From “IS THE SOCIAL ANTIPOLITICAL?” Ilaria Possenti. 2017. At this point it is worth noting that the concept of “society” derives from Latin, but its foundations are Greek: Aristotle speaks of koinônia politike (political community), an expression in which the second term is linked to to koinon (the common), and which in Latin is normally translated as societas civilis (civil society, an expression I use here in the premodern sense). From this perspective, political life as such –that is, the life of citizens (politai), those who are “free”– cannot be extricated from social life: the community is political whenever it is organized in such a way as to make political freedom possible (an organization that also comprises the economic sphere, in the antique form of the domestic economy involving women and slaves). In the era of the Greek polis Aristotle refers to, this meant that “citizens” were men (not women), indigenous (not foreign), and masters (not slaves, servants or basic workers). Each of them was free, that is, he was able to participate on an equal footing with others in managing certain aspects of community life (such as the primary military and civil issues) because he ruled over women and slaves who took care of the other aspects (reproductive and productive). It was only in the age of modern revolutions that the idea of “equaliberty” (Balibar) was developed: in that period, and not before, we began to see the “egalitarian” idea of including all humans in the polis, that is, of liberating the actors and activities of the reproductive and productive sphere from a politically secondary, subordinate and dominated role. This goal was not exactly achieved, however. Rendering the political sphere autonomous as state, that is, as a space for exercising sovereignty, led to the transformation of the community sphere into a “society” (“civil society” in the modern sense of bürgerliche Gesellschaft) with space for civil liberties but not the experience of political freedom10. In other words, it is specifically the liberal perspective that frames community life in a way that neglects this kind of freedom and conceptualizes “the social” in a way that begins to be anti-political. Modern and contemporary social history has also envisaged and narrated different stories, however. The claims made by “women” (the adaptable and performative subject Zerilli writes about) have often viewed welfare and work differently than the liberal state, promoting socially oriented initiatives and cooperatives –empowering, not “charitable” ones– for managing common resources and public services. According to such an approach, social life is and remains a site of political freedom. In demanding that they be paid the salary of specialized workers, the seamstresses of We want sex seek to obtain recognition for their “concrete labour” with its history of learning processes and relationships, work that is not merely “abstract human labour”. This is why they show the manager their pieces of cloth, pieces he would not know how to arrange or sew together. These working women know that there is logos in each person’s work and that enhancing the logos inherent in work is another way of making community into political community –a domain in which animal laborans is always already zoon politikon, a political and social animal From "Social Reproduction and the Pandemic, with Tithi Bhattacharya", Sarah Jaffee. 2020. Tithi Bhattacharya: The best way to define social reproduction is the activities and institutions that are required for making life, maintaining life, and generationally replacing life. I call it “life-making” activities. Life-making in the most direct sense is giving birth. But in order to maintain that life, we require a whole host of other activities, such as cleaning, feeding, cooking, washing clothes. There are physical institutional requirements: a house to live in; public transport to go to various places; public recreational facilities, parks, after-school programs. Schools and hospitals are some of the basic institutions that are necessary for the maintenance of life and life-making. Those activities and institutions that are involved in this process of life-making we call social reproduction work and social reproduction institutions. But social reproduction is also a framework. It is a lens through which to look at the world around us and try to understand it. It allows us to locate the source of wealth in our society, which is both human life and human labor. The capitalist framework or the capitalist lens is the opposite of life-making: it is thing-making or profit-making. Capitalism asks, “How many more things can we produce?” because things make profit. The consideration is not about the impact of those things on people, but to create an empire of things in which capitalism is the necromancer reigning supreme. Most of these activities and most of the jobs in the social reproduction sector—like nursing, teaching, cleaning—are dominated by women workers. And because capitalism is a thing-making system, not a life-making system, these activities and these workers are severely undervalued. Social reproductive workers are the worst paid, they are the first to go, they face constant sexual harassment and often direct violence. Sarah Jaffe: We are in a moment where we have ghouls like Glenn Beck saying that they would be happy to die if capitalism could keep functioning, making this all so clear. Bhattacharya: The coronavirus crisis has been tragically clarifying in two respects. Firstly it has clarified what social reproduction feminists have been saying for a while, which is that care work and life-making work are the essential work of society. Right now when we are under lockdown, nobody is saying, “We need stockbrokers and investment bankers! Let’s keep those services open!” They are saying, “Let’s keep nurses working, cleaners working, garbage removal services open, food production ongoing.” Food, fuel, shelter, cleaning: these are the “essential services.” The crisis has also tragically revealed how completely incapable capitalism is of dealing with a pandemic. It is oriented toward maximizing profit rather than maintaining life. [Capitalists argue] that the greatest victims in all this are not the countless lives that are being lost, but the bloody economy. The economy, it seems, is the most vulnerable little child that everyone from Trump to Boris Johnson is ready to protect with shining swords. Meanwhile, the healthcare sector has been ravaged in the United States by privatization and austerity measures. People are saying that nurses have to make masks at home. I have always said that capitalism privatizes life and life-making, but I think we need to reword that after the pandemic: “Capitalism privatizes life, but it also socializes death.” [...] Jaffe: What it shows us is not that emissions go down without people—because most people are not dying. What it shows us is that the world is a lot healthier without so much work because people are doing—as you were saying—only the life-making work. Bhattacharya: This argument that coronavirus is a reset button for the earth is an eco-fascist argument. What it should be is a reset button for social organization. If the virus passes and we go back to life as before, then this has taught us nothing. Because it has become necessary to stay at home, we are able to find beauty and time to enjoy those whom we share our homes with. But we cannot forget that homes under capitalism, while they provide safety and security, are also theaters of incredible violence. Two days ago, I got an email from a local domestic violence shelter where I used to volunteer, asking if I would consider coming in again, because they anticipate a spike in cases. My feminist comrades in Brazil, Sri Lanka, and India are all reporting the same: a spike in domestic abuse because of the pressure cooker of everybody staying in the house. We don’t need social isolation. We need physical isolation and social solidarity. We cannot ignore the elderly neighbor who is living across my street; it may not be safe for them to go to the grocery store. We cannot ignore our coworker who comes to work with way too much makeup around their eyes and says that they’ve hit their head on a door. We need to check in on them regularly.
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