This blog is about Thinking Activity on. Marxist Theory and Feminism. This task is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University (MKBU). As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called Cultural Studies.
Marxist Definition according Oxford dictionary...
The political and economic theories of Karl Marx (1818-83), which explain the changes and developments in society as the result of opposition between the social classes.
The political and economic theories of the German political philosopher and economists Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95), later developed by their followers to form the basis for the theory and practice of communism.
Central to Marxist theory is an explanation of social change in terms of economic factors, according to which the means of production provide the economic base which influences or determines the political and ideological superstructure. Marx and Engels predicted the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat and the eventual attainment of a classless communist society.
Marxism is both a social and political theory, which encompasses Marxist class conflict theory and Marxian economics. Marxism was first publicly formulated in 1848 in the pamphlet The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which lays out the theory of class struggle and revolution. Marxian economics focuses on the criticisms of capitalism, which Karl Marx wrote about in his book Das Kapital, published in 1867.
Generally, Marxism argues that capitalism as a form of economic and social reproduction is inherently unfair and flawed, and because of this will ultimately fail. Capitalism is defined as a mode of production whereby business owners (capitalists) own all of the means of production - the factory, the tools and machinery, the raw materials, the final product, and the profits earned from their sale - while workers (labor) are hired for wages and have no claim on those things. Moreover, the wages paid to workers are lower than the economic value that their work creates for the capitalist. This surplus labor is the source of capitalists' profits, and is the root of the inherent class struggle between labor and capital.
- Marxism is a social, economic, and political theory that examines the causes and effects of capitalism and promotes communism as an alternative.
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two German philosophers, proposed this theory in 1848 to explain the class conflict between capitalists (Bourgeois) and laborers (Proletariat).
- This theory suggests that the growing struggles between the social classes will eventually culminate in a revolution led by the proletariat, overturning the bourgeois and seizing control of the economy.
- Marx argued that class conflicts might have considerably more societal consequences than the theory predicts. However, due to increased competition, consumption, demand and supply, and wages, the globe has witnessed a revolution in the industry.
Marxist follow
1. In the Marxist literary analysis, the evolving history of humankind, of its social groupings and interrelations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods.
2. Changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society, establishing in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage.
3. Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of the position and interests of a particular class. In any historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the dominant economic and social class.
Marxism also class conflict between rich and poor people and rich class and servant class people. find out class conflict with example
Critic and his works
The Hungarian Thinker Georg Lukacs
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin
French Marxist Louis Althusser
Pierre Macherey in A Theory of Literary Production
Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci : 1929 and 1935
Stuart Hall
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe : hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985)
In England the many social and critical writings : Raymond Williams
A leading theorist of Marxist criticism in England : Terry Eagleton
Fredric Jameson : The Political Unconscious : Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act 1981
Marxism also class conflict between rich and poor people and rich class and servant class people. find out class conflict with example
👉Capitalist society is made up of two classes: the bourgeoisie, or business owners, who control the means of production, and the proletariat, or workers, whose labor transforms raw commodities into valuable economic goods.
👉Ordinary laborers, who do not own the means of production, such as factories, buildings, and materials, have little power in the capitalist economic system. Workers are also readily replaceable in periods of high unemployment, further devaluing their perceived worth.
👉To maximize profits, business owners have an incentive to get the most work out of their laborers while paying them the lowest possible wages. This creates an unfair imbalance between owners and laborers, whose work the owners exploit for their own gain.
👉Because workers have little personal stake in the process of production, Marx believed they would become alienated from it, as well as from their own humanity, and turn resentful toward business owners.
👉The bourgeoisie also leverage social institutions, including government, media, academia, organized religion, and banking and financial systems, as tools and weapons against the proletariat with the goal of maintaining their position of power and privilege.
👉Ultimately, the inherent inequalities and exploitative economic relations between these two classes will lead to a revolution in which the working class rebels against the bourgeoisie, takes control of the means of production, and abolishes capitalism.
Coolie written by Mulk raj Anand
In Hindi Cinema find some examples between class conflict:
1. coolie : In symbol is a hammer and sickle as Marxist 
2. Namak halaal : In film also two friends belong to different class 
3.Namak Haram ; In film servant and Malik (rich and poor family)
Example of Marxism
1. Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930)
2. Porcile (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969)
A classic movie by Charlie Chaplin is a Marxist film? Chaplin was always sensitive to social problems. England has always been the land of socialist battles. Highgate cemetery is a sufficient proof of how deeply related England is to Marx’s life.
This film could be seen as a social accusation toward industrialization . If one wants to better understand what proletariat alienation is, this is the film to see. This movie is based on a simple concept which it explains well through stereotypical and ironic characters.
A society that works in a crazy context cannot be fit for man, who continuously searches to be free. If it is only a critical film more than constructive one, it reflects a particular aspect of industrial proletariat problems, a very old problem that is a socialist vindication but at the same time, is the basis of Marx’s philosophy.
This film demonstrates what a useful concept communism was in fighting fascism in Italian society during World War II. Novecento is the story of two men, born in the same day in the same village. One is the son of a country worker (Gerard Depardieu) and the other one is the son of the landholder (Robert DeNiro). They have different social backgrounds but grow together in friendship.
Feminism
Cambridge dictionary...
the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state:
an organized effort to give women the same economic, social, and political rights as men
What does feminism mean?
Feminism is a doctrine, or principle, that states women should have rights equal to those of men, especially social and political rights.
Because feminism is a doctrine, there are many different thoughts about what feminism actually means and how best to achieve the desired equality. There is no unified group of feminists with a single philosophy, but all feminists agree that women are somehow not treated equally to men and that they should be.
