Contact: conori-rise@riseup.net 1. Pre-capitalist age. Establishing the basic Capitalist Power structure: the birth of sex, race and class oppression ● societies in the world: most patriarchal (patriarchal domination). Some of them with more equality between sexes. Different kinds of patriarchy ● agrarian societies: – Public and private sphere not completelly separate – usually women with more power: reproduction: women decide how many people are need work to the collectivity – in many societies the right to the earth was stablished using matricentric lineages. Separation between Women exhiled in public and private the private sphere sphere Women's More centralized power Men dominate autonomy (state) and juristic public sphere structure: (public and nature sphere) 1.1. Antique age ● Greece (many islands)→intensive exchange of goods→developing of market →stablishment of coinage (monetarian system) → public sphere ● Regulamentations → Burocracy and state law ● Public sphere → men (rethorical, rational) ● Private sphere → women (sensual, emotional) ● Rationality (men's world)→ status in trade : dialetics, formal logics 1.2. Medieval age (feudalism) (cent. V - XV) ● semi matriarchals remnants from the germanic folks but still women subordinate to husbands or fathers (greek influence) →paradoxal situation of medieval women ● serfdom: "family" (heteroconcept) was the center of agricultural and artisan production ● sourcery and witchcraft were not seem as bad ● Traditional healing and midwife work were womens work. ● Catholic Church → perserved negative image of women and conserved the idea that women should stay out of public sphere ● Riots: against fees, against working in the land of the lord, against repression. ● enclosure of the common land → private property is born. ● Women were more affected → women taking part/or leading riots. ● Many people went to cities. ● Searching for jobs → unemployment and hunger → State was born. ● Women tried to do handcraft work → male artisans organisations against women's work. ● Women's unemployment → prostitution increasing 2. Transition to Capitalism: witch hunt, colonialism and slavory system 2.1. Renassaince (cent: XIV to XVI) ● redescovery and revalorization of the antique cultural values → christian church image of women becomes more popular and efficiently ● production of goods and monetarian flux → new public sphere. ● Natural science revolution → rationality and technologies to the market → colonialism, expansion of manufacture, find new markets and resources 2.2 Witch hunt (cent: XV to XVIII) ● Campaign against women → control women and stop peasant riots ● Rationality of the Bourgeois man x the mistical idea of female witches close to nature ● simbolic campaign to dominate nature → resource to capitalist production ● medical profession and male rationality x women healers and wise women ● the burning of witches was not the last act of the "age of darkness" but the first act of the modernization (Scholtz) ● motherhood ideal becomes the model for women in the bougeoise class - Closure of women in private sphere ● The separation between productive and reproductive labor is completed 2.3. Colonialism ● Exports new born mercantilist/capitalist system and also the capitalist patriarchal system to the colonized territories ● Institutionalized racism is born → global racist division of labor ● Eg: In Latin america colonies → black people: slavory; native: serfdom; white: waged labor ● Acumulation of capital to the industrial revolution: gold, plate, resources, new resources and natural products to capitalism Decolonial Thought ● decolonial theory x post colonialism → not the same ● Colonialism: “classic” colonialism: phase when the metropoles (core countries) had the direct control of the colonies states ● Coloniality: geographical distribuction of power which were stablished as the result of the classic colonialism and still exists today organizing the racist division of labor globally ● the myth of the decolonized world ● "white man point zero” → eurocentrism Decolonial Feminism ● Is the concept of "woman" universal? – Queer answer: “no” → based in a post-structuralist, post- modern and essencialist speech. – Decolonial theory: “no” → based on a materialist, marxist, anti-racist and decolonial speech. ● Decolonial Feminism: Womens experiences are different because of the international racist division of labor ● bases of the capitalist oppressions (race, class, sex). Decolonial Feminism ● Colonisation: dehumanization, objetification and feminilization → part of the racialization process which creates racism. ● The "women" are only white women. The racialized women are not "women" but females (different stereotypes for racialized women) ● “Feminization” of racialized men during colonization time → non-rational, emotive, passive, fragile, wild. ● Racialized women → even less rational, wild, erotic, uncontrolable. ● (Christianism) and evangelization → discussing if the racialized people "had a soul" or not. Dandara of Palmares: a black warrior women who fought against slavory in the colonial period of Brazil Decolonial Feminism ● imposition of the capitalist gender system to the colonies → helped to naturalize the gender (sex roles) → capitalist Christian patriarchy becomes the rule ● imposition of heteronormativity in the colonies: the occidental view of homossexuality and lesbianism became norm. ● Mixing of races by rape and the “pocahontas myth” 3. Capitalism of many names: industrial capitalism, state capitalism, capitalism of information 3.1. First industrial phase in Europe (XVIII cent) ● Consolidation of the classes: bourgeoise x proletarian → workers x holders of ways of production ● high exploitation of the labor power → including women and children of working class ● no regulation ● no insurance or safety conditions ● Consolidation of the state ● Liberal Ideology 3.2. Organizing resistance ● Marxism and anarchism → analyses of production: classes ● Workers union → workers demands directed to abstract power (state) ● Fight against child-work ● first “feminist” wave (cent: XIX) – Mainly bourgeois women – Against exhilium in private sphere (right to vote, independence and adulthood in the state) – Internalized motherhood as natural – Supporting female workers and abolition fighters 3.3 Capitalism counterattacks: State Intervention and Fordism (second industrial phase - cent: XIX - XX): ● Fordism: production more efficient → technical advance → no need of women and child work ● