This Sex Which Is Not One Women on the market ticipation in society requires that the body submit itself to a secularization, a speculation, that transforms it into a value that man seeks in it, are ek-stasized. In that suspension in the bearing object, a standardized sign, an exchangeable signifier, a commodity of the relationship among men, producer-con- likeness", with reference to an authoritative model. A co- sumer-exchanger subjects are alienated. In order that they woman-is divided into two irreconcilable bodies"her might " bear"and support that alienation, commodities for "natural"body and her socially valued, exchangeable bod their part have always been dispossessed of their specific value which is a particularly mimetic expression of masculine valt On this basis, one may affirm that the value of the commodity No doubt these values also express"nature, "that is, the expen takes on indifferently any given form of use value. The price of diture of physical force. But this latter-essentially masculine, the articles, in fact, no longer comes from their natural form morcover from their bodies, their language, but from the fact that they technicization of natural productions. And it is this super-natural mirror the need/desire for exchanges among men. To do this property that comes to constitute the value of the product the commodity obviously cannot exist alone, but there is no Analyzing value in this way, Marx exposes the meta-physical such thing as a commodity, either, so long as there are not at character of social operations least two men to make an exchange. In order for a product-a woman?-to have value, two men, at least, have to invest(in) The commodity is thus a dual entity as soon as its value comes to possess a phenomenal form of its own, distinct from its natural form: that of exchange value. And it never possesse The general equivalent of a commodity no longer functions as a this form if it is considered in isolation. a commodity has this commodity itself. a preeminent mirror, transcending the world phenomenal form added on to its nature only in relation to of merchandise, it guarantees the possibility of universal ex- another commodity lodities. Each commodity may become As among signs, value appears only when a relationship has equivalent to every other from the viewpoint of that sublime been established. It remains the case that the establishment of standard, but the fact that the judgment of their value depends relationships cannot be accomplished by the commodities pon some transcendental element renders them provisionally themselves, but depends upon the operation of two exchangers incapable of being directly exchanged for each other. They are The exchange value of two signs, two commodities, two wom exchanged by means of the general equivalent-as Christians n, is a representation of the nceds/desires of consumer-ex- love each other in God, to borrow a theological metaphor dear to marx hanger subjects: in no way is it the"property"of the signs/ articles/women themselves. At the most the commodities-or That ek-static reference separates them radically from each rather the relationships among them-are the material alibi for other. An abstract and universal value preserves themm from use and he desire for relations among men. To this end, the com- exchange among themselves. They are, as it were, transformed modity is disinvested of its body and reclothed in a form that into value-invested idealities. Their concrete forms, their spe- makes it suitable for exchange among men cific qualities, and all the possibilities of"real"relations with But, in this value-bearing form, the desire for that exchange, chem or among them are reduced to their common character as and the reflection of his own value and that of his fellow man products of man's labor and desire We must emphasize also that the general equivalent, since it is