In the United States, from around 1848 through to 1920, feminism was generally concerned with women’s right to vote (known as women’s suffrage), notably starting at the Seneca Falls Convention.
From around 1960, feminism began to be concerned with women’s civil rights and questioned what women’s role in society should be. Scholars are divided on whether the second wave actually ended and, if so, when.
Starting in the 1990s, feminism started emphasizing electing women to political offices and majorly fighting against sexual harassment in the workplace. Many feminists at the time also questioned the notion of gender and the stereotypes of male and female societal roles and behavior.
Some scholars suggest in the early 2010s, feminists began to focus on furthering better treatment of women. This can be seen by the rapid spread of the Me Too movement.
Feminism Claims
1. The basic view is that Western civilization is pervasively patriarchal
2. It is widely held that while one’s sex as a man or woman is determined by anatomy, the prevailing concepts of gender—of the traits that are conceived to constitute what is masculine and what is feminine in temperament and behavior—are largely, if not entirely, social constructs that were generated by the pervasive patriarchal biases of our civilization.
3. The further claim is that this patriarchal (or “masculinist,” or “androcentric”) ideology pervades those writings which have been traditionally considered great literature, and which until recently have been written mainly by men for men. Typically, the most highly regarded literary works focus on male protagonists—Oedipus, Ulysses, Hamlet, Tom Jones, Faust, the Three Musketeers, Captain Ahab, Huck Finn, Leopold Bloom—who embody masculine traits and ways of feeling and pursue masculine interests in masculine fields of action.
What critic do ?
1. Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery of texts written by women.
2. Revalue women's experience.
3. Examine representations of women in literature by men and women.
4. Challenge representations of women as 'Other', as 'lack', as part of 'nature'.
5. Examine power relations which obtain in texts and in life, with a view to breaking them down, seeing reading as a political act, and showing the extent of patriarchy.
6. Recognise the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and 'natural'.
7. Raise the question of whether men and women are 'essentially' different because of biology, or are socially constructed as different.
8. Explore the question of whether there is a female language, an ecriture feminine, and whether this is also available to men.
9. 'Re-read' psychoanalysis to further explore the issue of female and male identity.
10. Question the popular notion of the death of the author, asking whether there are only 'subject positions ... constructed in discourse', or whether, on the contrary, the experience (e.g. of a black or lesbian writer) is central.
11. Make clear the ideological base of supposedly 'neutral' or 'mainstream' literary interpretations.
critics and his works
- Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792),
- John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869),
- the American Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845).
- Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own (1929)
“second-wave feminism,” was launched in France
- Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949),
- Marry Ellmann's Thinking about Women (1968),
- Patricia Meyer Spacks’ The Female Imagination (1975),
- Ellen Moers’ Literary Women (1976), on major women novelists and poets in England, America, and France; Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own: Brontë to Lessing (1977);
- Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979; rev. 2000).
- Barbara Johnson, A World of Difference (1987);
- Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (1989); and the essays in Feminism/ Postmodernism, ed. Linda J. Nicholson (1990).
Elaine Showalter named gynocriticism—that is, a criticism which concerns itself with developing a specifically female framework for dealing with works written by women, in all aspects of their production, motivation, analysis, and interpretation, and in all literary forms, including journals and letters.
Examples
1. Pink
The 2016 movie Pink raised a very important and relevant social issue- that of the importance of consent. Pink revolves around the lives of three young confident and self-dependent women- Minal, Falak and Andrea.
These three decide to attend a party at a farm house and that is where their problems begin. They get trapped in an unwanted situation and even have to go to court to prove it was ‘not their fault’ to be at a party, drink and talk to boys. (All of which are considered normal for the boys but unusual for the girls)
They have their character assassinated for no reason at all. Though it was Minal who was attacked by the man, she is presented as the perpetrator of the crime. She defends herself when the man tried to force himself on her. But throughout the court proceedings, it is presented like she was the one at fault for being attacked. Questions like why were she out so late night, what she was wearing, why she was drinking, why was she hanging out with boys are all fired on her.
It is their lawyer who ultimately wins the case by raising a very valid point- importance of consent to have sex with anyone. If a person says, NO you should stop then and there. No means No. It should never be taken lightly.
2. Thappad
3.english vnglish
4. Rudrama Devi
5.Queen
6. Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975).
The criteria for the films in this list are that they are fictional, made by women and feature female protagonists. Finally, all are made in the spirit of liberation. There are many notable films that provide stark and uncompromising images of women living under patriarchal law and male order, among them Barbara Loden’s Wanda (USA 1971) and Chantal Akerman’s I wanted, however, to focus on films that provide images of celebration rather than endurance. Films directed by men, in spite of there being some key titles, have been excluded as female filmmakers are too often absent from this type of list.
Availability for feminist classics is scarce. Feminist films are frequently ‘disappeared’ from film culture. Where, for example, are the films of Stephanie Rothman? Why has Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) been so long unavailable on DVD? [Dash’s film is now restored and is available on Blu-ray].
Other filmmakers that should be mentioned in the context of feminist filmmaking are the Hollywood directors, who in the late 1970s and early 1980s were part of a new wave of feminist film, among them Joan Micklin Silver (Between the Lines, 1977), Claudia Weill (Girlfriends, 1978) and Susan Seidelman (Smithereens, 1982 and Desperately Seeking Susan, 1985).
The directors working in Britain today must also be acknowledged. Their films provide examples of interesting and often inspirational female characters. Filmmakers like Gurinder Chadha, Andrea Arnold and Carol Morley are in their own ways keeping the tradition alive.
