Femininity as Productive Force: Kluge and Critical Theory

Abstract

When Alexander Kluge introduced the concept of "female productive force" in the debates of the women's movement in the mid-1970s, he did so as part of a long-standing discussion on the "public sphere" (Öffentlichkeit). The issue of the public sphere had been one of the main concerns of the left in the Federal Republic from the protests against nuclear energy (Ostermarschierer) in the 1950s and 60s to the student movement. Whatever their particular causes, these movements invoked the Enlightenment tradition of Western democracies to which the Federal Republic aimed to join. As "extra-parliamentary opposition," the left sought to promote the democratic process the "process of maturation" of the German people in contrast to the control that the National Socialist past continued to exert over political, legal, social, and cultural institutions. The influential study by Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, personified this critical interest in the liberal tradition of the public sphere.