Finding the Man in the State

Author(s): Wendy Brown

Source: Feminist Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 7-34
Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.
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 FINDING THE MAN IN THE STATE

WENDYBROWN

Amid postmodernistcircumspectionabout definitive or compre-

hensive accounts, the absence of a comprehensivetheory of the
masculinistpowers of the state is an admittedlyambiguouslack.
However,there are two overlappingsets of politicaldevelopments
in the United Stateswhich suggestthe need for as full, complex,
and nuanced readingof state powers as purveyorsand mediators
of male dominance as feminist theorists can achieve. First, the
state figuresprominentlyin a numberof issues currentlyoccupy-
ing and often dividingNorth Americanfeminists, includingcam-
paigns for state regulationof pornographyand reproductivetech-
nologies; contradictoryagendas for reforms in labor, insurance,
and parentalleave legislation(the "difference-equality" debate in
the public policy domain);and appealsto the state, at times cross-
cut by appealsto the privatesector, for pay equity, child support
and daycare funding. Second, an unprecedented and growing
number of women in the United Statesare today directlydepen-
dent upon the state for survival.Throughthe dramaticincreasein
impoverished"mother-headed households"producedby the social-
ly fragmenting and dislocating forces of late-twentieth-century
capitalism, and throughthe proliferationof state policies and ser-
vices addressingthe effectsof these forces,the statehas acquireda
historicallyunparalleledprominence-political and economic, so-
cial and cultural-in millions of women'slives.
State-centeredfeminist politics, and feminist hesitationsabout
such politics,are hardlynew. Nineteenth-centuryfeministappeals
to the stateincludedcampaignsfor suffrage,protectivelaborlegis-
lation,temperance,birthcontrol,and marriagelaw reform.In the
twentiethcentury,the list expandedto campaignsfor equaloppor-
tunity, equal pay, equal rights,and comparableworth;reproduc-
Feminist Studies 18, no. 1 (Spring 1992). ? 1992 by Feminist Studies, Inc.
7
8 Wendy Brown

tive rights and public daycare;reform of rape, abuse, marriage,

and harassmentlaws; and in the last decade,laborlegislationcon-
cernedwith maternity,as well as stateregulationof pornography,
surrogacy,and new reproductivetechnologies.In NorthAmerican
feminism'smore militantrecentpast, argumentsaboutthe appro-
priateness of turning to the state with such appeals frequently
focused on the value of "reformpolitics"(a Left skepticism)or on
the appropriatenessof state "intervention" in familialand sexual
issues (a liberalnervousness).Lessoften raisedand what I want to
pose centrallyhere is the questionof whetherthe stateis a specifi-
cally problematicinstrumentor arenaof feministpoliticalchange.
If the institutions,practices,and discoursesof the stateare as inex-
tricably,however differently,bound up with the prerogativesof
manhoodin a male-dominantsociety, as they are with capitaland
class in a capitalistsocietyand white supremacyin a racistsociety,
what are the implicationsfor feminist politics?
A subsetof this questionaboutfeministappealsto the state con-
cernsthe politicsof protectionand regulation,the inescapablepol-
itics of most state-centeredsocial policy. Althoughminimallevels
of protectionmay be an essentialprerequisiteto freedom,freedom
in the barest sense of participatingin the conditionsand choices
shaping a life, let alone in a richer sense of shaping a common
world with others,is also in profoundtensionwith externallypro-
vided protection.Whetherone is dealingwith the state,the Mafia,
parents,pimps, police, or husbands,the heavy, dual price of insti-
tutionalizedprotectionis always a measure of dependence and
agreementto abideby the protector'srules. As Jean-JacquesRous-
seau's elegant critique of "civil slavery"made so clear, institu-
tionalizedpoliticalprotectionnecessarilyentailssurrenderingindi-
vidual and collective power to legislate and adjudicatefor our-
selves in exchangefor externalguaranteesof physicalsecurity,in-
cludingsecurityin one'sproperty.'Indeed, within liberalism,pa-
ternalismand institutionalizedprotectionare interdependentparts
of the heritageof socialcontracttheoryin which "naturalliberty"is
traded for the individualand collective security ostensibly guar-
anteed by the state.2
If those attachedto the politicalvalue of freedomas self-legisla-
tion or directdemocracythus have reasonto be wary of the poli-
tics of protection,women have particularcause for greetingsuch
politics with caution. Historically,the argumentthat women re-
Wendy Brown 9

quireprotectionby and from men has been criticalin legitimating

women's exclusion from some spheres of human endeavor and
confinementwithin others.Operatingsimultaneouslyto link "fem-
ininity"to the privilegedraces and classes, protectioncodes are
also markersand vehicles of such divisions among women, dis-
tinguishingthose women constructedas violable and hence pro-
tectable from those women who are their violation,logicallyun-
violable because markedsexually available,markedas sexuality.
Protectioncodes are thus key technologiesin regulatingprivileged
women as well as in intensifyingthe vulnerabilityand degradation
of those on the unprotectedside of the constructeddividebetween
light and dark, wives and prostitutes,good girls and bad ones.3
Finally,if the politicsof protectionare genericallyproblematicfor
women and for feminism, still more so are the specific politics of
sexual protection, such as those inherent in feminist antipor-
nographylegislation.Legallycodifyingand therebyontologizinga
cultural constructionof male sexual rapaciousnessand female
powerlessness, this appeal for protectionboth desexualizesand
depowers women in its assignmentof responsibilityto the state
for women's fate as objects of sexist sexual construction.More-
over, if, as I will argue, state powers are no more gender-neutral
than they are neutralwith regardto class and race, such an appeal
involves seekingprotectionagainst men from masculinistinstitu-
tions, a move more in keepingwith the politics of feudalismthan
freedom.Indeed,to be "protected" by the very power whose viola-
tion one fearsperpetuatesthe specificmodalityof dependenceand
powerlessnessmarkingmuch of women'sexperienceacrosswide-
ly diverse culturesand epochs.
As potentiallyperniciousbut more subtle in operationthan the
politicsof protectioninherentin state-centeredfeministreformsare
the politics of regulationentailedby many such reforms.Michel
Foucault, and before him, Max Weber and Herbert Marcuse,
mappedin meticuloustheoreticaland empiricaldetail"theincreas-
ing organizationof everything as the centralissue of our time"and
illuminatedthe eviscerationof human depths and connection,as
well as the violent structures of discipline and normalization
achieved by this process.4 Yet with few exceptions, feminist
politicalthinkers and activists eschew this assessment, pursuing
various politicalreformswithout apparentconcern for the inten-
sificationof regulation-the pervasivelydiscipliningand dominat-
10 Wendy Brown

ing effects-consequent to them. Comparableworth policy, for ex-

ample,involvesextraordinary new levels of rationalizationof labor
and the workplace:the techniques and instrumentsof job mea-
surement,classification,andjob descriptionrequiredfor its imple-
mentationmake Taylorismlook like child'splay. Similarly,state-
assisted child support guarantees,including but not only those
utilizingwage attachments,invite extensive state surveillanceof
women'sand men'sdailylives, work activities,sexualand parental
practices,as well as rationalizationof their relationshipsand ex-
pectations.Given a choice between rationalized,proceduralun-
freedom, on one hand, and arbitrarydeprivation,discrimination,
and violence, on the other, some, perhaps even most, women
might opt to inhabit a bureaucratizeddomain over a "stateof
nature"suffused with male dominance.So also would most of us
choose wage work over slavery,but such choices featurenowhere
a meaningfulpolitics of freedom.
The second historicaldevelopmentsuggestinga need for the il-
luminativepowers of a feministtheory of the state-the dramatic
increasein impoverished,woman-supportedhouseholdsover the
last two decades-raises a relatedset of issues about dependence
and autonomy,dominationand freedom.The statisticsare famil-
iar:today, approximatelyone-fifthof all women are officiallypoor
and two out of three poor adults are women; women literallyre-
placed men on the poverty rolls over the last twenty years. The
poverty rate for childrenunder six is approximately25 percent-
47 percentfor AfricanAmericanchildren,and 40 percentfor His-
panic children. Nearly one-fifth of U.S. families are officially
"headedby women,"but this fifth accountsfor one-halfof all poor
families and harbors almost one-third of all children between
three and thirteen.5 Approximatelyone-half of poor "female-
headed"households are on welfare; over 10 percent of all U.S.
families thus fit the profile of being headed by women, im-
poverished,and directlydependenton the state for survival.
An appreciationof the gendered characteristicsof the institu-
tions now figuringso largelyin the lives of millions of U.S. poor
women and children is surely criticalto formulatingintelligent
feminist strategies for dealing with the state.6 Indeed, quietly
parallelingthe controversialfeministadvocacyof state regulation
of pornographyis an equally questionablebut less hotly debated
feminist insistence upon state solutions to female poverty. Al-
Wendy Brown 11

