- Title
- Engels and women, intimately: of pleasure, agency and literary worlds
- Creator
- Boer, Roland
- Relation
- Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory Vol. 40, Issue 2, p. 161-178
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2012.664725
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- Studies of the complex question of Friedrich Engels and women usually take two forms: either one focuses on the public realm of politics, gender equality and Engels's crucial if ambivalent role in the development of what is now called Marxist feminism; or one deals with the private question of biography and the relations between the ‘real’ Engels and women. This article takes a different approach and shifts focus. Given that much of the material concerning women and Engels comes from his own writings, it is argued that he constructs a literary world through those texts—literary criticism, creative works, journalism and letters. The focus of this study is precisely that literary world and the roles of women within it. The result is a world in which women are strong, positive agents and in which sensual, bodily pleasures are to be celebrated. Only when we have reconstructed such a literary picture is it possible to return to the questions of Marxist feminist politics and the biographical relations of Engels and women.
- Subject
- Friedrich Engels; literary worlds; women; pleasure; politics; biography
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1055390
- Identifier
- uon:15876
- Identifier
- ISSN:0301-7605
- Language
- eng
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