of that which is original and natural, does not exist as original and natural. Rather must it be first sought out and won; and that by an incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers. The state of Nature is, therefore, predominantly that of injustice and violence, of untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings. Limitation is certainty produced by Society and the State, but it is a limitation of the mere brute emotions and rude instincts; as also, in a more advanced stage of culture, of the premeditated self-will of caprice and passion. This kind of constraint is part of the instrumentality by which only, the consciousness of Freedom and the desire for its attainment, in its true - that is Rational and Ideal form - can be obtained. To the Ideal of Freedom, Law and Morality are indispensably requisite: and they are in and for themselves, universal existences, objects and aims; which are discovered only by the activity of thought, separating itself from the merely sensuous, and developing itself, in opposition thereto; and which must on the other hand, be introduced into and incorporated with the originally sensuous will, and that contrarily to its natural inclination.” http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/history4.htm
Within relations of mutual recognition expressive of "freedom" in this sense "differences" are resolved through reason. Thus Marx says of "religious opposition."
“The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jew and the Christian is the religious opposition. How is an opposition resolved? By making it impossible. How is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishing religion. As soon as Jew and Christian recognize that their respective religions are no more than different stages in the development of the human mind, different snake skins cast off by history, and that man is the snake who sloughed them, the relation of Jew and Christian is no longer religious but is only a critical, scientific, and human relation. Science, then, constitutes their unity. But, contradictions in science are resolved by science itself.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
In contrast to Hegel, Marx identifies "human emancipation" with the actualization of "freedom" and "mutual recognition" in "everyday life" as well as in political life. This expresses his "materialist conception" of "freedom" and of the process through which "freedom" in developed and actualized. As in Hegel, however, this is equivalent to the full development and actualization of "mind" - of "reason."
"the religious spirit cannot be really secularized, for what is it in itself but the non-secular form of a stage in the development of the human mind? The religious spirit can only be secularized insofar as the stage of development of the human mind of which it is the religious expression makes its appearance and becomes constituted in its secular form. This takes place in the democratic state. Not Christianity, but the human basis of Christianity is the basis of this state. Religion remains the ideal, non-secular consciousness of its members, because religion is the ideal form of the stage of human development achieved in this state.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
“Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his ‘own powers’ as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
The relations of mutual recognition that actualize freedom in this sense include sexual relations.
"In this natural species-relationship man’s relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature – his own natural destination. In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the human essence of man." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
Ted