though Linda Gordon, Mimi Abramovitz, and a handful of other

feminist welfare state critics do work to problematize this insis-
tence, the dominant position in feminist political discourse is typi-
fied by Barbara Ehrenreich and Frances Fox Piven who began ar-
guing in the early 1980s that Left and radical feminists must over-
come their "categoricalantipathy to the state."7In Ehrenreich'sand
Piven's view, such indiscriminate (and implicitly unfounded) mis-
trust of authority and institutions obscures how potentially em-
powering for the women's movement is the considerable and
growing involvement of women with the state-mostly as clients
and workers but also as constituents and politicians. Largely on
the basis of hypothetical alliances (between middle-class women
in the welfare state infrastructure and their clients) and imagined
possibilities for militant collective action (in the vein of welfare
rights actions of the 1960s), Piven and Ehrenreich argue that the
welfare state is not merely a necessary holding action for millions
of women but constitutes the base for a progressive mass move-
ment.8 "The emergence of women as active political subjects on a
mass scale is due to the new consciousness and new capacities
yielded women by their expanding relationships to state institu-
tions."9
Ehrenreich and Piven are sanguine about precisely what I want
to place in question, that U.S. women's "expandingrelationships to
state institutions" unambiguously opens and enriches the domain
of feminist political possibilities. Do these expanding relationships
produce only "active political subjects," or do they also produce
regulated, subordinated, and disciplined state subjects? Does the
late-twentieth-century configuration of the welfare state help to
emancipate women from compulsory motherhood or help to ad-
minister it? Is the state eroding or intensifying the isolation of
women in reproductive work and the ghettoization of women in
service work? Do female staff and clients of state bureaucracies -a
critical population in Ehrenreich's and Piven's vision of a militant
worker-client coalition-transform the masculinism of bureau-
cracy or do they become servants of it, disciplined and produced
by it? Considering these questions in a more ecumenical register,
in what ways might women's deepening involvement with the
state entail exchanging dependence upon individual men for regu-
lation by contemporary institutionalized processes of male domi-
nation? And how might the abstractness, the ostensible neutrality,
12 Wendy Brown

and the lack of a body and face in the latter,help to disguisethese

processes, inhibitingor diluting women's consciousness of their
situation qua women, thereby circumscribingprospects of sub-
stantivefeminist politicalchange?
In the interestof addressing-developingmorethan answering-
these questions,this essayoffersa contoursketchof the specifically
masculinistpowersof the late modernU.S. state. Althoughit does
not build toward policy recommendationsor a specific political
program,it issues from and develops two politicalhunches:First,
domination, dependence, discipline, and protection, the terms
markingthe itineraryof women'ssubordinationin vastly different
culturesand epochs, are also characteristiceffects of state power
and thereforecast state-centeredfeminist politics under extreme
suspicion for the possibilityof reiteratingratherthan reworking
subordinateconditionsand constructionsof women. Second, in-
sofar as state power is, interalia, a historicalproductand expres-
sion of male predominancein publiclife and male dominancegen-
erally,statepower itself is surelyand problematicallygendered;as
such, it gives a specificallymasculinistspin to the generic prob-
lematic of the high tension and possible incompatibilitybetween
prospectsfor radicaldemocracyand the increasinglyunattenuated
powers of the state in the late twentieth century.

THEORIZING THE STATE

Discerningthe sociallymasculinedimensionsof the staterequires
comingto termswith the theoreticalproblematicof the stateitself,
specificallythe paradoxthatwhat we call the stateis at once an in-
coherent,multifacetedensembleof power relationsand an appar-
ent vehicle if not agentof massivedomination.The contemporary
U.S. stateis both modernand postmodern,highlyconcreteand an
elaboratefiction;powerfuland intangible;rigidand protean;potent
and boundaryless;centralizingand decentered;without agency,
eschewing personification,yet capable of tremendouseconomic,
political, and ecological effects. Despite the almost unavoidable
tendencyto speakof the stateas an "it,"the domainwe callthe state
is not a thing,system,or subjectbut a significantlyunboundedter-
rain of powers and techniques,an ensemble of discourses,rules,
and practices,cohabitingin limited,tension-ridden,oftencontradic-
tory relationwith one another.10
Wendy Brown 13

Insofar as "thestate"is not an entity or a unity, it does not harbor

and deploy only one kind of political power or, to start the story a
bit earlier, political power does not come in only one variety. Any
attempt to reduce or define power as such, and political thinkers
from Machiavelli to Morgenthau to MacKinnon have regularly
made such attempts, obscures for example, that social workers,
the Pentagon, and the police are not simply different faces of the
state in an indigent woman's life but different kinds of power. Each
works differently as power, produces different effects, engenders
different kinds of possible resistance, and requires a different
analytical frame; at the same time, each emerges and operates in
specific historical, political, and economic relation with the others
and thus also demands an analysis which can nonreductively cap-
ture this relation.
For purposes of this essay, I want to consider four specific modal-
ities of contemporary U.S. state power. These four are not ex-
haustive of the state's powers, but each carries a feature of the
state's masculinism and each has been articulated in traditional as
well as feminist political thought. (1) The juridical-legislativeor
liberal dimension of the state encompasses the state's formal, con-
stitutional aspects. It is the dimension Marx, in his early writings,
criticized as bourgeois, it is central to Catharine MacKinnon's and
Carole Pateman's theorization of the state's masculinism, and it is
the focus of the rapidly developing field of feminist jurisprudence. 1
(2) The capitalistdimension of the state includes provision of capi-
talism's moorings in private property rights as well as active in-
volvement in capitalist production, distribution, consumption, and
legitimation.12Sketched by Marx in his later writings, exhaustively
theorized by twentieth-century neo-Marxist scholars,13a number
of European and North American Marxist feminists have analyzed
aspects of masculine privilege inscribed in this dimension of the
state.14 (3) The prerogativedimension of the state pertains to that
which marks the state as a state: legitimate arbitrary power in
policy making and legitimate monopolies of internal and external
violence in the police and military. As the overt power-political di-
mension of the state, prerogative includes expressions of national
purpose and national security as well as the whole range of legiti-
mate arbitrary state action, from fiscal regulation to incarceration
procedures. Machiavelli and Hobbes are prerogative power's
classic theorists; the analyses of war and militarism undertaken by
14 Wendy Brown

