1. Introduction

Although Marx and Foucault differ in subject matter and methodology, scholars within the Marxist tradition (such as Montag 1995; Charim 2002; Rehmann 2004) have explored the relationship between their works since the 1990s, framing it in terms of commonality, continuity, and complementarity. This continuity is traced through Althusser's expanded conception of social reproduction,¹ which enables the analysis of its extra-economic conditions and their pivotal role, without being confined to strictly economic frameworks. His innovation lies in highlighting the role of institutions such as the family, the school, and the church as sites of the labor-power reproduction, understood as specific production of individuals, which takes place outside the direct economic sphere. Adopting Althusser's (2014) "standpoint of reproduction" (47)—that is, recognizing that "in order to exist, every social formation must, while it produces, and in order to be able to produce, reproduce the conditions of its production" (48)—provides a valuable framework for reading Marx and Foucault as both analyzing the context of such reproduction of modern society, albeit with different emphases. While the former primarily focuses on the economic dimension of the reproduction process, addressing extra-economic aspects only briefly when necessary for his presentation [Darstellung] of the capitalist mode of production (Marx, 1982 [1867], 275; see also Heinrich 2003, 260), the latter places greater emphasis on these extra-economic elements, referencing their connections to the economic sphere only sporadically (Foucault 2012, 220–2; Foucault 2006, 71–72; Foucault 1978, 140–41).

As Christian Schmidt (2008) succinctly summarizes: "Althusser's expanded conception of social reproduction, which interrogates not only material [materielle] reproduction but also the complex conditions of reproducing labor-power […], establishes the connection between the works of Marx and Foucault." (239) Althusser's conceptualization of the reproduction of labor-power provides a lens for a non-economistic extension of Marx's framework, enabling an examination of the extra-economic aspects that sustain the reproduction of capitalist societies as a whole. Among these aspects, one of crucial importance is the organization of generative reproduction² within these societies, as highlighted since the late 1960s by Marxist feminists, and as consistently ignored by the Marxists—Althusser included, who only briefly addresses this crucial dimension and never fully grasps its implications.

To research deeper into this dimension, this paper turns to Teresa de Lauretis' queer-feminist theorization, particularly her pioneering essay The Technology of Gender (1987). This is a rarely explored—indeed, so far an entirely uncharted—path, given the lamentably scarce contemporary interest in this author. That such indifference is found in political philosophy (let alone in the Marxist tradition) is not surprising, given that de Lauretis is better known as a scholar of semiotics, film theory, and literary theory; that it is found in queer theory and feminism, on the other hand, is striking and paradoxical. It was precisely de Lauretis who, in a bold and provocative gesture, coined the expression "queer theory" in February 1990 at a conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz—only to reject it entirely three years later (de Lauretis 1994), criticizing "its disastrous and deadening recuperation by the practitioners of an academic knowledge of bibliometric, conference-bound, inflationary, and thus promotional character, who turned it into a kind of prêt-à-penser." (Prearo 2012, 111)

In The Technology of Gender, de Lauretis revisits and reinterprets Althusser's ideas in order to frame gender relations and domination within capitalist societies. De Lauretis establishes a crucial connection between Althusser and Foucault—at the time an absolutely original and indeed rather daring move for a feminist—if we consider, on the one hand, the heavy shadow cast on Althusser, who only seven years earlier had killed his wife Hélène Rytmann, and, on the other hand, the now almost forgotten troubled relations between Foucault and feminism during the 80s and early 90s, which found a catalytic episode in the polemic over "rape" and "pederasty." (Taylor 2009) As we shall see, de Lauretis' theoretical move also stands apart from ongoing debates in Queer Marxism and Trans Marxism, in that it departs from the two prevailing frameworks—Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) and Freudo-Marxism—that have largely structured those debates (see, e.g., Sears 2025; Gleeson and O'Rourke 2021; Vishmidt and Sutherland 2020 and 2022).

In this paper, we further develop the connection between Althusser and Foucault established by de Lauretis to argue that the Foucauldian analysis of the dispositif of sexuality represents the culmination of both Althusserian theories of social reproduction and the materialist perspective on the "production of life" implicit in Marx and Engels' research program.³ By employing her critical lens to "queer" the standpoint of reproduction, we argue that Foucault's analysis sheds light on the fundamental ways generative reproduction and gender domination are organized in contemporary capitalist society.

