Papers by Zoe Sutherland
The New Feminist Literary Studies
Totality Inside Out, 2022
Conference Presentations by Zoe Sutherland
This paper addresses the Marxist-feminist category of ‘social reproduction' insofar as it has eme... more This paper addresses the Marxist-feminist category of ‘social reproduction' insofar as it has emerged as a hegemonic perspective in feminist theory today. We will evaluate the adequacy of this concept for analysing gender in the post-crisis capital relation, along with some questions for the models of resistance it offers.
The post-crisis era has renewed the urgency for feminist practice and analysis at the same time as it has exposed the degree to which gender relations and the terrain of feminist struggle have shifted. The 1970s-80s model of Marxist-feminism—grounded upon a normative Keynesian ideal of a family wage—appears redundant, both in its ability to grasp the current situation, and in the exclusivity of its feminist politics. Nevertheless, we are seeing an energetic revival of Marxist-feminist theory, which seeks to extend and/or reformulate its theoretical frames for the present. The category of ‘social reproduction’ is taken up by a diverse range of theorists and activists, not all from the Marxist current, for its potential to synthesise numerous forms of oppression and exploitation, based not only on gender but on race, sexuality and multiple other stigmas intrinsic to capitalist logics of value. Drawing mainly on the Italian Autonomist branches of the second-wave feminist movement, adoption of this framework is often coupled with an implicit or explicit positioning of the global (unpaid) reproductive worker as ‘revolutionary subject’. The ‘crisis of reproduction’ is being met with a more inclusive ‘call to (reproductive) arms’.
However, approaches grounded in value-form analysis, such as Roswitha Scholz and Endnotes, identify the potential dangers of moralism and essentialism latent within the category of social reproduction, arguing that the 'logic of gender' must be negated rather than affirmed through its alleged proximity to relations of ‘care’ and the sustaining of life. For Scholz, there is nothing more ideological than the vision of a world beyond money based on ‘care’. The threat of non-reproduction, compounded by austerity measures, cannot be fought through the self-organisation of care. At the same time, some social reproduction theories developed in the 1970s-80s, such as that of Lise Vogel, seem potentially capable of adapting to the epochal shifts of Neoliberalism, and speak to what is now a broadly 'intersectional' understanding.
2nd International Marxist-Feminist Conference, Vienna, 2016
Feminist struggle has often oriented around the problematic of unity and separation, the theoreti... more Feminist struggle has often oriented around the problematic of unity and separation, the theoretical framing of which is typically expressed through the binary of a bad universalism and the necessity of insisting upon difference. This paper will argue that Marxist-Feminism is especially apt to think through this problematic. It will survey vectors of difference and universalism in the history of the feminist movement, focusing particularly on the tension between autonomy and separatism, as it played out in the divergent paths of feminisms and tracing the binds between affirmation and negation of difference contra the bad universal of formal equality. Totality and universalism have disparate political-philosophical lineages, yet have strategic affinity in that both invoke the 'whole'. And it is in this that the Marxist-Feminist framework is the most compelling theoretical position and tool of critical analysis.
Book Reviews by Zoe Sutherland
Since the 1990s, there has been much discussion about the impact of globalization upon the produc... more Since the 1990s, there has been much discussion about the impact of globalization upon the production, circulation and exchange of art. Somewhat inverting this line of inquiry, Marcus Verhagen's Flows and Counterflows looks instead at how artists have engaged with these social processes through their works. Verhagen's interest lies not in simple representations or illustrations of globalization—'rote symbols of displacement or exchange'—but rather in works that contribute new ways of thinking about it. Flows and Counterflows is thus first and foremost an examination of the political-aesthetic operations of the artwork—an analysis of the ways in which art practice has been able to offer critical perspectives on globalized conditions.
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Papers by Zoe Sutherland
Conference Presentations by Zoe Sutherland
The post-crisis era has renewed the urgency for feminist practice and analysis at the same time as it has exposed the degree to which gender relations and the terrain of feminist struggle have shifted. The 1970s-80s model of Marxist-feminism—grounded upon a normative Keynesian ideal of a family wage—appears redundant, both in its ability to grasp the current situation, and in the exclusivity of its feminist politics. Nevertheless, we are seeing an energetic revival of Marxist-feminist theory, which seeks to extend and/or reformulate its theoretical frames for the present. The category of ‘social reproduction’ is taken up by a diverse range of theorists and activists, not all from the Marxist current, for its potential to synthesise numerous forms of oppression and exploitation, based not only on gender but on race, sexuality and multiple other stigmas intrinsic to capitalist logics of value. Drawing mainly on the Italian Autonomist branches of the second-wave feminist movement, adoption of this framework is often coupled with an implicit or explicit positioning of the global (unpaid) reproductive worker as ‘revolutionary subject’. The ‘crisis of reproduction’ is being met with a more inclusive ‘call to (reproductive) arms’.
However, approaches grounded in value-form analysis, such as Roswitha Scholz and Endnotes, identify the potential dangers of moralism and essentialism latent within the category of social reproduction, arguing that the 'logic of gender' must be negated rather than affirmed through its alleged proximity to relations of ‘care’ and the sustaining of life. For Scholz, there is nothing more ideological than the vision of a world beyond money based on ‘care’. The threat of non-reproduction, compounded by austerity measures, cannot be fought through the self-organisation of care. At the same time, some social reproduction theories developed in the 1970s-80s, such as that of Lise Vogel, seem potentially capable of adapting to the epochal shifts of Neoliberalism, and speak to what is now a broadly 'intersectional' understanding.
Book Reviews by Zoe Sutherland
The post-crisis era has renewed the urgency for feminist practice and analysis at the same time as it has exposed the degree to which gender relations and the terrain of feminist struggle have shifted. The 1970s-80s model of Marxist-feminism—grounded upon a normative Keynesian ideal of a family wage—appears redundant, both in its ability to grasp the current situation, and in the exclusivity of its feminist politics. Nevertheless, we are seeing an energetic revival of Marxist-feminist theory, which seeks to extend and/or reformulate its theoretical frames for the present. The category of ‘social reproduction’ is taken up by a diverse range of theorists and activists, not all from the Marxist current, for its potential to synthesise numerous forms of oppression and exploitation, based not only on gender but on race, sexuality and multiple other stigmas intrinsic to capitalist logics of value. Drawing mainly on the Italian Autonomist branches of the second-wave feminist movement, adoption of this framework is often coupled with an implicit or explicit positioning of the global (unpaid) reproductive worker as ‘revolutionary subject’. The ‘crisis of reproduction’ is being met with a more inclusive ‘call to (reproductive) arms’.
However, approaches grounded in value-form analysis, such as Roswitha Scholz and Endnotes, identify the potential dangers of moralism and essentialism latent within the category of social reproduction, arguing that the 'logic of gender' must be negated rather than affirmed through its alleged proximity to relations of ‘care’ and the sustaining of life. For Scholz, there is nothing more ideological than the vision of a world beyond money based on ‘care’. The threat of non-reproduction, compounded by austerity measures, cannot be fought through the self-organisation of care. At the same time, some social reproduction theories developed in the 1970s-80s, such as that of Lise Vogel, seem potentially capable of adapting to the epochal shifts of Neoliberalism, and speak to what is now a broadly 'intersectional' understanding.