Abstract: The uncovering of the sociality of gender and the reshaping of the consciousness of women are fundamental cultural appeals of feminism, and these appeals may rely on theoretical support from both classical Marxist dialectical analysis of the relationship between society and consciousness and Western Marxist illuminations of the subjectivity and cultural materialism, although the latter may take on more weight for feminist criticism. Since 1970s, Marxist feminism has absorbed the theory of cultural production, developed on Althusser's theory of ideology and British cultural studies, in its analysis of patriarchy, capitalism and gender system, and gender is thus disclosed as the result of patriarchal cultural production and a social institution rather than a pure biological fact or subjective identity. Through "the politics of discourse" as developed from the theory of cultural production, contemporary materialism feminism may try to revise the philosophy of consciousness in the post-Marxist theory of discourse.

Key words: Marxist feminism, gender, patriarchal culture, cultural production, the politics of discourse