Frigga Haug, one of Germany's best-known feminist and Marxist critics, develops here a profound challenge both to women's oppression and to what she sees as women's 'collusion' in that oppression. Rejecting the essentialism of much feminist writing today, along with the denial of subjectivity that still permeates Marxism, Haug explores the connections between Marxist theory and the emancipation of women, a project which necessarily involves, as she explains, "diverting a powerful and long-standing anger into detective work."
Under the headings of Socialization, Work and Politics, she combines the fruits of these investigations with the influential "memory-work" she has pioneered with women's collectives, to throw startling new light on a wide range of themes and issues: personal ethics and public morality; daydreams, domesticity and consumerism; privatization, new technologies and the restructuring of the workplace; the evolution of women's politics in Germany; the future of socialist feminism in the wake of Communism's collapse.
Above all, this is a book which strives to find new links between the micro-politics of daily life and the evolving structures of capitalism. "If we could find out why and when our hopes for life were buried," Haug argues, "then we could try to take our history in our own hands." Beyond Female Masochism provides the materials, and inspiration, to do just that.

About the Author
Frigga Haug teaches politics and sociology in Berlin. She is the editor of Female Sexualization (Verso, 1987) and of the journal Das Argument.

Reviews
In these invigorating and original essays, Frigga Haug bravely goes against the fashionable grain, working through dream, memory and experience and revealing theoretical contours for a much-needed reorientation of socialist feminist politics. -- Sheila Rowbotham



Book Information
ISBN 9780860915621
Author Frigga Haug
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 704g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 152mm * 23mm