To achieve this theoretical result, we adopt a close reading of the texts, which is not comparative nor linear but rather we interrelate them in such a way that new, more profound interpretations can emerge, even by deliberately pushing on the authors' ambiguities. Our reading aims at the emergence of a historically specific (materialist), queer standpoint of generative reproduction and modern gender domination. In the first section, we begin by analyzing Althusser's concept of ideology, situating it firmly in the broader context of the question of the reproduction of capitalist societies, thus rereading it in light of the problematic of the production of individuals within this social formation. In the second section, de Lauretis' reading of Althusser and her original development of "gender as ideology" will be further unfolded to emphasize its queer and materialist aspects (against culturalist and second-wave feminism of difference interpretations), that is, in the direction of an understanding of heterosexuality as ideological matrix of the production of sexual subjects specific of capitalist society. The third and final move will be done by following de Lauretis' welding between Althusser and Foucault, and, again further unfolding it, expanding on Foucault analysis of the dispositif of sexuality.

2. Althusser: The Standpoint of Reproduction and Ideological Subjection

In the posthumously published manuscript On the Reproduction, which includes the well-known 1971 essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, Althusser (2014) situates his reflections on the state and ideology within a broader analysis of the conditions necessary for social reproduction in capitalist societies. In the third chapter, "Of the Reproduction of the Conditions of Production," he briefly references Marx's analysis of the reproduction of total social capital from the second volume of Capital. In this analysis, Marx (1992 [1885]) explores how the means of production (raw materials, fixed facilities, machines, and so on) required by individual capital, as well as the means of subsistence required by workers and capitalists, must be produced in specific material and value proportions. However, this alone does not fully address the question of social reproduction. As Althusser (2014) clarifies, for the capitalist mode of production to sustain itself, it requires not only the reproduction of the means of production and subsistence, but also the reproduction of labor-power (49). This reproduction extends beyond mere material needs, such as food and clothing (in the form of wages), or the qualification and training of "competent" workers with specific know-how, ensured by institutions such as the school, the Church, and the army. Crucially, it also involves the subjection of labor-power to ideology (51–52).

The two most commonly emphasized aspects of Althusser's conception of ideology are its materiality and its connection to representation. In contrast to the Gramscian conception of ideology as a worldview (derived from Benedetto Croce), in which ideas guide and direct practical action—an idealistic or ideological conception of ideology (185)—he proposes a rematerialization of ideology that goes beyond a simple causal inversion, in which practical actions generate ideas. Instead, by reintegrating ideology into the process of material and social reproduction, Althusser, in the dense final chapter of On the Reproduction, develops a conception of ideology as a specific (mode of) production of individuals as subjects, that is not separate from the capitalist mode of production but is endowed with its own specificity (see Charim 2002, 67, 69–70, 75). The starting point of this innovative conception, which marks a radical departure from earlier theories, is his thesis that ideology has a material existence (Althusser 2014, 186). Althusser shows that ideology operates through practical logics of behavior and modes of action. It is embodied in material acts that are embedded within socially ordered collective practices, institutions, and apparatuses. As he succinctly puts it, "ideology always exists in an apparatus, and in its practice, or practices." (184) Echoing this, Isolde Charim (2002) observes that "the apparatus is the ideology, in the sense that it is its mode of existence. It is ideology's own materiality, its 'material existence'." (72)

Following Althusser, ideology does not belong to the realm of pure representations, but manifests itself to individuals through representations. It should thus be understood as a real, material process that produces these representations—i.e., an imaginary relation to real relations—while simultaneously producing individuals as subjects (Althusser 2014, 184). The object of these imaginary representations is not the real conditions governing the existence of individuals, but rather the imaginary relationship that individuals, as subjects of the ideology, maintain with these conditions. As Althusser writes:

'People' do not 'represent' their real conditions of existence in ideology (religious ideology or some other kind), but, above all, their relation to those real conditions of existence. That relation is at the centre of every ideological, hence imaginary, representation of the real world. (183)