Judith Steihm, Nancy Hartsock,Jean Bethke Elshtain, Cynthia

Enloe, and CarolCohn, as well as by nonacademicculturaland
ecofeminists,have openedthe terrainof prerogativestatepower to
feminist theoreticalcritique.15(4) The bureaucratic dimension of
the state,like the others,is expressedin institutionalarrangements
and discourse: bureaucracy's hierarchalism, proceduralism,
and cult of expertiseconstituteone of severalstate"voices" and the
organizationalstructureof stateprocessesand activities.Classical-
ly theorizedby Weber,cast in a narrowerframeby Foucaultas the
problematicof "disciplinary" power, this dimensionof state power
has been subjectedto feminist critiqueby KathyFerguson.16
Before elaboratingeach of these dimensions of state power, I
want to offer three prefatorynotes about male dominance and
statepower. First,the argumentI am here advancingis that all di-
mensions of state power, and not merely some overtly
"patriarchal" aspect, figurein the genderingof the state. The state
can be masculinistwithout intentionallyor overtly pursuingthe
"interests"of men preciselybecausethe multipledimensionsof so-
cially constructed masculinityhave historicallyshaped the mul-
tiple modes of power circulatingthroughthe domain called the
state-this is what it means to talk aboutmasculinistpower rather
than the power of men. On the other hand, although all state
power is markedwith gender,the same aspectsof masculinismdo
not appear in each modality of state power. Thus, a feminist
theory of the state requires simultaneouslyarticulating,decon-
structing,and relatingthe multiple strandsof power comprising
both masculinityand the state. The fact that neither state power
nor male dominanceare unitaryor systematicmeans that a femi-
nist theoryof the statewill be less a linearargumentthan the map-
ping of an intricategrid of often conflictingstrategies,technolo-
gies, and discoursesof power.
A second significantfeature of state and male dominationand
the qualityof their interpenetrationpertainsto the characterologi-
cal homologybetween them-their similarlymultiple,diverse,un-
systematiccompositionand dynamics.Perceivingand productive-
ly working this homology entails recognizing-for some this will
be conceding-that male dominanceis not rooted,as domination
by capital is, in a single mechanism that makes possible a large
and complexsystem of socialrelations.Whatlinks togetherthe di-
verse forms or "stages" of the economic system called capitalism-
Wendy Brown 15

the liberalor competitivestage, the monopolyor organizedstage,

the postindustrialor disorganizedstage- is its continuouslinchpin
in "private,"profit-orientedownershipand controlof the means of
production. Thus, however deeply and variously involved the
state may be with capitalistaccumulationand legitimation,the
state'scapitalistbasisremainsits guaranteeof privateownershipas
privatepropertyrights.Thereis no parallelway in which the state
is "male"because male dominancedoes not devolve upon a single
or essentialprinciple,which is why it is so hard to circumscribe
and absolutely inappropriateto systematize.17In most cultures,
male dominanceincludes the regularizedproductionof men's ac-
cess to women as unpaidservants,reproducers,sex partners,and
cheap labor,as well as the productionof men'smonopoliesof in-
tellectual,political,cultural,and economicpower. But the mascu-
linity and hence the power of men is developedand expresseddif-
ferently as fathers, as political rulers or members of a political
brotherhood,as owners and controllersin the economy, as sexual
subjects,as producersof particularkinds of knowledges and ra-
tionality,and as relativenonparticipantsin reproductivework and
otheractivitieswidely designatedas women'spurview. The diver-
sity and diffuseness of male power results in parallel diversity
across women's experienceinside the family and out, as mothers
and prostitutes, scholars and secretaries,janitors and fashion
models. These differences cannot be reduced entirely to the in-
tersectionof genderwith class, race,and sexuality;they pertainas
well to the different effects of the multiple dimensions and do-
mains of male power and female subordination.
A relatedfeatureof the homologybetween male dominanceand
state power pertainsto the ubiquitousquality of the dominance.
State and masculine dominationboth work throughthis ubiqui-
tousness rather than through tight, coherent strategies.Neither
has a single source or terrainof power; for both, the power pro-
ducing and controllingits subjects is unsystematic,multidimen-
sional,generally"unconscious," and withouta center.Malepower,
like state power, is real but largelyintangibleexcept for the occa-
sions when it is expressedas violence, physical coercion, or out-
rightdiscrimination-all of which are importantbut not essential
features of either kind of domination, especially in their post-
modernincarnations.The hegemoniceffectof both modesof domi-
nance lies in the combinationof strategiesand arenas in which
16 Wendy Brown

power is exercised.Concretely,if men do not maintainsome con-

trol over relationsof reproduction,they cannot as easily control
women's laborand if they do not monopolizethe norms and dis-
courseof politicallife, they exercisemuch less effectivesexualand
economiccontrolover women. But these strategiesbuttressand at
times even contradicteach other;they are not indissolublylinked
to one another. Women'ssubordinationis the wide effect of all
these modes of control,which is why no single feministreform-
in pay equity, reproductiverights, institutionalaccess, childcare
arrangements,or sexual freedom-even theoreticallytopples the
whole arrangement.The same is true of the state-its multipledi-
mensionsmake statepowerdifficultto circumscribeand nearlyim-
possibleto injure.Thereis no singlethreadwhich, when snapped,
unravelsthe whole of state or masculinedominance.
One final prefatorynote on the discernmentof gender in the
state:in the U.S. context,as well as that of other historicallycolo-
nial or slave-basedpoliticaleconomies, state power is inevitably
racialized as well as gendered and bourgeois. But the white
supremacistnature of contemporarystate power-the specific
mores and mechanismsthroughwhich state power is systemati-
cally rather than incidentally racist-are only beginning to be
theorizedby scholarsinvestigatingthe inscriptionof raceand race
supremacyin politicalpower, and I do not develop their specula-
tions here.18What can be arguedwith some certaintyis that the
racialized,gendered,and class elements of state power are mutu-
ally constitutiveas well as contradictory,but the specific mecha-
nisms and narrativesof the racializedstate have some distinctive-
ness, just as the genderedaspects of state power are analytically
isolatablefrom those of class, even as they mingle with them his-
torically and culturally.In other words, however these various
modes of social,political,and economicdominationintersectwith
each other in the daily constitutionand regulationof subjects,as
modes of politicalpowerthey requireinitiallyseparategenealogical
and analyticstudy. To do otherwiseis to reiteratethe totalizing,
reductionistmoves of Marxisttheories of power and society, in
which analysisof one vectorof socialpower-class- is tenderedto
enframeall modes of domination.
Wendy Brown 17

FINDING THE MAN IN THE STATE:

FOUR MODALITIESOF POWER
TheLiberalDimension.Liberalideology, legislation,and adjudica-
tion are predicatedupon a divisionof the polityinto the ostensibly
autonomousspheresof family, civil society (economy),and state.
In classical as well as much contemporaryliberal discourse,the
family is cast as the "natural" or divinely given-thus prepolitical
and ahistorical-partof the human world. Civil society is also for-
mulatedas "natural" in the sense of arisingout of "humannature,"
although the civility of civil society is acknowledgedby liberal
theoriststo be politically"achieved" and it is also within civil socie-
ty that the rights guaranteedby the (nonnatural)state are exer-
cised. In classic liberalaccounts,the state is the one conventional
and hence fully malleablepart of this tripartitearrangement;it is
constructedboth to protect citizens from externaldangerand to
guaranteethe rights necessary for commodious commerce with
one another.
The problemwith this discoursefor women is familiarand has
been extensively rehearsedby feminist politicaltheoristssuch as
CarolePateman,CatharineMacKinnon,LorenneClark,and Lynda
Lange.First,because the familyis cast as naturaland prepolitical,
so also is woman, the primaryworkerwithin and crucialsignifier
of the family, constructedin these terms. In this discourse,wom-
en are "naturally" suited for the family, the reproductivework
women do is "natural," the familyis a "natural" entity- everywhere
naturegreetsnatureand the historicalconstructednessand plasti-
city of both women and the family is nowhere in sight. As the
family is depoliticized,so is women'ssituationand women'swork
within it; recognizedneitherpoliticallynor economicallyas labor,
this work has a discursivelyshadowy, invisible character.19Sec-
ond, becausemuch of women'swork and life transpiresin the "pri-
vate" or familial realm, women's involvement with the place
where rights are conferred and exercised-civil society-is sub-
stantially limited by comparison with men. Thus, even when
women acquirecivil rights,they acquiresomethingthat is at best
partiallyrelevantto their daily lives and the main domainof their
unfreedom.Third,historically,the "privatesphere"is not actually
a realmof privacyfor women insofaras it is a place of nearlyun-
limited access to a woman by her husbandand children."Privacy
is everythingwomen . . . have never been allowed to have; at the
18 Wendy Brown

