Birgit Sauer: Intersectional state theory: “Transforming the monster”

The Western welfare state is a deeply contradictory construct, for which the French philosopher Étienne Balibar coined the term “national-social state”. How have you approached this connection in your recent work?

Balibar is not the starting point of our book, but like him we want to point out that the modern Western state is a construct of domination. Western states founded themselves as nation states in the 19th century. National unity has always been a fiction; above all, this state is always linked to exclusions: through the exclusion and oppression of colonies, but also through the exclusion of women. The idea of ​​feminist state research was to point out that this state construct does not create a common good, as the liberal idea suggests. And the connection between nationality and the welfare state, as Balibar also tries to make clear, is actually a toxic connection.

Interview

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Birgit Sauer is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Vienna. She works on feminist state theory, affect theories and the authoritarian right. Her anthology »The coldest of all cold monsters?« published together with Gundula Ludwig. Approaches to intersectional state theory” was published in June by Campus-Verlag (268 pp., br., 34 €).

Was this the idea for the anthology?

Through our feminist-materialist theorizations, Gundula Ludwig and I discovered that the state is not just a question of class relations that the welfare state attempted to tame and institutionalize. Gender relations are also central to maintaining dominance. In addition, the origins of modern statehood are characterized by sexual relationships, heteronormativity and very specific ideas of corporeality, i.e. ability. The Western state is also characterized by colonial exclusions, which continue to have an impact today in postcolonial racist constellations. The idea of ​​the book is to expand the feminist-materialist state theory through power structures that have so far not been explicitly theorized in their connection in either materialist or feminist state theory.

What are the challenges when attempting to theorize the state intersectionally?

The central challenge for critical theory is not to allow itself to be carried away by the idea that there is one theory of the state with which all forms of domination, oppression and exploitation can be grasped, in order to show the one way in which domination by people over people can be overcome could become. In my opinion that cannot exist. We always have to take into account completely different, temporally and regionally differentiated, constantly re-establishing forms of state, capitalist-patriarchal, colonial and heteronormative rule.
The second challenge that feminist-materialist state theory has always dealt with is the search for the origin of domination or, better, the explanation of how capitalist relations of accumulation, production and exploitation are connected to patriarchal relations. I think we also have to say goodbye to this question of origin.

That’s why you work with the term “intersectionality”?

We discussed the question of what “intersectionality” means for a long time. The term is aimed at the crossing of different power structures and what happens at this interface, the intersection. How are gender privileges related to disadvantage and exclusion through racist structures and capitalist exploitation? We noticed that this is incredibly difficult to theorize. That is why we speak of multiple power structures to make it clear that we are aware that societies are characterized by very diverse power structures and modes of subjectivation.

And that makes the state “the coldest of all cold monsters,” as your collection is called?

The title goes back to a quote by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche from his book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. And it is, how should I put it, a beautiful and terrible metaphor. The contract theorist Thomas Hobbes already used a metaphor for the monstrosity of the foundation of the modern state – the “Leviathan”, a sea monster. We do not adopt Nietzsche’s thinking about the state; for us, the metaphor of the “coldest of all cold monsters” includes the fact that this multiplicity of monstrosities is reproduced through state institutions, through state norms, through state policies and through modes of subjectivation. With this we want to express that the modern Western state is based on completely monstrous, oppressive, exclusionary and exploitative structures. It expresses the callousness with which, as Michel Foucault called it, life is made and let die.

Nicos Poulantzas, a Greek-French state theorist to whom you also refer, writes: The state “works in a positive way, it creates, changes, produces something real.” Doesn’t this contradict your conception of the state?

I wouldn’t see it as a disagreement. Intersectional state theory always refers to Poulantzas’ idea that the state is a terrain on which struggles are fought. State theory should always assume that these struggles are contingent – ​​otherwise they would not be struggles. But it is of course difficult to think about the ambivalence: on the one hand, the violent structures of the state, and on the other hand, the possibility of transforming them through struggles. There are always opportunities for social actors to intervene in a changeful way.

Can you specify that?

The nation state was a means for the bourgeois class to assert itself against feudal structures. Through struggles, constitutional forms emerged that limited the state’s violence. The welfare state, as an institutionalized class compromise, can also be understood as a Pyrrhic victory for the working class in the Global North. It is part of its ambivalence that women and enslaved people in the Global South remained excluded. Likewise, neoliberal accumulation and statehood have led to improvements – at least for some. Christa Wichterich speaks of the neoliberal emancipation of women. We see, for example, that state institutions were able to enforce laws protecting against violence, albeit in a neoliberal exploitation context. What is interesting is how statehood can be thought of in the ambivalence of exclusion and oppression as well as the enablement of transformation and change.

When the ruling politicians proclaim that refugees must “finally be deported on a large scale,” are we currently dealing with an authoritarianization of Western statehood?

It is interesting that Poulantzas already dealt with the question of authoritarianism in the 1970s, i.e. in the transition from Fordism to neoliberalism. Around the same time, Stuart Hall described Margaret Thatcher’s policies as “authoritarian populism.” At the moment we see that the crisis of neoliberalism that we have faced since the global financial crisis of 2009 is reinforcing authoritarian tendencies. This can be seen in the European isolation policy, but also in social policy and the debates about citizens’ money. The security and punishment discourse is also an indication of this. Violence protection laws, for example, which are actually intended to protect women, can be turned against migrants. This leaves me pessimistic.

What can we do to counter authoritarian tendencies?

I think we need a completely different idea of ​​how people live in relationships with each other and how this can be organized. We must abandon the idea of ​​liberal concepts of the state that people are closed monads who have an interest in profit. We have to rethink society, people and subjecthood. Staying with it is the task of critical sciences. If we say that statehood arises from social conditions of exploitation and oppression, which in turn are lived by people, then state theory can also help to change these and transform the monster.

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