In addition to his theses on materiality and representation, Althusser advances a "third thesis" on ideology, which, although fundamental, is often underemphasized in standard interpretations of his theory: the thesis that ideology is eternal. As is well known, he presents his theory of subjection "in the form of a sequence with a before and an after, that is, in the form of a temporal succession." (191) This is illustrated through the famous example of an individual who, hailed by a policeman, turns around—a "theoretical theatre" elucidating how individuals are interpellated by ideology, thereby being transformed into subjects. However, Althusser immediately clarifies that this "little theoretical theatre" is purely fictional: "In reality, things take place without any succession. The existence of ideology and the interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing." (191) Here, he introduces the thesis that ideology is eternal:

I must now suppress the temporal form in which we have represented the functioning of ideology and say: ideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to making it clear that individuals are always-already interpellated by ideology as subjects. This ineluctably leads us to one last proposition: individuals are always-already subjects. Hence individuals are 'abstract' with respect to the subjects they always already are. (192)

The claim that ideology is eternal thus pertains to its mode of operation: It is entirely immanent to the structure within which it produces its effects. Ideology does not progressively infiltrate a pre-existing, pre-subjective individual, as if there were a natural being, untouched by and indifferent to it. Instead, ideology structures the very field of possible actions for individuals. It anticipates their existence, shaping the framework within which their actions, thoughts, behaviors, and speech unfold, guided by the orientations set by this framework (see Macherey 2014, 93–94).

In this way, ideology constitutes individuals as subjects, conforming them to the modes of rationalization and possibilities it prescribes. Thus, there are no individuals prior to becoming subjects. For Althusser, the notion of individuals existing before their subjection to ideology is an abstraction. Stressing the thesis of eternity is, at the same time, important to show the misunderstanding of 'homo ideologicus' notions—that is, understanding ideology as a natural condition of the human—and instead asserting the logical-structural antecedence of ideology with respect to individuals.⁴

To illustrate the idea that there are no individuals who are not always-already subjects, he briefly refers to the family as an ideological state apparatus (ISA) but does not fully explore its significance.

Freud shows that individuals are always 'abstract' with respect to the subjects they always-already are, simply by noting the ideological ritual that surrounds the expectation of a 'birth' […]. Before its birth, then, a child is always-already a subject, marked out [assigné] as a subject in and by the particular familial ideological configuration in which it is 'expected' […]. There is no need to add that this familial ideological configuration is [the] structure [in which] the quondam subject-to-be has to 'find' 'its' place, that is, 'become' the sexual subject (boy or girl) it already is in advance. (Althusser 2014, 192–193)

Analogously, in Freud and Lacan, with regard to the process through which the "little biological being issuing from human childbirth" (Althusser 1996a, 22) is inserted into the "human order" or "human norm," (26) Althusser argues that such an order or norm "l[ies] in wait [for him], from before birth, […] seiz[es] on him from his very first cry to assign him to his place and role and thus his forced destination." (26; see also Althusser 2016, 59–60)

These passages show that there can be no human individual who is not fully and coherently marked out by sex—who is not always-already a sexual subject shaped by the "familial ideological configuration," (Althusser 2014, 193) predisposed by the family as an ISA. The incoherence or ambiguity of sex is, therefore, something that human culture systematically rejects, excluding it as external to its order or norm. Moreover, this enables us to argue how, contrary to Butler's account in The Psychic Life of Power, the matrix of Althusser's theory of ideology is not primarily religion—modeled after the appendix of Spinoza's Ethics, Part I—and thus the constitution of the religious subject, but rather psychoanalysis with the insertion of the newborn into the human order, that is, the constitution of the sexual subject (Butler 1997a, 106–119).