same time the private is everythingwomen have been equated

with and defined in terms of men'sabilityto have."20 Insofaras it
arises as a realm of privacyfrom other men for men, the private
sphere may be the last place on earth women experienceeither
privacyor safety-hence the feministlongingfor a "roomof one's
own"within men's"havenin a heartlessworld."Forthe most part,
rights do not apply in this sphere; ratherthis realm is formally
governed by norms of duty, love, and custom, and until quite
recently,has been largelyshieldedfrom the reachof law. Indeed,
the difficultiesof establishingmaritalrape as rape, wife battering
as battery,or child abuse as abuse, pertain,interalia, to the liberal
resistanceto recognizingpersonhoodinside the household;in the
liberalformulation,persons are rights-bearingindividualspursu-
ing theirinterestsin civil society.21ThusJamesTyrellin the seven-
teenth century, and Immanuel Kant and William Blackstonein
the eighteenth, argued that it was reasonablefor women to be
"concluded"(politicallyrepresented)by their husbands because
"womenhave no civil personality"-theyexist only as membersof
householdswhile personhoodis achievedin civil society.22Within
liberalism,the nonpersonhoodof women, the extralegalstatus of
household relations, and ontological association of both with
natureare all mutuallyreinforcing.
Accordingto the originmyths of liberalism,men come out of the
"stateof nature"to procurerightsfor themselvesin society;they do
not establish the state to protect or empower individualsinside
families.23The relevanceof this for contemporaryanalysislies in
its revelation of the masculinistperspective at the heart of the
liberalformulationof politicaland civil rights:the liberalsubjectis
a man who moves freelybetween familyand civil society,bearing
prerogativein the former and rights in the latter.This person is
male ratherthan genericbecause his enjoymentof his civil rights
is buttressedrather than limited by his relationsin the private
spherewhile the oppositeis the case for women: within the stan-
dard sexual division of labor,women'saccess to civil society and
its libertiesis limitedby householdlaborand responsibility.Liber-
alism'sdiscursiveconstructionof the "private" sphere as neithera
realmof work nor of power but of nature,comfort,and regenera-
tion is inherentlybound to the male positionin the privatesphere
and parallelsthe privilegingof class entailedin bourgeoischarac-
terizationsof civil society as a place of universal freedom and
equality.
Wendy Brown 19

One problemwith liberalstate power for women, then, is that

those personsrecognizedand grantedrightsby the state are walk-
ing freely aboutcivil society, not containedin the family. Women
doing primary labor and achieving primary identity inside the
familyare thus inherentlyconstrainedin theirprospectsfor recog-
nition as persons insofar as they lack the stuff of liberalperson-
hood-legal, economic, or "civilpersonality."They are derivative
of their households and husbands, subsumed in identity to their
maternalactivity as mothers, sequesteredfrom the place where
rights are exercised, wages are earned, and political power is
wielded. Moreover,because the liberal state does not recognize
the family as a politicalentity or reproductionas a social relation,
women'ssituationas unpaidworkerswithin the familyis depoliti-
cized. Finally,althoughwomen have now been accordedroughly
the same panoplyof civil and politicalrightsaccordedmen, these
rightsare of more limited use to most women and have different
substantivemeaningin women'slives. It is as gratuitousto dwell
upon an impoverishedsingle mother'sfreedomto pursue her own
individualinterestsin society as it is to carryon aboutthe private
propertyrightsof the homeless.
This last pointraisesa finalconsiderationaboutthe liberalstate's
maleness, one suggestedby the work of thinkers as diverse and
respectively problematicas Carol Gilligan and Luce Irigaray.24
The liberal subject-the abstractindividual constituted and ad-
dressedby liberalpoliticaland legalcodes-may be masculinenot
only because his primary domain of operationsis civil society
ratherthan the family,but becausehe is presumedto be morallyif
not ontologically oriented toward autonomy, autarky, and in-
dividualpower. Gilligan'swork suggeststhat social constructions
of genderin this cultureproducewomen who do not think or act
like liberalsubjects,that is, in terms of abstractrightsand duties.
For Gilligan,insofar as women develop much of their thinking
and codes of action within and for the comparativelynonliberal
domain of the family, relationshipsand needs rather than self-
interestand rightscomprisethe basisfor femaleidentityformation
and decision-makingprocesses. Although Irigaraymoves in the
domainof psychoanalysisratherthan empiricalsocial science, her
insistencethat"thesubjectis alwaysmasculine"is predicatedupon
a convergentaccountof the repudiationof dependencyentailedin
the psychic constructionof the male subject.
20 Wendy Brown

Incorporationof selected insights from these thinkers is not

meant to suggest that there is something essentiallymasculine
aboutthe liberalsubjector state;supplementingeitherthe psycho-
analyticor empiricalaccountswith historical,cultural,and politi-
cal-economiccomponents,one could plausiblyargue that liberal
discourseand practicesare the basis for the social constructionof
bourgeois masculinity rather than the other way around. But
causationis a poor analyticalmodalityfor appreciatingthe genea-
logicalrelationshipbetween masculinityand liberalism,a relation-
ship which is complexlyinterconstitutive,or better,interconstruc-
tive. One effect of this genealogyis that the liberalstate not only
adjudicatesfor subjectswhose primaryactivitiestranspirein civil
society ratherthan the family, but it does so in a discoursefeatur-
ing and buttressingthe interestsof individualisticmen againstthe
mandatoryrelationalsituationof women situated in sequestered
domains of caretaking.Similarly,not only does the liberal state
grantmen access to women in the privatesphereby markingthe
privatesphere as a rightlessrealm largelybeyond the state'spur-
view, it requiresthat women entercivil society on socially male
terms. Recognition as liberal subjects requires that women
abstractfrom their daily lives in the household and repudiateor
transcendthe social constructionof femalenessconsequentto this
dailiness, requirementswhich in addition to being normatively
problematic,are-as every working woman knows-never fully
realizable.Thus, not merely the structureand discoursebut the
ethos of the liberalstate appearsto be socially masculine:its dis-
cursive currenciesare rightsratherthan needs, individualsrather
than relations,autogenesisratherthan interdependence,interests
ratherthan sharedcircumstances.
The CapitalistDimension.The masculinismof the capitalistdi-
mension of the state, like that of the liberal dimension, is also
mooredin a public/privatedivisionbut one which moves along a
somewhat differentaxis from that constructedby liberalism.In
this division, men do paid "productive" work and keep women in
exchangefor women'sunpaidwork of reproducingthe male labor-
ers (housework)and the species (childcare)and caringfor the elder-
ly or infirm.The sexualdivisionof laborhistoricallydevelopedby
capitalismis one in which almostall women do unpaidreproduc-
tive work, almostall men do wage work, andthe majorityof wom-
en do both.
Wendy Brown 21

A largeportionof the welfare state is rootedin capitalistdevel-

opment'serosion of the interdependenthousehold aspect of this
division of labor;in the collapse of the exchange between wage
work in the economy and unpaid work in the family;and in the
provisionof householdcare for children,old, and disabledpeople
that this exchangesecured.But as feministscholarsof the welfare
state Mimi Abramovitz,Nancy Fraser,and Linda Gordonmake
clear,the fact that the familialexchangeprocesshas brokendown
does not mean thatcapitalismand the capitaliststateare no longer
structured along gender lines.25First, these arrangements,on
which the "familywage"and unequal pay systems were based,
leave their legacy in women's sixty-four-cents-on-the-dollar earn-
ing capacity and in
ghettoization low-payingjobs. Second,unpaid
reproductivework continues,and continuesbeing performedpri-
marilyby women, even though this work is increasingly(under)-
suppportedby the welfare state ratherthan by a male wage. Con-
sequently, ever-largernumbers of working- and middle-class
women are doing all of life'swork-wage work, childcare,domes-
tic labor, sustenance, and repair of community ties-within an
economy that remains organizationallyand normatively struc-
turedfor male wage earningand privilegeand assumesunpaidfe-
male labor in the home.
In Capital,Marxspeaks ironicallyof the double sense in which
the workerwithin capitalismis "free": "heis free to dispose of his
own laboras a commodityand he is free from any othermeans of
sustaininghimself, i.e., property."Women, of course, do not bear
the first kind of "freedom" when they are engagedin reproductive
work-they cannot "freely"dispose of their laboras a commodity
nor "freely" competein the labormarket.This is one of the mecha-
nisms by which capitalismis fundamentallyratherthan inciden-
tally gendered. Indeed, as long as significantparts of domestic
laborremainoutsidethe wage economy and women bearprimary
responsibilityfor this work, women will be economicallydepen-
dent on someone or something other than their own income-
earningcapacitieswhen they are engagedin it. The socialtransfor-
mation we are currentlywitnessing is one in which, on the one
hand,for increasingnumbersof women, this dependenceis on the
state ratherthan individualmen; and, on the other, the state and
economy, rather than individualmen, are accorded the service
work of women. Althoughmuch work historicallyundertakenin
22 Wendy Brown

