The Magic of the Ouroboros: Reflections on Class Struggle on the Home Front

Abstract

Although popular fictions are often separated from scholarly analyses, both discourses frame our understanding of the economics of household labor. This essay examines the ability of Class Struggle on the Home Front not only to bridge such arbitrary divisions but also to free the economic imagination in ways that allows us to reclaim the importance of household labor. In particular, this essay focuses on three interrelated contributions of the volume: the inclusion of class in narratives about work-family balance, the amplification of other scholars' work on these concerns in ways that push the conversation in new and imaginative directions, and the problematizing of oppositional thinking that privileges the masculine over the feminine in both literal and metaphorical ways.

Key Words:

• Archetypal Psychology
• Class Analysis
• Feminism
• Household Labor
• Work-Life Balance

Acknowledgments

A version of this paper was given at the 2013 Rethinking Marxism conference—Surplus, Solidarity, Sufficiency—at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I would like to thank the panelists and audience for their support and critical discussion. I also thank Chizu Sato for her patience and helpful comments.

Notes

1. This iconic poster had purposely limited text: “What is our one demand? Occupy Wall Street September 17th. Bring Tent.” See Adbusters (2011).

2. Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi, Rosa DeLauro, Doris Matsui, and Donna Edwards have drafted legislation based on the liberal feminist agenda of providing paid family and sick leave, closing the wage gap, and promoting affordable childcare.

3. The feminine here is used metaphorically. Feminine refers to cultural meanings associated with socially constructed hierarchal binary oppositions and should not be conflated with a biological essentialism.

4. Archetypal processes are not limited to the visual and can include other psychically charged phenomena like melody and dance. James Hillman is considered the founder of post-Jungian archetypal psychology. Archetypal psychology is a reworking of Jungian ideas within a postmodern framework such that archetypal processes are freed from the many essentialisms found in Jung's ideas.

5. While many feminists have criticized Jung for his transhistorical notions of masculine and feminine, which tend to naturalize patriarchy, Rowland suggests that post-Jungian archetypal psychology is much more theoretically compatible with the fluidity of gender. The androgynous and polyvalent nature of archetypal processes and their numinous qualities produce a “more semiotically infused symbolic than that of Lacan and post-Freudian feminism” (Rowland 2002, 124).

6. Hillman (1999, xxiv) claims the following: “My war—and I have yet to win a decisive battle—is with the modes of thought and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism).”

7. Social theorists influenced by archetypal psychology reject a monotheistic imagination in favor of the polytheistic mythology of gods and goddess to illustrate psychological dynamics and complexes. Bolen (2008) draws inspiration from the archetypal image of the Great Mother to ignite a global peace movement to end terror and heal the earth. Spector (2010) invokes the bisexual consciousness of Dionysus to help loosen the Western imagination so that it can better reclaim “the other,” including the repressed feminine, in a post-9/11 world.