“Gender” for a Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word

Abstract

I n 1983, Nora Räthzel from the autonomous women’s collective of the West German independent Marxist journal, Das Argument , wrote to ask me to write a “keyword” entry for a new Marxist dictionary An editorial group from Das Argument had undertaken an ambitious project to translate the multi-volume Dictionnaire Critique du Marxism (Labica and Benussen, 1985) into German and also to prepare a separate German supplement that brought in especially the new social movements that were not treated in the French edition. 1 These movements have produced a revolution in critical social theory internationally in the last twenty years. They have also produced—and been partly produced by—revolutions in political language in the same period. As Räthzel expressed it, “We, that is the women’s editorial group, are going to suggest some keywords which are missing, and we want some others rewritten because the women do not appear where they should” (personal communication, 2 December 1983). This gentle understatement identified a major arena of feminist struggle—the canonization of language, politics, and historical narratives in publishing practices, including standard reference works. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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