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The Feminist Subversion of the Economy: Contributions for Life Against Capital
The political response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the pressures on the global capitalist economies has, once again, imposed the priority of markets over life. Add to this the climate crisis and, undoubtedly, the task of sustaining life continues to be privatized, made invisible, and feminized. We must what does a dignified life look like, especially one that transforms the gendered labor divisions and a racialized, exploitative feminized care economy that falls mainly on the shoulders of women—from the household to the wider effects of the capitalist economy on social reproduction. At the same time, these questions are intimately connected with considerations of our environment. The Feminist Subversion of the Economy makes the conection between patriarchy, capitalism, and ecological crisis—and rallies women, the LGBTQ+ community, and movements worldwide to center gender and social reproduction in a vision for a just ecology and economy. Public intellectual, academic, and activist Amaia Pérez Orozco offers a vision beyond the myths of development (unlimited growth), wealth (accumulation of capital), and work (limited to waged labor) and, at the same time, accounts for the tasks, networks, and economic subjects that, materially and daily, guarantee that life keeps going. Newly translated and updated in collaboration with Liz Mason-Desse, who has won a PEN translation award for her work on feminist economics, The Feminist Subversion of the Economy shows the urgent need to radically and democratically discuss what we mean by a dignified life and how we can organize to sustain life collectively.
288 pages, Paperback
Published October 4, 2022
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October 4, 2022I read this book a while back, and am excited to read it again in its published form! Here's my blurb:
“In the last decade, feminist political economy has experienced an efflorescence, as a generation of new thinkers has critically revised the practice of reading the interconnected spheres of misery produced by capitalism, in all its debilitating forms. Why? Because such heterodox, ruptural feminisms offer the most robust theorization of the multidimensional confluence of ecological devastation, state-sanctioned racism, deteriorating mental and physical wellbeing, colonial exploitation, reliance on unpaid work (including care), heteropatriarchal division and social murder. These crises are synthetically and historically produced in and through capitalism, a global totality and the epicenter of these problems. Amaia Pérez Orozco’s The Feminist Subversion of the Economy is not just the exemplar of this critical-analytic tradition; this book is a further contribution towards the construction of “a solid base from which to fight”; a “utopian horizon”; a life-sustaining collectively-pedagogical project of “buen convivir”; and a feminist degrowth transition. This book will compel you think differently--and even better, with others!--as to how we can create a life-sustaining economy.”
“In the last decade, feminist political economy has experienced an efflorescence, as a generation of new thinkers has critically revised the practice of reading the interconnected spheres of misery produced by capitalism, in all its debilitating forms. Why? Because such heterodox, ruptural feminisms offer the most robust theorization of the multidimensional confluence of ecological devastation, state-sanctioned racism, deteriorating mental and physical wellbeing, colonial exploitation, reliance on unpaid work (including care), heteropatriarchal division and social murder. These crises are synthetically and historically produced in and through capitalism, a global totality and the epicenter of these problems. Amaia Pérez Orozco’s The Feminist Subversion of the Economy is not just the exemplar of this critical-analytic tradition; this book is a further contribution towards the construction of “a solid base from which to fight”; a “utopian horizon”; a life-sustaining collectively-pedagogical project of “buen convivir”; and a feminist degrowth transition. This book will compel you think differently--and even better, with others!--as to how we can create a life-sustaining economy.”
February 23, 2024
This is a thoughtful, carefully laid out argument for a completely different economy than the one we live in, by Amaia Pérez Orozco and her collaborator-translator Liz Mason-Deese. Mason-Deese apparently contributed a lot more to this current translation than to the previous version. The language is heavily academic, and can be challenge to read or follow.
Pérez Orozco is interested in the concept of buen vivir or, as she prefers, buen convivir, living well together. I had heard both terms, but I appreciated her tracing the concept back to more than one indigenous South American language. She is consistently careful about invoking indigenous terms, expectations, and practices, as she is also careful about how she uses common economic terms like "market," and "production." She has a charming way of describing the current late-stage capitalist system as "this scandalous Thing" (after Donna Haraway). She is trying to promote the term "decessities," which doesn't work well in English. Nonetheless, the underlying concept -- those things that sit squarely between being "needs" and "desires" -- is extremely useful: do we need to feel that we will be cared for in need, or do we just desire to feel that way? I also appreciated the compassionate rigor with which she sorts out concepts like universal basic income -- extremely important in the current system and simultaneously a way to reinforce the current system because it assumes that "income" and "money" are inextricably linked.
As I said, the book is dense and thoughtful. I certainly don't feel like I got anywhere near all of her points on a first read, and life being what it is, I'm unlikely to go back and re-read in full, but I do expect to dive in again here and there. If you're looking for a book that will help you think about how to think differently about economic possibility, and you can handle the style, this is a fine choice.
Pérez Orozco is interested in the concept of buen vivir or, as she prefers, buen convivir, living well together. I had heard both terms, but I appreciated her tracing the concept back to more than one indigenous South American language. She is consistently careful about invoking indigenous terms, expectations, and practices, as she is also careful about how she uses common economic terms like "market," and "production." She has a charming way of describing the current late-stage capitalist system as "this scandalous Thing" (after Donna Haraway). She is trying to promote the term "decessities," which doesn't work well in English. Nonetheless, the underlying concept -- those things that sit squarely between being "needs" and "desires" -- is extremely useful: do we need to feel that we will be cared for in need, or do we just desire to feel that way? I also appreciated the compassionate rigor with which she sorts out concepts like universal basic income -- extremely important in the current system and simultaneously a way to reinforce the current system because it assumes that "income" and "money" are inextricably linked.
As I said, the book is dense and thoughtful. I certainly don't feel like I got anywhere near all of her points on a first read, and life being what it is, I'm unlikely to go back and re-read in full, but I do expect to dive in again here and there. If you're looking for a book that will help you think about how to think differently about economic possibility, and you can handle the style, this is a fine choice.
January 14, 2025
Took me some time to get through but such a good book on our dependence on the invisibilised care economy and imagining a world where degendered and non reactionary care is prioritised over capitalist production
February 8, 2024
“We will be societies in which labor does not exist or in which everything is work, because creating the life of the world is work and we will have blurred the boundaries between work and leisure, making it so that it finally gives us life. […] Those of us who have grown up in the center of this scandalous Thing will not recognize ourselves, because we will desire that which we do not desire today, because we will know how to do things that we currently want others to do for us, because we will experience life and death in ways that today we cannot even imagine. Let’s see how we can manage to get ready to live in a present in which there is no contradiction between running to get ahead of the change imposed on us and not being in a hurry because we require new forms of experiencing time, without productivism or guilt. Will we find ourselves in futures that are unthought of today? If so, it will be because we have gone together, through contagion, with a politics of the common and of conflict. Because we will have fought together” (172).
6 ⭐️ (sorry Goodreads) Thank you Amaia and Liz!
6 ⭐️ (sorry Goodreads) Thank you Amaia and Liz!
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