Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Stallybrass: “[F]or all our talk of the ‘materialism’ of modern life, attention to material is precisely what is absent.” (39).

My hypothesis is that “materialistic” is half of yet another binary, like unnatural/natural, inauthentic/authentic, and feminine/masculine.  I’m not yet entirely sure what word to use to describe what’s on the other side.

First of all, I think that complaints about “materialism” are inherently sexist.  I would argue that most things denigrated as being “materialistic” are also gendered female (clothing and pop music, for example).  Additionally, Judtih Butler would say that the entire concept of materialism has been considered feminine from the start.  Fausto-Sterling writes, “Western notions of matter and bodily materiality, Butler argues, have been constructed through a ‘gendered matrix.’  That classical philosophers associated femininity with materiality can be seen in the origins of the word itself.  ‘Matter’ derived from mater and matrix, referring to the womb and problems of reproduction.” (22).

I want to go back again to the concept of “disembodied spirits” from Mary Douglas.  She writes, “Social intercourse requires that unintended or irrelevant organic processes should be screened out. It equips itself therefore with criteria of relevance and these constitute the universal purity rule. The more complex the system of classification and the stronger the pressure to maintain it, the more social intercourse pretends to take place between disembodied spirits.” (80).  Unlike Douglas, I’m not talking about organic processes, but I think the constructed idea that bodies and matter aren’t relevant to proper social discourse is really important.  The idea is that someone truly intelligent would have no need for material things, and would even transcend materiality, so someone really interested in material thingss would be really “materialistic” and less intelligent.

To bring it back to Stallybrass, I think this dichotomy is why “attention to material is precisely what is absent.”  If one pays attention to material, one runs the risk of becoming materialistic.  Better just to proclaim that people are too materialistic and then ignore the importance of material things . . .