Women on the market ly desirable? Do women have no ter toward polygamy? The good anthropologist does not raise such 8 questions. A fortiori: why are men not objects of exchange among women? It is because womens bodies-through their Women on the market use,consumption,and circulation--provide for the condition making social life and culture possible, although they remain an unknown"infrastructure"of the elaboration of that social life The society we know, our own culture, is based upon the and culture. The exploitation of the matter that has been sexu- exchange of women. Without the exchange of women, we are alized female is so integral a part of our sociocultural horizon old, we would fall back into the anarchy (?)of the natural hat there is no way to interpret it except within this horizon world, the randomness (?)of the animal kingdom. The passage to the social order, into the symbolic order, into order as In still other words: all the systems of exchange that organize such, is assured by the fact that men, or groups of men, circu- patriarchal societies and all the modalities of productive work te women among themselves, according to a rule known as that are recognized, valued, and rewarded in these societies the incest taboo men's business. The production of women, signs, and com- Whatever familial form this prohibition may take in a given modities is always referred back to men(when a man buys a state of society, its signification has a much broader impact. It girl, he"pays"the father or the brother, not the mother... ), assures the foundation of the economic. social. and cultural and they always pass from one man to another, from one group order that has been ours for centuries of men to another. The work force is thus always assumed to be Why exchange women? Because they are"scarce [com masculine, and"products"are objects to be used, objects of sential to the life of the group, " the anthrop transaction among men alone. lls us. Why this characteristic of scarcity, given the bio equilibrium between male and female births? Because the"deep Which means that the possibility of our social life, of our polygamous tendency, which exists among all men, always culture, depends upon a ho(m)mo-sexual monopoly? The law makes the number of available women seem insufficient. Let us that orders our society is the exclusive valor add that, even if there were as many women as m needs/desires, of exchanges among men. What the anthropolo- women would not all be equally desirable. . and that, by gist calls the passage from nature to culture thus amounts to the definition the most desirable women must forrm a Institution of the reign of hom(m)o-sexuality. Not in an"im minority. 2 mediate"practice, but in its"social"mediation. From this This text was originally published as"Le marche des femmes, ""in int on, patriarchal societies might be interpreted as societies pm functioning in the me e politica,(Milan: Felcrineli, 1978 deof“ semblance:” The value of sym Imaginary productions n Sturmer, and Rodney Needham 1969),p.36. even substituted for, the value of relations of material, natural, and corporal (re) roduction In this which 171