Abstract

Starting from a reading of Shulamith Firestone’s ground-breaking book, The Dialectic of Sex, the article questions the dialectical approach used in certain gender theories which reevaluate both psychoanalysis and Engels and Marx’s materialism. The very notion of the dialectical – which can have different meanings – enables us to address the sexual question by way of the socio-historical production of gender-oriented discourses and practices, in articulation with the psychosexual basis of this production. The dialectical approach, the thrust of which is critical and revolutionary, must however undergo a conceptual rephrasing of their psychoanalytical and Marxist formulation, in particular regarding the relations between biology, class and sex, with a view to deciphering the gendered bias latent in their unconscious and ideological conceptualization. The inherited theoretical framework, proper to Marxism and to psychoanalysis, is thus tested in the confrontation with the historical specificity of the articulation between the social relations of sex, class, and race, thus leading to the elaboration of a materialistic approach to psychoanalysis.