154
PARTISAN REVIEW
ideology. They derive their strength not only from psychologically de–
termining forces active since early childhood, but also from the basic
principle of society, the principle of the incest taboo.
It
is here that the
social and the psychological meet. Not only do they reinforce each other,
but they are interdependent .
To develop this point, Mitchell invokes Levi-Strauss's theory of
kinship structure. Levi-Strauss holds that human society depends on so–
cial exchange, which can be assured only through the incest taboo which
dictates that fathers and brothers shall give up their daughters and sis–
ters, offering them to other groups who in turn bestow their own wo–
men . No other exchange in society, according to Levi-Strauss, no matter
how important, is as reliable and can be so firmly institutionalized as the
exchange of women and the accompanying exchange of goods, values,
and sentiments . Exchange through marriage is a total social act,
economic, moral, and legal. The oedipus complex is the psychic
mechanism of the incest taboo, which leads to the exchange of women.
In linking Freud's theory
to
a theory of social structure, however,
Mitchell faces a major difficulty which she does not acknowledge. Hav–
ing established theoretically the principle of patriarchy as the touchstone
of human society, both socially and as a universal psychic structure, she has
the problem of reconciling this with her feminism . She attempts this
reconciliation with a radical notion : the abolition of the nuclear family in
some future society.
Her argument rests mainly on Marx's theory of pauperization of the
masses and on Levi-Strauss's concept of social exchange. She states that, just
as according to Marx, "under capitalism the vast majority of the popu–
lation . . .has nothing to sell but its labour power, it also has nothing
to
exchange but this. " Without anything
to
exchange, she concludes , there is
no reason, except that of serving the interests of capitalist society, for the
existence of the nuclear family .
But Mitchell's tour de force in rescuing Freud for feminism by making
the nuclear family wither away like the Marxist state, actually results in the
withering away of Freud himself. And she misrepresents Levi-Strauss by
restricting exchange to material goods. His main point , which he repeats
over and over again in the
Structures etementaires de fa parente,
is that mari tal
exchange is a total social act, by which he means an undifferentiated social
act. It is at the same time legal, social, and moral, in that the patterned
exchange of women gives rise to an exchange of sentiments, commitments,
and social val ues as well as
to
a material exchange. Thus, even if Marx were
right that the majority of people have nothing to sell but their labor, this
notion could not be applied directly
to
Levi-Strauss's theory of exchange
