"Wandel, Persistenz, Paradoxie": Normalisierung und Prekarisierung von Sexualität und Geschlecht im Neoliberalismus

In: Prokla: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft, Band 43, Heft 173

Abstract

This essay discusses current analyses that observe a paradoxical simultaneity of both the flexibilisation and the persistence of traditional forms of gender and family, focussing on the work of Andrea Maihofer, who amply investigated in this field. The author argues that, although heteronormative forms of gender, kinship and labour are increasingly becoming precarious, they haven't lost their normative power as a "regulatory ideal" (Butler), thus producing a dialectics of diversification and co-opted normalisation, which includes the state-aided reproduction of class and race privilege. The paradoxical coexistence of the fracturing and the intensification of patriarchal power is therefore best understood as a regime that promotes the neoliberal privatisation and subjectivation of a nowadays pluralized institution of marriage and family.