Rethinking class and gender justice with and against Marx, Adorno and Lacan

I argue that hierarchical binaries contribute to class and gender injustices characteristic of modern societies. I retrace Marx's and Adorno's critique of capitalism to show that it reveals how binaries are embedded in this system's basic institutions. I then draw on Lacan's theoretical framework of the imaginary, the symbolic and the Real, to explain how such binaries extend into modern societies' broader unconscious substratum. Subsequently, I demonstrate that at key points, in signifying the working-class and the woman, even well intentioned critics of hierarchical forms of thought, such as Marx and Adorno, can help engrave and reinforce them. Finally, I show that the theoretical concepts of the non-identical and the Real provide us with powerful tools to break away from binary forms of thought.