This paper relates Arendt's critique of a labor society to her thoughts on the "good life." I begin with the claim that in the post-mass production era, Western societies, traditionally centered around gainful employment, encounter a decrease in the relevance of labor and can thus no longer rely on it as a resource for individual or social meaning. From Arendt's perspective, however, the current situation allows for the possibility ofa transition from a society based on labor to a society centered around activities. I explore Arendt's different types of activities-labor, work, action-with respect to the question of justice between the genders.What is most impressive in The Human Condition is the visionary foresight of Arendt's analysis ofa labor society and its approaching end. Her prediction dates back to the 1950s, when industrial nations were in the midst of the recovery boom after World War I1 and still held an optimistic belief in an uninhibited progress. "What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse." Arendt recognized even then that the concurrence of dropping employment quotas, resulting from technological advancement, and increasing productivity would not liberate modern industrialized societies but rather pose an existential threat.
Using the notion of a transfiguration of sexed bodies, this text deals with the stratifications of the gender-specific imaginary. Starting from the figurative-thus creative-force of the psyche-soma, its interaction with the configurations of a collective body will be developed from the perspectives of social philosophy and philoso-
This work argues from a social-theoretical perspective for the view that every concept of 'gender' remains bound to reproduction. As every culture is interested in its continuity, it distinguishes individuals according to their assumed possible contribution to reproduction and so develops a fundamental dual classification. Subsequent gender categories are necessarily derived from this one. The conceptual and empirical arguments for this thesis are illustrated through an imagined dystopia. There I envision under what conditions a complete dissociation of the concepts 'sex' and 'gender' from the old dual distinction would be possible and in what way a multiplicity of genders would be accomplished.Since it began about thirty years ago, gender research has-in many different areas and in different respects-explored the extent to which human beings, women as well as men, are determined in an actual cultural sense by their sex and gender (the German for both terms is Geschlecht). Questions have been raised as to whether humans necessarily are or should be determined by Geschlecht and how social conditions have to be transformed in order to assure the greatest possible diversity of life choices for both sexes. Gender research investigates the roles (among others) of art, literature, and theory for each culturally specific conception of gender (femininity and masculinity). The original question has been slightly modified in the meantime. Now, more explicitly than before, it is being historicized and-given the (sub)cultural and situational variations in the relevance and meaning of gender-related to a specific cultural context.
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