Money, Women, and Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Living Currencies and the Gender of Capital

Women and money run like threatening shadows across the long history of philosophy. There is considerable debate, however, about the nature of each and the relations between them. The twentieth century was a time of both theoretical recapture and of new engagements for both. As historically marginalized topics charged with critical potential, the issues of women and money entered the closed worlds of political philosophy and economics under pressure from social struggle. At the same time those disciplines were being redefined both by a new accentuation of the critical tradition they inherited from the enlightenment as well as by heterodox developments within the fields. This chapter pays especially close attention to the histories of monetary theory and feminism from the 1970s to the present, showing the relationships among materialist feminism, institutionalism, structuralist and poststructuralist theories of signification, and reappropriations of money by marginalized groups. A historical survey also reveals important differences within and debate among different branches of feminism in the twentieth century. The fault lines very often concern, and are made visible by, their contrasting views on money. Just as the topic of money provides a new lens to survey the various branches of feminism, so too does feminist theory offer a privileged vantage from which to survey philosophical approaches to money.