the household is now available for purchase in the market,

women follow this work out into the economy-the laborforce of
the service sectoris overwhelminglyfemale.26Thus, as capitalism
has irreversibly commodified most elements of the formerly
privatesphere,the domainand characterof "exchange" in the sex-
ual division of labor has been transformedand transportedfrom
privateand individualizedto public and socialized.The twin con-
sequence is that much of what used to be women's work in the
home is now women's work in the economy; and the state and
economy, rather than husbands, now sustain many women at
minimallevels when women are engagedin bearingand caringfor
children.
In sum, the capitalistdimensionof the stateentailswomen'ssub-
ordinationon two levels. First, women performunremunerated
reproductivelabor;and because it is both unremuneratedand se-
questered from wage work, most women are dependent upon
men or the state for survivalwhen they are engagedin it. Second,
women serve as a reserve army of wage labor and are easily re-
tainedas such because of the reproductivework which interrupts
their prospectsfor a more competitivestatusin the laborforce.27
The state'srole in these arrangementslies in securing,via private
propertyrights,capitalistrelationsof productionin the firstplace;
buttressing and mediating, through production subsidies, con-
tracts,bailouts,and fiscalregulation,these relationsof production;
maintaining,through legal and political regulationof marriage,
sexuality,contraception,and abortion,controlof women'srepro-
ductive work; and perpetuating,througha genderedwelfare and
unemploymentbenefits system and the absence of qualitypublic
daycare,the specificallycapitalistsexual division of labor.28
The PrerogativeDimension. Prerogative power, the state's "legiti-
mate"arbitraryaspect, is easily recognizedin the domainof inter-
nationalstate action. Here, as Hegel remindsus, "theIdea of the
stateis actualized"-thestateexpressesitself as a stateand is recog-
nized as such by otherstates.29ForJohn Locke,the occasionalim-
perativeof maximum efficiency and flexibilityof state action in
both the domesticand internationalarenajustifiesthe cultivation
and deploymentof prerogativepower.30Among politicaltheory's
canonicalfigures,however,it is not Hegelor Lockebut Machiavelli
who treats most extensively the dynamics and configurationsof
prerogativepower-its heavily extralegal,adventurous,violent,
Wendy Brown 23

and sexualcharacteristics.Machiavellitheorizespoliticalpower in
a registerwhere violence, sexuality,and politicalpurposearethor-
oughly entwined, preciselythe entwiningwhich signalsthe pres-
ence of prerogativepower.31
That an early-sixteenth-century Florentinecould offer illumina-
tion about this featureof the postmodernU.S. state suggeststhat
unlike liberal, capitalist, and bureaucraticmodalities of state
power, prerogativepower is not specificto modernity.Indeed,for
liberals, prerogativepower is the liberal state's expressly non-
liberal dimension, and classical liberal thought depicts princely
prerogativeas precisely what liberalismpromises to diminish if
not cancel: historically, monarchical power is dethroned and
mythically,the state of nature (in which everyone has unlimited
prerogativepower)is suppressed.In this regard,the emergenceof
liberalismis conventionallyconceivedas the adventof an epoch in
which politicalorganizationbound to the privilegesof the few is
usurped by the needs of the many, in which raisond'etatshifts
from power to welfare,in which the nightwatchmanreplacesthe
prince. But there is another way of reading the origins of the
liberal state, in which the arbitraryand concentratedpowers of
monarchyare not demolishedbut dissimulatedand redeployedby
liberalismas prerogativepower that extends from war makingto
budgetmaking.In this reading,the violence of the "stateof nature"
is not overcomebut reorganizedand resituatedin, on the one hand,
the stateitself as the police and the military,and, on the other,the
zone marked"private" where the state may not treadand where a
good deal of women's subordinationand violationtranspires.
MaxWeber'stale of originsaboutthe stateis quite suggestivefor
mapping the connection between the obvious masculinism of
internationalstate action (the posturing,dominating,conquering
motif in such action)and the internalvalues and structureof state-
ruled societies. Accordingto Weber, the state has a double set of
origins. On the one hand, organized political institutions are
prefigured in the formation of bands of maraudingwarriors,
"men'sleagues,"who live off of a particularterritorialpopulation
without being integratedinto it and who randomlyterrorizetheir
own as well as neighboringpopulations.On the other, institu-
tionalizedpoliticalauthorityis prefiguredin the earliesthousehold
formations,where male or "patrimonial" authorityis rootedin the
physical capacity to defend the household against the pillaging
24 Wendy Brown

warriorleagues.32The first set of origins,which featuresa com-

bination of predatory sexuality, territoriality, violence, and
brotherhood in warrior league activity, certainly adduces a
familiarface of prerogativepower-egregious in the ways of street
gangs,ostensiblymodulated,rationalized,and legitimatedin inter-
nationalstate activity. In this vein, what CharlesTilly calls "war
makingand statemakingas organizedcrime,"Jose Ortegay Gasset
conjures as the "sportiveorigins of the state,"and Norman O.
Brown anoints"theoriginsof politics in juvenile delinquency...
politicsas gangrape"all posit, contraMarx,a genderedand sexual
rather than economic underpinningto the political formations
prefiguringstates.33But if we add to this picturethe second strain
of Weber'sorigins story, that concernedwith the foundationsof
male household authority,it becomes clear how contemporary
prerogativepower constructs and reinforces male dominance
acrossthe social order-and not only throughovertlymasculinist
displaysof power by the Pentagonor the police.
In Weber'saccount, althoughwarriorleagues are initiallycon-
sociated"beyondand above the everydayround of life,"they are
eventually "fittedinto a territorialcommunity,"at which point a
recognizable"politicalassociationis formed."This associationpre-
sumably retainsmany of the characteristicsit had as a more mo-
bile enterprise, especially its foundation in organizedviolence,
which, for Weber, is the identifying characteristicof the state.
Duringthis transition,the socialstructureof the territorialpopula-
tion shifts from one of mother-childrengroups to father-headed
households.The authorityof the adult male, Weber suggests,de-
rives not from his place in the divisionof laborbut from his capa-
city to physicallydominateand defendhis household,a significant
capacity only because of the omnipresentthreat to household
security posed by the warriorleagues.34On this account, male
household authorityis rooted in its provisionof protectionfrom
institutionalizedmale violence. In other words, the patriarchal
householdand its legitimatestructureof authorityarisesnot mere-
ly as an economicunit but also as a barrierbetween vulnerablein-
dividualsand the sometimesbrutaldemandsor incursionsof the
state'sprefigurativeassociations.This arrangementis codifiedand
entrenchedthrough asymmetricallegal privilegesand an asym-
metricalsexualdivisionof labor:householdpatriarchs"protect" de-
pendent and rightlesswomen from the violence of male political
Wendy Brown 25

organization.In this respect,the stateoperatesas an insigniaof the

extent to which politicsbetween men are always alreadyalso the
politics of exchanging, violating, protecting, and dominating
women; the one constitutesthe imperativesof the other.
Accordingto Weber,the characterof politicalpower concerned
with security,protection,or welfare is always shapedby the ulti-
mate power purposesof a politicalorganization.This suggeststhat
the gendered structureof liberalismis partly determinedby the
genderedcharacterof prerogativepower in which women are cast
as requiringprotectionfrom the world of male violence while the
superiorstatusof men is securedby their supposedabilityto offer
such protection. For Weber, the modern legacy of the warrior
leagueslies in the state'stelosof domination,realizedthrougha ter-
ritorialmonopoly of physical violence and resultingin a "legiti-
mate authority"predicatedupon this domination.This readingof
state originsalso leads Weberto formulatepoliticsand the state as
appropriatelyconcernedwith mattersother than "life,"especially
what he terms the "prestigeof domination."35 The legitimacy of
prerogativepower is rooted in the state'spursuitof values other
than the welfareof the citizenry;its aim is self-affirmationthrough
displaysof power and prestigeand not in protectionor sustenance
of mortallife.
The problem here is one most feminists could recite in their
sleep. Historically,women have been culturallyconstructedand
positioned as the creaturesto whom this pursuit of power and
gloryfor its own sake standin contrast:women preservelife while
men risk it; women tend the mundane and the necessary while
men and the state pursue larger-than-life concerns;men seek im-
mortality while women look after mortal affairs;men discountor
with their activities threaten the realm of everyday life while
women nurture and protect it. The problem, then, lies not in
women's exclusion from the domain of prerogativestate power
but in its problematicallygenderedcharacter.The distinctionbe-
tween daily existence preservedby women and the male pursuit
of power or prestigethroughorganizedviolence is both what gives
such a predatory, rapacious, conquering ethos to prerogative
power and what disenfranchiseswomen from this kind of power.
Conventionalconstructionsof masculinesexuality(as opposedto
masculinerationality,interests,or privileges)are most heavilyfea-
tured in this domain because this dimension of state power is
26 Wendy Brown