3. De Lauretis: Gender as Ideology

The intersection of reproduction, ideology, psychoanalysis, and gender issues, which Althusser only briefly sketches, is significantly developed by de Lauretis, particularly in her 1987 essay The Technology of Gender. The aim of this article is to explore "the potential of Althusser's theory of ideological interpellation in relation to the understanding of gender." (ix) As de Lauretis (1990) argues in a contemporaneous essay:

Louis Althusser's own effort to define the construction of the subject in ideology by the state ideological apparatuses made him step into the area of theoretical overlap between Marxism and psychoanalysis, opening up not merely the long-standing question of their possible integration but a speculative terrain in which the social relations of class may be addressed in conjunction with gender and race relations. (123)

Before digging into de Lauretis' proposed interpretation of Althusser, it is worthwhile to first consider some of the sources and influences on her work, which provided her with the tools to outline a "possible integration" of Marxism and feminism.

De Lauretis positions herself within the Marxist feminist current of the 1970s, whose key texts include foundational essays such as Gayle Rubin's "The Traffic in Women" (1975) and Heidi Hartmann's "The Unhappy Marriage" (1981), a current later sidelined with the emergence of Social Reproduction Theory. Drawing on these authors, de Lauretis adopts the notion of the sex/gender system, first introduced by Rubin to address the absence of an equivalent in the sexual sphere to the Marxian critique of political economy. In other words, a theory that would simultaneously critique this system and provide a framework for its positive analysis.

Rubin (1975) defines the sex/gender system as the way in which a society (whether precapitalist or capitalist) organizes sexuality; that is, "the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality" (159) into gender. She argues that this concept is essential for understanding the relations of gender domination. Such a "systematic social apparatus" (158) that produces gender possesses a degree of autonomy from the capitalist mode of production and cannot be fully subsumed under its logic (158–166). At the same time, both Rubin and Hartmann (1981, 17–18) regard this system as part of a single "social reality"—a unified process of material and social reproduction. However, this process unfolds within a context composed of "different types of social relations," each governed by a distinct logic that is interrelated but not reducible to one another. Examples of these include capitalist social forms and the sex/gender system (de Lauretis 1987, 8–9).

However, de Lauretis departs from the 1970s Marxist feminist framework in a crucial respect. In her celebrated essay, Rubin revisits and updates the Engelsian project, which aimed to identify the historical-cultural moment and structure that established gender domination at the dawn of human history. Unlike Engels, who in The Origin of the Family drew on Morgan's Ancient Society, Rubin (1975, 168–171) situates her analysis within what she calls the "great fresco of the origin and nature of human societies" outlined by Lévi-Strauss in The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Following Lévi-Strauss—who posited a sharp demarcation between a human being not yet touched by culture (i.e., a 'natural' human, still animal, a primate not yet fully human) and a human being acculturated and thus no longer animal—Rubin similarly adopts this perspective, reframing it along the sex/gender axis. This approach informs both her conclusions and the broader theoretical framework underpinning them, including the very definition of the sex/gender system. That definition is, in fact, grounded in a gendered reformulation of the nature/culture distinction proposed by Lévi-Strauss—namely, on the assumption of a biological, natural, animal sex, distinct from and antecedent to human culture, which is subsequently reworked and transformed into gender.

In her essay "Through the Looking-Glass" (1984), where she sketches a series of reflections on the sexual/gender subject and related apparatuses—later elaborated more fully in The Technology of Gender—de Lauretis questions this notion of a "before" culture, which posits that humans exist in a purely natural state and are naturally sexed. She criticizes the Lévi-Straussian thesis that traces the ahistorical origin of culture to the exchange of women between patrilineal clans.

Referring to a passage by Rubin that underscores the proximity between Lévi-Strauss and Lacan, de Lauretis (1984) shows how both theories appeal to "biology and myth, reinstating sexual reality as nature, as origin and condition of the symbolic." (23) In particular, she observes:

Lévi-Strauss overlooks or does not see a contradiction that lies at the base of his model: […] at the origin of society, at the (mythical) moment in which the incest taboo, exchange, and thus the social state are instituted, the terms and items of exchange are already constituted in a hierarchy of value, are already subject to the symbolic function. (19)

In other words, de Lauretis argues that the women's exchange system posited at the origin of culture and society, already presupposes a hierarchy of values and a symbolic division between the sexes. Consequently, the hypothetical 'nature' that would precede culture—that is, the pre-cultural and quasi-animal state of humans inscribed in their biological bodies—proves, in reality, to be a product of the same symbolic and cultural logic it is supposed to ground and condition. In this sense, one might say that "culture always precedes itself." (Althusser 2016, 60, 62)

