Abstract: Genevieve Vaughan
Heterosexual Economics: Genders as economic categories
In a society based on the market, gift giving, which can be considered
as a basic mode of distribution, is captured inside the home or even inside
the individual. Market based societies penetrate, plunder and dominate
gift based societies, which they conside 'inferior'. Market exchange imposes
a self-reflecting logic of giving-in-order-to get. By directing gifts
towards the market, Patriarchal Capitalism creates scarcity by causing
the gifts of the many to flow into the profit of the few. A paradigm shift,
which gives importance to gift giving from a meta point of view, reveals
it to be the deep logic of humanity. Seeing language as based on gift
giving allows us to de-personalize the mode of the mother and extend it
to many areas where it has been canceled. On the other hand, European-American
gender is constructed within the opposition between mothering and an artificial
'male' identity of not-giving. We can understand patriarchal not-giving
and domination, and the market in which they are embedded, as derivative,
aberrant, and subject to change, whether those patterns are carried out
by biological males or females.
Biographical Information
Genevieve Vaughan (b.1939) is an independant researcher. She lived
in Italy from 1963-1983 where she became a feminist in 1978, participating
in the Italian and international feminist movements. Her two early essays
'Communication and exchange' (Semiotica 1980) and 'Saussure and Vigotsky
via Marx' (1981) deal with language and economics, a theme she has been
working on throughout her adult life. In 1983, Vaughan returned to Texas
where in 1987 she started the Foundation for a Compassionate Society (1987-1998),
an all-woman activist foundation, which initiated many innovative projects
based on the political use of 'women's values'. Her book For-Giving,
a Feminist Criticism of Exchange was published in 1997. Vaughan travels
widely to conferences nationally and internationally. She is a member
of the international network, Feminists for a Gift Economy and is active
in the anti-globalization and peace movements. She has three daughters.
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