more immediatelyvisceral and corporealthan, for example, bu-

reaucraticor juridicalpower, both of which tend to organizeand
work on bodies without touchingthem so directly.
The masculinismof state prerogativepower inheres in both its
violent and its transcendent(above-"life") features, as well as in
their relation:women are the "other"of both these moments of
prerogativepower as well as the conduit between them. Yet be-
cause prerogativepower appears to its subjects as not just the
power to violate but also the power to protect-quintessentially
the powerof the police-it is quitedifficultto challengefroma fem-
inistperspective.The prerogativeof the state,whetherexpressedas
the interventionof the police or as incessantlychangingcriteriafor
welfarebenefits,is often all that standsbetween women and rape,
women and starvation,women and dependenceuponbrutalmates,
in short,women and unattenuatedmale prerogative.36
TheBureaucratic Dimension.Weberand Foucaultformulatebu-
reaucratizationand its normalizing,discipliningeffects as the dis-
tinct and ubiquitousdominationof our age.37Neither limits this
mode of dominationto the state;to the contrary,they regardthe
moder filtrationof bureaucracyor disciplinaryinstitutionsacross
the social orderas preciselywhat permitsa decreasein the overt
exerciseof statepowerwithouta correspondingdeclinein political
and social control.38Indeed,one of the most significantaspectsof
bureaucratizationis its erosion of a clear line between state and
civil society. Considerthe proliferatingsocial services bureaucra-
cies, regulativebureaucracies,and military-(post)industrial com-
plexes: the purview of each involves institutionalizedpenetration
and fusion of formerlyhonoredboundariesbetween the domain
of politicalpower, the household,and privateenterprise.
In TheFeministCaseagainstBureaucracy, KathyFergusonemploys
the insightsof Foucaultand Weber to exploretwo differentmo-
ments of masculinismin bureaucraticpower. She argues,first,that
bureaucraticpower "feminizes" bureaucraticstaff and clienteleby
rendering them dependent and submissive and by forcingthem in-
to strategiesof impressionmanagementthat"protectthem fromthe
worst aspects of dominationwhile simultaneouslyperpetuating
that domination."Second,she insiststhatbureaucraticdiscourseis
masculinistinsofaras it bearswhat Gilligan,Chodorow,Hartsock,
and others have identifiedas socially male values of abstractra-
tionality,formalproceduralism,rights-orientation, and hierarchy,
Wendy Brown 27

while opposingor colonizingsociallyfemalevalues of substantive

rationality,need-baseddecision making,relationality,and respon-
sibility.39For Ferguson,the masculinismof bureaucraticdiscourse
thus lies in a dualproduction:it createsfeminizedsubjectsand it ex-
cludes or colonizesfemalesubjects.
Ferguson'sdistinctionbetween "femininity" and "femaleness" is
drawn from the of
complexity women's experience as subordi-
nates (the site of productionof "femininity")and as caregivers(the
site of productionof "femaleness"), but insofar as these are not
separatesites of activityand women do not actuallyhave these ex-
periencesseparately,the distinctionbetween the feminineand the
female is rooted in a false essentializingof femaleness as care-
giving. Moreover,if bureaucracy'screationof subordinatesis the
process of feminization,then bureaucraticdominationand male
domination each lose their singularity;in assimilatingthem to
each other, genderand bureaucracyboth disappearas specifiable
kinds of power-domination in Ferguson'sanalysis begins to ap-
pear flatly generic. More persuasive than Ferguson'sargument
about bureaucracy'sfeminizationof subjectsis her accountof the
way the structuresand values of bureaucracy-hierarchy,separa-
tion, abstractright,proceduralism-standin relationto what she
posits as women's socially constructedexperience as caregivers.
When measuredby the normsof bureaucraticdiscourse,the values
of a caregivingmilieu appearimmatureor irrational-this is the
political face of Gilligan'sinsights into the norms of Lawrence
Kohlberg'sdevelopmentpsychology.Not only does bureaucratic
discourseperpetuatethe devaluationof practicesorientedtoward
need and care,it is also a directmediumof the state'smasculinism
in agencies dealingwith women as caregiversinsofaras this dis-
course both judges its female clients in masculineterms and con-
structsthem as feminizeddependents.
Ferguson'scritique of bureaucracyby no means exhausts the
possiblerangeof bureaucraticpower'smasculinistfeatures.I have
argued elsewhere that the instrumentalrationalitycomprising
both the foundationof bureaucraticorderand the process of bu-
reaucraticrationalizationis groundedin the social valorizationof
maximizedpower throughmaximizedtechnocraticcontrol.40This
particularexpressionof a will to power-domination throughre-
gimes of predictability,calculability,and control-appears to be
sociallymasculinein the West insofaras the ultimatevalue is con-
28 Wendy Brown

trol, and the uncontrollableas well as that which is to be con-

trolled(externalnatureor the body politic)are genderedfemale in
these discourses. Finally, bureaucraticpower quite obviously
"serves" male-dominantintereststhroughits disciplinaryfunction:
state agencies of every variety create disciplined,obedient, rule-
abiding subjects. This aspect of bureaucracy'sinvolvement with
masculinedominancedoes not requirethatbureaucraticpower it-
self be masculinist,only thatit be an effectiveinstrumentof domi-
nationand thatthe policiesit executesare gendered,whetherthey
be HUD, IRS,or militaryregulations.In this mode, bureaucracy's
regulatory and disciplining capacities enable and mask male-
dominant interests external to bureaucracy,much as Foucault
casts the disciplinaryorganizationof schools and hospitalsas aux-
iliaries of a generalized aim of social control. The fact that
bureaucracyas discipline is both an end and an instrument,and
therebyoperatesas poweras well as in theserviceof otherpowers,all
the while presentingitself as extrinsicto or neutralwith regardto
power, makingit especiallypotent in shapingthe lives of women
who are clients of the state.

POLITICALIMPLICATIONSAND POSSIBILITIES
As the sites and registersof women'srelationshipsto the state ex-
pand in late- and post-modernity,both the characteristicsand the
meaning of the state'smaleness transmogrify.Ceasingto be pri-
marilya domainof masculinistpowers and an instrumentof male
privilege and hegemony, albeit continuing to function in these
ways, the state increasinglytakes over and transformsthe project
of male dominance. However, as it moves in this direction,the
state'smasculinismbecomes more diffuseand subtleeven as it be-
comes more potent and pervasive in women's lives. Indeed, al-
though the state is replacingthe man for many women, its juris-
prudentialand legislativepowers, its welfareapparatus,and even
its police powers often appearas leadingvehicles of sex equalityor
female protection.In this regard,the late modern state bears an
eerie resemblanceto the "newman"of pseudofeministinfamy.Be-
neath a thin exteriorof transformed/reformed genderidentityand
concern for women, the state bears all the familiarelements of
male dominance.Throughits policeand military,the statemonop-
olizes the institutionalizedphysicalpower of society. Throughits
Wendy Brown 29

