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Working Women and Monstrous Mothers: Kant, Marx, and the Valuation of Domestic Labour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2017

Jordan Pascoe
Jordan Pascoe*
Affiliation:
Manhattan College
*
Email: jordan.pascoe@manhattan.edu
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Abstract

In this article, I compare Kant’s and Marx’s analysis of women and domestic labour in their mature political works, and argue that Kant offers more analytic tools for understanding the social and economic role of domestic labour than does Marx. While domestic labour becomes visible to Marx only as it is outsourced, Kant develops a clear account of the specific rules governing domestic labour in the emerging bourgeois household. Because of his commitment to the domestic realm as a core feature of the just state, however, much of Kant’s account of domestic labour should be challenged by contemporary Kantian feminists.

Keywords

KantMarxpolitical philosophyanthropologywomenmarriagedomestic labourservantsbourgeois familyfeminist philosophy
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 22 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue on Kant and Marx , December 2017 , pp. 599 - 618
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2017 

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