VIDEO: Faster Slower Future #3
Never Done?: Feminized Reproductive Labour and Post-Work Politics
Malgré les crises majeures avec lesquelles le système capitaliste a récemment été aux prises, une alternative post-capitaliste semble plus que jamais impensable. Nous poursuivons notre course à un rythme toujours plus effréné. Ce que nous appelons « la gauche » s’essouffle à chercher des issues. Les nouveaux mouvements sociaux issus de la société civile militent toujours davantage pour un ralentissement. Face à cela, une pensée autour de l’accélération est apparue ces dernières années : pourquoi ne pas anéantir le capitalisme avec ses propres moyens ? Pourquoi ne pas mettre les bouchées doubles pour faire passer la société à un ordre différent ?
Durant un programme de deux jours, nous nous penchons sur cet antagonisme entre accélération et ralentissement, avec au cœur de la réflexion, la pensée d’un récent mouvement politico-philosophique : « l’accélérationnisme de gauche », une composante d’un courant philosophique (abstrait) plus vaste : « le réalisme spéculatif ». Nous donnons la parole aux partisans et aux opposants, mais plus que tout, nous sondons des propositions provocatrices pour repenser l’avenir.
Les invités principaux sont Nick Srnicek et Alex Williams, qui ont écrit ensemble Le Manifeste accéléré pour politique accélérationniste et – Inventing the Future : Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (Inventer l’avenir : post-capitalisme et un monde sans travail).
SATURDAY 22/10
17:00 – Helen Hester: Never Done?: Feminized Reproductive Labour and Post-Work Politics
Helen Hester will explore the suggestion that post-work positions neglect to address domestic and caring activities or to include reproductive labour within their political purview. It will attempt to both support and query such criticisms with reference to one of the foundational thinkers of the contemporary challenge to work, Andre Gorz. Gorz demands to be recognised as one of the key post-work thinkers of the twentieth century, with Farewell to the Working Class exercising a substantial and continuing influence upon later critics and activists. Yet, his attitude to reproductive labour (and hostile stance towards certain feminist positions) renders this influence problematic. Today, I want to sketch out Gorz’s framing of ‘autonomous labour’ and the domestic sphere, arguing that, whilst he undoubtedly positions unwaged reproductive labour at the centre of his project, he does so primarily in order to exclude such labour from his conception of work. In fact, he not only argues that it is a privileged sphere of activity that should be upheld, but does so in such a way that he naturalizes both this work and the existing gender roles that underpin it. In doing so, Gorz runs counter to a materialist feminist refusal of work, wrongly characterizing this refusal as a celebration of the work ethic (and thus failing to absorb all the insights this position has to offer).
• Helen Hester is Head of Film and Media at the University of West London. Her research interests include technofeminism, sexuality studies, and theories of social reproduction, and she is a member of the feminist working group Laboria Cuboniks. She is the author of Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex (SUNY Press, 2014), the co-editor of the collections Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism (Ashgate, 2015) and Dea ex Machina (Merve, 2015), and series editor for Ashgate’s ‘Sexualities in Society’ book series.