Our reading shows that de Lauretis, building on Rubin's notion of the sex/gender system, reformulates it by abandoning the Lévi-Straussian framework, in which a biological sex is transformed into gender through socio-cultural processes. This reframing, rooted in a critique of the nature/culture distinction and the conception of sex as an original biological datum, shifts from a model of gender acquisition conceived as a temporal sequence—in which a distinct, antecedent sex, untouched by human order or norm, is subsequently reworked into gender—to a perspective in which gender acquisition "does not attach itself to an original body already endowed by nature with sexuality," but instead emerges as the simultaneous production of a sexual ("en-gendered") subject and a sexed body (de Lauretis 1999, 10, 134). In what follows, we will examine the pivotal points of her rereading of Althusser and bring this perspective to its fullest articulation.

In The Technology of Gender, de Lauretis (1987) explicitly engages with Althusser's thesis on ideology as an imaginary representation of the relationship between individuals and their conditions of existence, applying this framework to the concept of gender:

When Althusser wrote that ideology represents 'not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live' and which govern their existence, he was also describing, to my mind exactly, the functioning of gender. (6)

To unfold her reading of Althusser: Gender—by which she refers to the apparatus of production of sexual subjects, i.e., the sex/gender system (8–9)—does not represent the reality of sex/gender relations, nor a distorted view of this reality. Rather, gender represents the imaginary relationship individuals have with these relations. In agreement with Althusser, de Lauretis argues that ideology does not directly mirror reality (nor a distorted version of it); rather, by producing individuals as subjects, it simultaneously constructs an image of how they relate to reality itself. In the case of gender, the sex/gender system, by producing individuals as sexual subjects, simultaneously constructs an image that appears "natural" or "inevitable"—such as being male or female, man or woman.

For de Lauretis, this Althusserian definition is pivotal. While retaining the terms representation and imaginary—which often evoke a purely representational view of ideology—she reinterprets them in a radically different light, as we have seen. According to her, gender is an imaginary representation that is nonetheless material, embedded in and regulated by various apparatuses, institutions, and practices. In other words, within the ideological imaginary of gender—that is, within the imaginary relation produced by the sex/gender system—individuals as sexual subjects necessarily perceive themselves as either male or female at the level of sex, and as either men or women at the level of gender. Consequently, the sex/gender system functions as a binary system.⁵ Regardless of how false this relationship may be held to be, it remains real in its effects, as countless institutions, apparatuses and practices actively work to produce individuals as male or female, men or women. For de Lauretis, however, this perception is ideological—produced by the sex/gender system—and is neither an immutable nor a natural reality.

Moreover, in "Eccentric Subjects," de Lauretis (1990) not only reaffirms that gender is an ideological apparatus (128), but also further specifies its constitution by asserting that heterosexuality is the backbone through which the sex/gender binary system organizes itself, reproduces itself, and produces sexual subjects. Despite some ambiguities, our reading allows us to state that for her, heterosexuality is neither a "biological fact" (128) nor an externally imposed principle or law—as articulated in Adrienne Rich's concept of "compulsory heterosexuality," (1980, 637)—⁶ but rather an element intrinsic to the functioning of gender as an ideological apparatus. This implies that heterosexuality is not an additional condition to gender, but is immanent to gender itself as an ideological apparatus. In other words, gender as a sex/gender binary system already operates inherently through it, which "(re)produces and regulates a specific power differential between women and men." (128) Here, heterosexuality is not understood as a (compulsory) sexual orientation, but as the very ideological matrix through which sexual subjects are produced.

