Editorial: Reclaiming the second sex

Abstract

Nothwithstanding its esoteric overtones and the absence of a canonical source, reification is a central concept of social theory. Literally, reification (Verdinglichung) refers to the transformation of human properties, relations, processes, actions, concepts, etc. into things. This transformation can operate both on a methodological and a social level. In the first case, the concept of reification is used to denounce (a) the hypostasis of concepts (nominalist critique of reism), (b) the naturalization of the subject and the life-world (humanist critique of naturalism), and (c) the ideological justification of the status quo (dialectical critique of fetishism). In the latter case, the concept refers to the alienated and alienating autonomization of social structures, showing thus a family resemblance with the Marxist concepts of alienation and the fetishism of commodities, and with the Weberian concept of formal rationalization. Although the concept is already present in Hegel, the real history of the concept begins with Marx and with Lukács's Hegelian interpretation of Marx. In Marx, the concept is used in the context of the critique of the fetishism of commodities, to denounce the transformation of social relations into things. In his classic formulation of the theory of reification, Lukács generalized Marx's concept of commodity fetishism, and fused it with Max Weber's concept of formal rationalization and Simmel's concept of the tragedy of culture. Replacing the theory of class-consciousness with a Freudian theory of repression, the members of the Frankfurt School—Horkheimer, Marcuse, and especially Adorno radicalized, universalized, and totalized Lukács's theory of reification. Criticizing the Frankfurt School's identification of rationalization and reification, Habermas reformulated the theory of reification in his theory of communication in terms of the colonization of the life-world by the subsystems of the economy and the administration of the state.