Many books have been written about Freud's views of women, gender, and sexuality. Some feminist accounts try to rescue Freud's writings on women and make them useful to feminists, while others critically disavow them, arguing that a misogynist such as Freud has nothing useful to say to feminists. Feminism and Its Discontents is not either type of books. Buhle's book is ambitious project to understand the relationship between two of the most powerful and controversial theories and political movements of the twentieth century. Psychoanalysis and feminism both have been incredibly influential and controversial on their own merits, but as a sympathizer to either knows, they have been struggling with each other in vicious and productive ways for a century. Buhle provides a fascinating, readable, nuanced analysis of the entangled history of these two movements for anyone interested in psychoanalytic theory or feminist theory (psychoanalytic or not). Buhle argues persuasively that psychoanalysis and feminism, frequently understood only as theories that oppose each other, have historically struggled with similar issues around human liberation. In particular, they have both been in pursuit of self, subjectivity, sexuality, and, in the later part of the century, the tension between production and reproduction. Buhle argues, however, that there is no natural affinity or natural antagonism between the two theories, no right answer as to whether these two theories are compatible. Rather, a specific history of ideas, events, and actors shaped the relations between psychoanalysis and feminism. The axes of equalsidering questions of structure and context, she turns her attention to the tradition that extends from Marxist thought to socialist feminism and standpoint theory. Through critical encounters with feminist systems and standpoint theorists, and with nonfeminist thinkers such as Lukacs, Althusser, and Negri, she reclaims the concept of totality and develops understanding of collective feminist subjects located within and potentially against a field of socioeconomic forces. With subjects and systems in place, Weeks next considers the question of how passive subjects defined by structural positions can become active political agents. Positing labor as the key link between subjects and systems, she identifies structurally organized laboring as the grounds upon which active collective subjects (or feminist standpoints, understood as ontological rather than epistemological projects) can be constructed, and then she discusses the roles of irony and self-valorization in the creation of such subjects. This subject her alternative model of feminist subjectivity is an achieved, selective, and politically engaged collectivity based upon affirmation of women's laboring practices (p. 15). The above summary hardly does justice to a complex and ambitious project that is nicely laid out and developed in relatively few pages. This combination of ambition and brevity, however, leaves a few important discussions underdeveloped. For example, the meaning and significance of the doctrine of eternal return in Neitzsche's work is not, as Weeks notes, particularly clear. Given the elusiveness of this concept and its importance to her construction of the feminist subject, further efforts at clarification would have been helpful. Another underdeveloped discussion concems Antonio Negri's work. Negri is important figure in Weeks's project. In his poststructuralist Marxism, Weeks finds a conception of totality as a unity of differences that allows for antagonistic subjects located within and potentially against the system. His concept of self-valorization helps her account for the subject's capacity for autonomy and its potential power. Negri, however, is not as well known as the other theorists discussed. A more comprehensive introduction to his work would have helped underline his unique contributions. Finally, most of the book is devoted to the construction of alternative model of the feminist subject; little effort is directed to exploring this construction's analytical dimensions or practical implications. I found myself waiting for the payoff and was disappointed when it was not to be found. Weeks is aware that there is more to be said and realizes that the analysis she provides is only a beginning. Based on the quality of this beginning, there is every reason to look forward to her continuing work on this issue.
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Open Access
Jan 1, 2023
Rong Yao 