De Lauretis (1990, 145) accomplishes such queer reconfiguration of the concept of the sex/gender binary system, particularly through her engagement with the ideas of French lesbian materialist Monique Wittig (1992). Her central thesis is that heterosexuality constitutes the political regime that produces the category of sex for the reproduction of the "species," (6) i.e., the production of individuals. In a passage that echoes Althusser's ideology theory, she states:

A materialist feminist approach shows that what we take for the cause or origin of oppression is in fact only the mark imposed by the oppressor; the "myth of woman," plus its material effects and manifestations in the appropriated consciousness and bodies of women. Thus, this mark does not preexist oppression […] Now, sex is taken as an "immediate given", a "sensible given", "physical features", belonging to a natural order. But what we believe to be a physical and direct perception is only a sophisticated and mythic construction, an "imaginary formation", which reinterprets physical features (in themselves as neutral as any others but marked by the social system) through the network of relationships in which they are perceived. (11–12)

In other words, there is no 'sex' as a physical feature belonging to a natural order prior to the subsequent cultural construction or imposition of 'gender'. Instead, there is the production of 'sexual nature' that operates through 'the network of relationships', i.e., heterosexuality as the organizing arrangement of the sex/gender binary system. In this regard, and through our reading, it is possible to claim that de Lauretis' thought aligns closely with Judith Butler's concept of the heterosexual matrix (2002) and continues the line of reflection initiated by Rubin in "The Traffic in Women". This result is striking, given that de Lauretis and Butler are often portrayed as opposed figures in queer debates, including in de Lauretis' own self-understanding (1999, 109). In the literature (Bernini 2021, Villa 2021), a distinction has become established between, on the one hand, readings that associate Butler with the strand of queer theory labeled "radical constructivism," grounded in Foucault, and, on the other hand, readings that place de Lauretis among the exponents of "antisocial queer theories," who work on the uncanny dimension of the sexual drive using the tools of Jean Laplanche's psychoanalysis.

While a thorough comparison between Butler and de Lauretis (and each of their respective relations to Foucault and Althusser) would show that such a distinction is somewhat too coarse—since it is in fact possible to identify a persistent parallelism of theoretical aims and points of contact, such as the one our reading has highlighted here—it is important to underscore a crucial difference precisely with regard to this convergence on the production of sexual subjects. In Gender Trouble (2002) and "Merely Cultural" (1997b), Butler at times leans toward Delphy (1980) and French materialist feminism, entertaining the hypothesis of a separate, more fundamental mode of sexual production articulated in broadly transhistorical, culturalist terms. By contrast, de Lauretis adopts Hartmann and Rubin's Marxist-feminist thesis of a single process of material reproduction that unfolds within a context composed of different social relations governed by distinct logics—an approach that, with the rise of Social Reproduction Theory, has often been misread as dualistic but which, in our view, remains most consistent with a Marxian framework. On this basis, de Lauretis appears as a rare instance of Queer Marxism independent of both Freudo-Marxism and SRT—a point underscored by her singular reading of Foucault below.

4. Welding Althusser and Foucault: The Dispositif of Sexuality

As previously observed, in her rereading of Althusser in The Technology of Gender, de Lauretis acknowledges and emphasizes that his conception of ideology is not repressive but productive, attributing to it a positive role as an effective agent in the process of material and social reproduction. At the same time, she recognizes that, within the framework of Marxist theory, he anticipates a turn analogous to the one undertaken by Foucault during the same period. This perspective enables de Lauretis to move beyond the often negative critiques of ideology found in Foucault's work (and among Foucauldian scholars), arguing that Althusser's notions of ideology and ideological apparatus share significant commonalities with Foucault's concepts of norm and dispositif (or technology of power). Both conceptual frameworks address the process of subjection and production of individuals as subjects. In particular, de Lauretis (1987) explicitly highlights this connection when she explains how "the process described by Althusser with the word interpellation, […] is constructed and how it is then accepted and absorbed […], turn[s], first, to Michel Foucault" (12) and his analysis of the dispositif of sexuality.

This pivotal point of convergence between Althusser's approach to ideology and Foucault's concept of the dispositif—only briefly touched upon in The Technology of Gender—is explored in more depth in de Lauretis' 2008 work, Freud's Drive. In this text, she critically engages again with social and radical constructivist theories of sexuality. Without falling into the trap of essentialism—which posits that the "body […] would exist prior to gender attribution" (de Lauretis 1999, 127)—de Lauretis (2008) argues against theoretical positions that reduce the body and sexuality to mere and mobile power relations "that individuals may rearticulate, resignify or reappropriate […] by political will." (44)

