Feminist Strike (and Beyond)
Elena Martinez-Acacio
In recent years, especially since 2017, a wave of feminist mobilizations developed in different parts of Latin America in response to diverse heteropatriarchal-capitalist forms of violence. Thinkers such as Susana Draper, Cinzia Arruzza, María Pía López, Verónica Gago, Françoise Vergès and many more have theorized the concept of “feminist strike” as a category that challenges both the classical Marxist concept of “work” and the white liberal appropriation of the term “feminism.” These works tend to consider “feminist strike” as a process (as opposed to a fixed event) inherently heterogeneous, and thus capable of establishing connections with other social movements (LGBTQA+ and indigenous activism, abolitionism, to name but a few). However, how to reconcile the academic conceptualization of the phenomenon without obscuring the particularities of each region? If “feminist strike” is understood as a fluctuating process that creates and recreates unprecedented alliances that go beyond traditional social classes and political identities, who is the subject of this strike, and what are its concrete political goals? In this seminar, we will develop these questions and their implications.
Required Readings
• Draper, Susana. “Strike as Process: Building the Poetics of a New Feminism.” South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 117, Is. 3, 2018, pp. 682–691.
• Arruzza, Cinzia. “From Social Reproduction Feminism to Women’s Strike.” Social Reproduction Theory. Remapping Class, Recentring Oppression. Edited by Tithi Bhattacharya. Pluto Press, 2017, pp. 192-197.
• López, María Pía. “Strike: The End of the End of History.” Not One Less. Mourning, Disobedience and Desire. Polity Press, 2020, pp. 42-67.
• Laclau, Ernesto. "Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?" Emancipations. Verso, 1996, 36-47.
Further Readings
• Gago, Veronica. La potencia feminista o el deseo de cambiarlo todo. Tinta Limón - Traficantes de sueños, 2019.
• Segato, Rita. La guerra contra las mujeres. Tinta Limón - Traficantes de sueños, 2017.
• Vergès, Françoise. A Decolonial Feminism. Pluto Press, 2021.
• Cavallero, Luci; Federici, Silvia; Gago, Verónica (eds.) ¿Quién le debe a quién? Ensayos transnacionales de desobediencia financiera. Tinta Limón, 2021.
• Honig, Bonnie. A feminist theory of Refusal. Harvard University Press, 2021.
• Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, Bloomsbury, 2014.
• Fraser, Nancy. “Contradictions of Capital and Care.” New Left Review, vol. 100, July/August 2016.
• Toupin, Louise. Wages for Housework. A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972-77. Pluto Press, 2018.
• Federici, Silvia. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. PM Press, 2012.
• Edmond, Wendy and Suzie Fleming. All Work and No Pay: Women, Housework and the Wages Due. Falling Wall Press, 1975.
• Dalla Costa, Maria Rosa and Selma James. The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community. Falling Wall Press, 1972.
• Fontaine, Claire. The Human Strike Has Already Begun & Other Essays. Mute, 2013.
• Hochschild, Arlie with Anne Machung. The Second Shift. Working Families and the Revolution at Home. Penguin, 1989.
• Žižek, Slavoj. “The Spectre of Ideology.” Mapping Ideology, edited by Slavoj Žižek, Verso, 1994, pp. 1-33.
• Laclau, Ernesto and Changal Moufe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Verso, 1985.
