(Re)Producing Social Justice After Neoliberalism
Political thought needs categories; political life defies them.
Because the categories we think with both enable and constrain
our imaginations, the analysis of our categories of thought must
always be integral to political theory and strategy. Bringing
economic and sexual justice together as theoretical concepts, while
engaging the associated movements for social change, requires that
we put our conceptions of "economy" and "sexuality" under pressure.
On the one hand, feminist scholars and activists have a long history
of considering the social construction of these terms, and of
arguing that they are deeply and complexly interrelated. On the
other hand, we are engaged in scholarship and public debates that
insist on a separation of the terms "economic" and "sexual"—seen as
the proper objects of quite distinct analyses and political
organization. We are trapped within the historical categories of
liberalism—economy, state, civil society, and family—trying to
emerge into another conceptual and political universe.[1]
The ideological work of these dominant categories of liberalism
has been well analyzed by decades of scholarship. Feminist scholars
have turned their attention to the broad impact of the
public/private distinction as well. Meanwhile, we also find
ourselves struggling with murky distinctions of our own:
production/reproduction, production/consumption, or
social/cultural/political/economic. Feminist, anti-imperialist,
anti-racist, queer and left activists and scholars together have
most recently pointed out the ways that historical categories such
as race, gender, class, sexuality, ability and religion have cut
across the liberal domains, intersecting with each other in complex
ways. All the while, it has been clear that even this notion of a
complex intersectionality is inadequate to the task of demonstrating
the shifting historical interrelations within which such terms
define each other. None are self contained enough to simply
"intersect" with the others.[2]
As the dominant political and economic policy paradigm of
neoliberalism shifts in the wake of global crisis, it is imperative
that we seize opportunities to communicate, organize, strategize and
theorize our way out of its cruel projects of expanding inequalities
and concentrating power and resources. It is crucial that we
demonstrate the ways that social formations of race, gender,
sexuality, nationality and religion are central to economic
processes and state actions, and are not simply population segments
to be progressively included in the status quo. We need concepts and
analyses that can capture the shifting relationships of the forces
with which we contend, and that can illuminate them in ways that
facilitate effective critique and a sense of new possibilities. We
need a way out of either simply listing these categories and
asserting that they intersect (or are imbricated), or just
demonstrating their social construction and incoherence. Tall
order, hey?
In the world of English language feminist politics, I would like
to argue for the resurrection and reworking of an old socialist
feminist concept—social reproduction. After its initial
heydey in the 1960s and 70s, as a counterpoint to Marxist emphasis
on the relations of production, the term was revived in the 1980s
within feminist political economics, especially in Britain and
Canada. Most recently, it has been put to interesting use by
scholars in other fields such as geography, development studies, and
international relations.[3]
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