To further elucidate how Foucault's dispositif of sexuality operates as a structure of "implacable" and "unconscious" domination, de Lauretis draws on Althusser's thesis that ideology is eternal. She underscores the critical proposition that "individuals are always-already subjects." (Althusser 2014, 192) In support of this argument, de Lauretis extensively cites the same Althusserian passage on the ideological interpellation of the sexual subject (de Lauretis 2008, 44–45), which we examined earlier. By invoking this reference, she effectively welds Foucauldian concept of the dispositif of sexuality with Althusser's notion of ideological interpellation of the sexual subject. Furthermore, as de Lauretis had already identified the ideological interpellation of the sexual subject with the sex/gender binary system in The Technology of Gender, this synthesis introduces a new perspective—both queer-feminist and Marxian—to Foucault's analysis in The Will to Knowledge and the preceding Abnormal lectures at the Collège de France. This triple identification of the binary sex/gender system, the dispositif of sexuality, and the ideological interpellation of the sexual subject brings to light an implicit or underexplored dimension in Foucault's work.

The Will to Knowledge is often interpreted as a "history of ideas" or "history of mentalities," which tends to reduce sexuality to a purely cultural and discursive construction. However, de Lauretis' work highlights the materialist and feminist dimensions of Foucauldian analysis that are frequently overlooked. By employing her Althusserian approach, we can revisit Foucault's work and uncover its deeper relevance for understanding the organization of generative reproduction in capitalist societies.

According to Foucault (2003, 248–249), the transition to capitalist societies marked a fundamental shift. The dispositif of alliance—based on personal and direct domination through kinship and blood ties, "sanguinity," (1978, 147) and embodied in the extended patriarchal family, which oversaw the production of both goods and individuals—was replaced by a new mode of regulation centered on sexuality and the nuclear family. As Foucault (2003) explains:

Until the middle of the eighteenth century the […] family […] was above all a sort of relational system. It was a bundle of relations of ancestry, descent, collateral relations, cousinhood, primogeniture, and alliances corresponding to schemas for the transmission of kinship and the division and distribution of goods and social status. Sexual prohibitions effectively focused on these kinds of relations. What is now being constituted is a sort of restricted, close-knit, substantial, compact, corporeal, and affective family core: the cell family in place of the relational family; the cell family with its corporeal, affective, and sexual space entirely saturated by direct parent-child relationships. (248)

This nuclear family, by instilling in individuals a 'sexual nature' or 'natural sex', emerged in capitalist contexts as a specialized organ for the production of individuals as sexual subjects, distinct from the production of goods and services as commodities.

This transformation entailed a dual separation: the production of goods was detached from the production of individuals, and the latter became specialized in producing individuals as sexual subjects. This shift marked the transition from a system of direct personal domination (with the male head of household exercising direct authority over both the production of goods and the production of individuals through the patriarchal legal frameworks in family and marriage law) to one of impersonal, indirect domination. In the newly separated economic dimension, this domination took the form of "the silent compulsion of economic relations," as Marx describes in Capital (1982 [1867], 899).⁷ In the dimension of production of individuals, it operated through new mechanisms of subjection. In our reading, Foucault describes this new configuration of the latter dimension of production as the dispositif of sexuality, wherein individuals' conduct is structured by a new sex/gender system governed by the imperative binary of heterosexuality: male or female, man or woman. As he emphasizes, "Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct," (Foucault 1978, 105) which is shaped in these ways and not in others according to the sex/gender binary system. This structure of domination became fully consolidated in the 19th century, closely intertwined with the rise of nation-states as the political form of capitalist societies. As Foucault (2003) writes:

Certainly, one of the reasons it was desirable to replace the loose, polymorphous, and complex apparatus [dispositif] of the large relational family with the limited, intense, and constant apparatus of the parental surveillance of children was the discovery of a political and economic interest in the child's survival. […] The State demands from parents, and the new forms or relations of production require, that the costs entailed by the very existence of the family, by the parents and recently born children, are not squandered by the early death of children. (255)