welfare function, the state wields economicpower over indigent

women, arbitrarilysets the terms of their economic survival,and
keeps them "dangling" and submissive by providingneither de-
pendable, adequate income levels nor quality public daycare.41
Throughage-of-consent laws on contraception,regulationof abor-
tion and other reproductivetechnologies,and heterosexualstipu-
lations on motherhood,the state controlsand regulatesthe sexual
and reproductive constructionand condition of women. Through
its monopoly of political authority and discourse, the state
mediatesthe discursive, semiotic,and spatialtermsof women'spoli-
tical practices.Thus, the state is neitherhegemonicnor monolith-
ic, but it mediates or deploys almost all the powers shaping
women's lives-physical, economic, sexual, reproductive, and
political-powers wielded in previousepochs directlyby men. In
short, in precise contrastto Foucault'sargumentaboutthe declin-
ing importanceof the state in the disciplinaryage, male social
power and the productionof female subjects appearsto be in-
creasinglyconcentratedin the state. Yet like the "newman,"the
postmodernstate also representsitself as pervasivelyhamstrung,
quasiimpotent,unable to come throughon many of its commit-
ments, because "itis no longer the solution to social problems,"
because it is "butone playeron a globalchessboard,"because it is
decentralizing(decentering)itself, or because it has forgonemuch
of its power in orderto become "kinder,gentler."The centralpara-
dox of the postmodernstate thus resemblesa centralparadoxof
postmodernmasculinity:its power and privilegeoperateincreas-
ingly throughdisavowalof potency, repudiationof responsibility,
diffusion of sites and operationsof control.
We may now return to Piven's and Ehrenreich'sclaim, re-
hearsedin the earlypages of this essay, aboutthe ostensiblyradi-
cal potentialinherent in women's growinginvolvementwith the
state. Suchan argumentdependsupon a Marxistconvictionabout
the inevitably radicalizingeffects of collectivizingsubjects pre-
viously isolated and dispersedin their oppression.42This convic-
tion in turn presumes a transcendentalsubject, a subject who
simply movesfrom isolatedto collectivizedconditions,as opposed
to a subjectwho is differentiallyproduced by these respectivecondi-
tions. In this regard,Piven'sand Ehrenreich's analysisis impervious
to the effects of the discursiveand spatialdisciplinarystrategiesof
the (post)modemworkplace and the state on workers or state
30 Wendy Brown

clients. Just as microelectronicsassembly plants in Third World

"FreeTradeZones"do not simplyemploywomen workersbut pro-
duce them-their bodies,socialrelations,sexualities,life conditions,
genders, psyches, consciousnesses-the state does not simply
handleclientsor employstaffbut producesstatesubjects,interalia,
bureaucratized, dependent,disciplined,and genderedones. Put an-
other way, capitalism'ssteady erosionof the liberalboundarybe-
tween public and private,its late-twentieth-century disruptionof
the boundarybetween householdand economy,and the politiciza-
tion of heretoforeprivateactivitiessuch as reproductionand sexual-
ity achievedby these developments,do not automaticallygenerate
politicalconsciousnessor strugglesfor freedomany more than the
state'sincreasingentanglementwith the economy automatically
generatesworking-classconsciousnessor militance.Again,this is
because the state does not simply addressprivateneeds or issues
but configures,administers,and producesthem. AlthoughPiven
speaksof women as "partlyliberatedfromthe overweeningpower
of men by the 'breakdown'of the family,"what is "liberated" from
the privatesphere may in fact be immediatelycolonizedand ad-
ministeredby one or more dimensionsof masculiniststatepower.
Indeed, the state may even assist in separatingindividualsand
issues from the "private" sphere in orderto effectivelyadminister
them: this is certainlyone way of readingthe workings of birth
controllegislationin the nineteenthcenturyand "squeallaws"and
surrogacylegislationin the late twentieth.
However important"thefamily"remains,even in its absence or
disintegration,in constructingthe genderedunconscious,it is de-
creasinglythe vehicle or the daily superintendentof masculine
dominancein postmodernculture. Today, women's strugglesfor
social, political,and economic freedomin the United Statesmore
often transpirein or near the domain of the state, whether these
strugglesare focused on the problemof poverty, welfare benefits
and regulations,reproductivetechnologies (includingabortion),
daycare, teenage reproductiverights, sexual freedom (including
lesbian rightsand the rightsand claims of sex workers),affirma-
tive action, education,or employment.Fromwhat I have argued
about the historicallegaciesand contemporaryfiguringof mascu-
linism in state powers, feminists might wisely be wary of sur-
renderingcontrolover the codificationof these issues to the state
and of approachingthe state as provider,equalizer,protector,or
Wendy Brown 31

liberator.Yet like male dominanceitself, masculiniststate power,

in part due to its multiple and contradictorycomposition,is not
monolithicbut deconstructible;it is somethingfeminists may be
able to exploitand subvertif we comprehendin orderto strategi-
cally outmaneuverits contemporaryruses.

NOTES
1. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Discourse on Inequality," pt. 2, and The Social Contract,
book 1, chap. 4.
2. The classic formulation of these arrangements are contained in Thomas Hobbes's
Leviathan and John Locke's Second Treatise on Government;the classic critic is Rousseau.
For feminist commentary, see Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1989) and the essays in pt. 2 of Feminist Challenges: Social and Political
Theory, ed. Carole Pateman and Elisabeth Grosz (Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1986).
3. See Jacqueline Dowd Hall, "The Mind That Burns in Each Body," in Pleasure and
Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carol Vance (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1984); Laurie Bell, ed., Good Girls, Bad Girls: Feminists and Sex Trade Workers Face to
Face (Toronto: Seal Press, 1987); Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).
4. Herbert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xxii. See also Sheldon Wolin,
Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1960), chap. 10. Recently, several political economists and cultural
theorists have argued that this tendency-a tendency specific to modernity and
especially organized capitalism -is in decline, indeed that the hallmark of postmoderni-
ty is disorganization. See Scott Lash and John Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987); and Claus Offe, Disorganized
Capitalism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).
5. Ruth Sidel, Women and Children Last: The Plight of Poor Women in Affluent America
(New York: Penguin, 1986), 3, 16, 24. See Hilda Scott, Working Your Way to the Bottom:
The Feminization of Poverty (London: Pandora Press, 1984), 19.
6. See Wendy Brown, "Deregulating Women: The Trials of Freedom under a Thousand
Points of Light," sub/versions 1 (January 1991): 1-10.
7. Frances Fox Piven, "Ideology and the State: Women, Power, and the Welfare State,"
in Women, the State, and Welfare, ed. Linda Gordon (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1990), 250; and Barbara Ehrenreich and Frances Fox Piven, "Women and the
Welfare State," in Alternatives: Proposals for America from the Democratic Left, ed. Irving
Howe (New York: Pantheon, 1983).
8. Piven, 258-59; Ehrenreich and Piven, 38.
9. Piven, 251.
10. Other feminist scholars have also sought to grasp these features; see especially
Rachel Harrison and Frank Mort, "Patriarchal Aspects of Nineteenth-Century State
Formation," in Capitalism, State Formation, and Marxist Theory, ed. Phillip Corrigan (Lon-
don: Quartet Books, 1980), 82; and Varda Burstyn, "Masculine Dominance and the
State," Socialist Register (1983): 46.
11. Catharine MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward a
Feminist Jurisprudence," pts. 1 and 2, Signs 8 (Summer 1983): 635-58, and Feminism Un-
32 Wendy Brown

