Materialism, Sex Work, and the Law: Doing Feminist Legal Theory Differently

This article places texts from Marxist feminist scholar Silvia Federici and feminist legal and post-Marxist scholar Catharine MacKinnon in conversation with each other. In doing so, it responds to Clare Hemmings’s call for feminist scholars to do feminist theory differently by breaking free from staid tropes and narrative devices through which feminism has been historicised. Starting from a commitment to the rejuvenation of materialist feminist theory and my belief that it could play a bigger role in feminist legal scholarship, I juxtapose texts from Federici and MacKinnon, reading for continuities and links rather than discontinuities and breaks. What is revealed is a ‘scaled-up’ materialist methodology and politics that connects the real essence of capitalism and sexual domination to the phenomenal appearances of capitalism and sexuality. Both Federici and MacKinnon understand liberal law as part of domination’s real essence and a phenomenal appearance distorting this reality. They centre women’s consciousness on creating a class/sex for themselves and view law as a possible site for raising consciousness of the real essence of women’s oppression. I end by reflecting on the difference that this different reading of Federici and MacKinnon might make in contemporary legal research about sex work.