These emerging nation-states promoted and organized measures for population control and regulation through the implementation of what Foucault (1978) refers to as "total institutions"—such as prisons, barracks, schools, and hospitals—as well as through state-sponsored mass-medicine programs and public hygiene initiatives aimed at promoting population growth, monitoring fertility, and advancing pronatalist policies (25–29, 116, 126–127, 139–141). As he puts it:

One of the great innovations in the techniques of power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of "population" as an economic and political problem: population as wealth, population as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded. (25)

Within the dispositif of sexuality, for women, regardless of class distinctions, generative reproduction becomes the primary objective of sexual relations. Reproduction is positioned as the central axis of female existence, effectively narrowing their entire existential horizon to this role. This leads to what Foucault describes as "a hysterization of women's bodies […]. [T]he Mother, with her negative image of 'nervous woman,' constituted the most visible form of this hysterization." (104) At the same time, non-heteronormative sexualities and non-conforming gender identities are not only marginalized but also pathologized. They are relegated to the realm of the illicit and subsumed under a medical-psychiatric discourse, which conflates what are now understood as distinct concepts—homosexuality, cross-dressing, and transgenderism—into a single deviant framework that Foucault refers to "the perverse adult." (105)

This period thus marks the decisive medicalization and pathologization of non-reproductive sexualities. Among these, children's sexuality occupies a pivotal position, necessitating its pedagogization by parents, educators, doctors, and psychologists. The most conspicuous manifestation of this process was the intense campaign against masturbation (104; Foucault 2003, 250–253). Heterosexual penetrative sex is, in essence, established as the dominant form of sexual activity, deemed as a marker of mental 'sanity' and physical 'health'. Medicine and emerging psychiatry are tasked with identifying and addressing the presumed causes of 'deviant' behavior (Foucault 1978, 118–119; 2003, 278).

5. Conclusion

The main objective of this paper has been to establish a robust conceptual link between Marx and Foucault through Althusser and de Lauretis. Although the Marx/Althusser-Foucault connection had already been discussed in the literature, particularly in relation to Discipline and Punish and the Collège de France lectures The Punitive Society. Here, we have proposed a queer-feminist shift, drawing on de Lauretis' work and focusing on The Will to Knowledge and The Abnormal lectures.

First, we have reread Althusser 'against himself', emphasizing an anti-culturalist interpretation of his theory of ideology, particularly its thesis of eternity. From this, we have argued that what is crucial for Althusser's theory of ideology is the psychoanalytic model of the insertion of the newborn into the human order, that is, the constitution of the sexual subject. This rereading of Althusser aligns decisively with feminist and queer theories.

Secondly, we have reactivated the connection between Althusser and Foucault which is already present in de Lauretis' texts, bringing its full feminist and queer significance to the fore. We have combed through her early works to distinguish the ideas that lean towards queer theories from those still influenced by Italian feminism of sexual difference. While recognizing the convergence with Butler's contemporary perspective, we have shown how de Lauretis more clearly distances herself from culturalism, and grounds her analysis of gender domination in a more overtly Marxian framework, distinct from both the pre-eminent SRT and Freudo-Marxism.

Thirdly, this has enabled us to reconsider The Will to Knowledge from a perspective that is both more Marxian and more feminist. We have contrasted Foucault's theoretically and empirically fragile hypothesis, formulated in that book, of the coexistence of the alliance dispositif and the sexuality dispositif with a decisive historical discontinuity, drawing on Foucault's own lectures on The Abnormal. In outlining this epochal transformation of gender domination, we have analytically distinguished personal domination—prevalent in pre-capitalist contexts and, exceptionally, in capitalist ones, and comparable in the Foucauldian sense to repression—from impersonal domination—the true novum of capitalist contexts. This stands in radical contrast to interpretations of Foucault that equate domination with repression, reducing this novum to an ambivalent and generic fluidity of 'power'. In doing so, we have highlighted the feminist-critical side of The Will to Knowledge, which had been decidedly understated in it, as demonstrated by its reception within parts of late 1970s–1990s Anglophone feminism, and, at the same time, we have firmly rooted it in a Marxian framework. Therefore, the novelty of our contribution lies in establishing—via de Lauretis—a solid connection between Marx/Althusser and Foucault along the gender axis, thus also contributing to the debate on Queer Marxism and Trans Marxism.