Revisitando o cânone: as contribuições de Eleanor Marx para a luta pela emancipação feminina

Abstract

This monograph, of a theoretical-critical nature, aims to analyze the historical marginalization of women in Western thought and propose the recovery of silenced female philosophers. Its central focus is the critique of the traditional philosophical canon, demonstrating that its definition of philosophy functions as a mechanism of power that excludes alternative methodologies, such as the philosophy of lived experience (or praxis), the thought emerging from the concrete experience of oppression. The framework of historical materialism is used here to connect ideological exclusion to economic exploitation. Initially, Friedrich Engels' work (The Origin of the Family) is employed to analyze the genesis of subordination in the "historical defeat of the female sex," a consequence of the rise of private property and the monogamous family. Then, August Bebel's work (Woman and Socialism) is used to demonstrate how capitalism solidifies this subjugation by analyzing marriage as an institution of support and prostitution as its structural pillar, both justified by the ideology of female incompetence. Finally, the thought of Eleanor Marx is examined as the central case study synthesizing the thesis of the philosophy of lived experience. Her unique formation ("alongside Capital" and mentored by Engels) allowed her to formulate the theory of double oppression (class and gender), filling the gap left by classical Marxist theory. Her critique of bourgeois feminism, sex murder (moral repression), and the Contagious Diseases Acts is analyzed, concluding with her thesis of self-emancipation as a prerequisite for socialism, the only order capable of dissolving the afflictions permeating women's lives