modified;Pateman, Sexual Contract.Introductionsto feminist jurisprudenceinclude

ChristinaBrooks Whitman,"FeministJurisprudence,"FeministStudies17 (Fall 1991):
493-507;ChristineLittleton,"InSearchof a FeministJurisprudence," HarvardWomen's
LawJournal10 (Spring1987):1-7;HeatherRuthWishik,"ToQuestionEverything:The
Inquiriesof FeministJurisprudence," BerkeleyWomen'sLawJournal1 (Fall1985):64-75;
Ann Scales, "Towardsa FeministJurisprudence,"IndianaLawJournal56 (Fall 1981):
375-444, and "TheEmergenceof FeministJurisprudence,"YaleLawJournal95 (1986):
1373-1403; Marie Ahse, "Mind'sOpportunity:Birthing a PoststructuralistFeminist
Jurisprudence,"SyracuseLaw Review 38 (1987): 1129-73; and Ellen DuBois, Mary
Dunlap, CarolGilligan,CatharineMacKinnonand CarrieMenkel-Meadow,"Feminist
Discourse,MoralValues, and the Law-A Conversation," BuffaloLawReview34, no. 11
(1985): 11-87; Martha Minow, Making All the Difference:Inclusion,Exclusion,and
AmericanLaw (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1990); MarthaFineman and Nancy
Thomadsen, eds., At the Boundariesof Law: Feminismand Legal Theory(New York:
Routledge, 1991).
12. James O'Connor,FiscalCrisisof the State(New York:St. Martin'sPress, 1973),and
AccumulationCrisis (London:Blackwell, 1986);Jurgen Habermas,LegitimationCrisis,
trans.ThomasMcCarthy(Boston:BeaconPress, 1975);ClausOffe, Contradictions of the
WelfareState,ed. John Keane (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1984). On the postmodernstate
and postindustrialcapitalism,see Lash and Urry;and Offe, DisorganizedCapitalism.
13. In additionto the works cited in note 12, see also LouisAlthusser,LeninandPhilos-
ophy(London:New Left Books, 1971);John Holloway and SimonPicciotto,eds., State
and Capital:A MarxistDebate(London:Arnold,1978);FredBlock,RevisingStateTheory:
Essaysin Politicsand Postindustrialism (Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1987);
Ralph Miliband,The State in CapitalistSociety(New York: Basic Books, 1969);Nicos
Poulantzas,PoliticalPowerand Social Classes,trans. Timothy O'Hagen(London:New
Left Books, 1973);and Offe, Contradictions of the WelfareState.Surveysand analyses of
these debates can be found in MartinCarnoy,TheStateandPoliticalTheory(Princeton:
PrincetonUniversityPress, 1984);and BobJessop, TheCapitalistState:MarxistTheories
and Methods(New York:New York University Press, 1982).
14. See Michele Barrett, Women'sOppressionToday:Problemsin Marxist Feminist
Analysis(London:New Left Books, 1980);Burstyn;ZillahEisenstein,FeminismandSex-
ual Equality(New York:Monthly Review Press, 1984);Mary McIntosh,"TheStateand
the Oppressionof Women,"in Feminismand Materialism,ed. Annette Kuhn and Ann
Wolpe (London:Routledge& KeganPaul, 1978);Eli Zaretsky,"ThePlace of the Family
in the Originsof the WelfareState,"in Rethinkingthe Family:SomeFeministQuestions,
ed. BarrieThorne (New York:Longman,1982).
15. Judith Steihm, ed., Womenand Men'sWars(Oxford:PergamonPress, 1983), and
Women'sViewsof thePoliticalWorldsof Men (DobbsFerry,N.Y.: Transnational,1984);
Nancy Hartsock,Money,Sex, andPower:Towarda FeministMaterialism(Boston:North-
eastern University Press, 1984);Jean Bethke Elshtain, Womenand War (New York:
Basic Books, 1987); Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarizationof
Women'sLives(London:SouthEnd Press, 1983);CarolCohn, "Sexand Death in the Ra-
tional World of Defense Intellectuals,"Signs 12 (Fall 1987):687-718; and the issue of
RadicalAmerica(vol. 20 [anuary 1986])devoted to "Womenand War."
16. See KathyFerguson,The FeministCase againstBureaucracy(Philadelphia:Temple
University Press, 1984).
17. Many feminists have strained toward such systematization,none more fiercely,
however, than CatharineMacKinnon.For more extendedcritiqueof this efforton Mac-
Kinnon'spart, see my reviews of FeminismUnmodifiedin PoliticalTheory17 (August
1989):489-92, and of Towarda FeministTheoryof theStatein TheNation,8-15Jan. 1990,
61-64.
Wendy Brown 33

18. A sampling would include Henry Louis Gates and Dominick LaCapra, eds., The
Bounds of Race (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Paul Gilroy, There Ain't No
Black in the Union Jack (London: Hutchinson, 1987); David Goldberg, ed., Anatomy of
Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990); Stuart Hall, "Race Articula-
tion and Societies Structured in Dominance," Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism
(Paris: UNESCO, 1980), 299-314; Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The
Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1982 (London: Macmillan, 1984); Minow;
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s
to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1986); Peter Scraton, The State of the Police (London:
Pluto, 1985); Cornel West, A Genealogy of Racism (London: Routledge, 1990).
19. See Sheila Rowbotham, Woman's Consciouness, Man's World (Middlesex, England:
Penguin, 1973), chap. 4; and Lorenne Clark and Lynda Lange, eds., The Sexism of Social
and Political Theory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).
20. MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State," 656.
21. Catharine MacKinnon, "The Male Ideology of Privacy: A Feminist Perspective on
the Right to Abortion," Radical America 17 (Fall 1983): 23-35; and Wendy Brown,
"Reproductive Freedom and the 'Right to Privacy': A Paradox for Feminists," in Families,
Politics, and Public Policy: A Feminist Dialogue on Women and the State, ed. Irene Dia-
mond (New York: Longman, 1984), 322-38.
22. From Blackstone's Commentarieson the Laws of England: "By marriage, the husband
and wife are one person in law; ... they very being or legal existence of the woman is
suspended.. ." (cited in Carole Pateman, "Women and Consent," Political Theory 8 [May
1980]: 152, 155).
23. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (New York: Collier 1962),
129-33; John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1960), 361-77.
24. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); Luce Irigaray, "The Subject Is Always
Female," in This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell Universi-
ty Press, 1985). See also Nancy Hartsock's formulation of "abstract masculinity" in
Money, Sex, and Power.
25. Mimi Abramovitz, Regulating Women (Boston: South End Press, 1988); and Gordon,
Introduction (3-8) and Nancy Fraser, "Struggle Over Needs" (199-225) in Women, the
State, and Welfare.
26. Sidel, 61-62.
27. E.g., the "workfare"clauses of the welfare reforms enacted by the 1988 Family Sup-
port Act, which will do little to break "the cycle of poverty" or "the feminization of
poverty" but which will supply millions of cheap, docile female workers to the economy
during a predicted shortfall of low-wage labor in the coming decade.
28. See Barbara Nelson, "The Origins of the Two-Channel Welfare State: Workmen's
Compensation and Mother's Aid" (123-51), and Fraser, "StruggleOver Needs" in Women,
the State, and Welfare. See also Abramovitz.
29. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1952), 209.
30. Two Treatises, 421-27. See also Sheldon Wolin, "Democracy and the Welfare State:
Staatsrason and Wohlfahrtsstaatsrason,"Political Theory 15 (August 1987): 467-500.
31. In addition to Machiavelli's oeuvre, see Hanna Pitkin, Fortune Is a Woman (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984); Wendy Brown, Manhood and Politics: A Feminist
Reading in Political Theory (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988); and Wolin.
32. Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978), 357-59.
33. Charles Tilly, "WarMaking and State Making as Organized Crime," in Bringing the
34 Wendy Brown

State Back In, ed. Peter Evans et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985);
Jose Ortega y Gassett, "The Sportive Origin of the State,"in History As a System and Other
Essays Toward a Philosophy of History (New York: Norton, 1961), 26-32; and Norman O.
Brown, Love's Body (Wesleyan: Wesleyan University Press, 1959), 13.
34. Weber, 906, 359.
35. Weber, 910-11; Arthur Mitzman, The Iron Cage: An Historical Interpretationof Max
Weber (New York: Knopf, 1970), 82.
36. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, "The Contemporary Relief Debate,"' in
The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State (New York: Pantheon, 1987).
37. Weber, 223, 987, 1393-93, and "Politics As a Vocation," in From Max Weber, ed.
H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 82; Michel
Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York:
Vintage, 1977).
38. For Weber, this is the triumph of rational legal authority; for Foucault, the
supplanting of sovereign or juridical power with disciplinary power.
39. Ferguson, 158-69.
40. Brown, Manhood and Politics, chap. 8.
41. Wolin, 474-78.
42. "The welfare state brings together millions of poor women who depend on welfare
state programs. These constituencies are not... simply atomized and therefore helpless
people. Rather the structure of the welfare state itself has helped to create new
solidarities. . ." (Piven, 260).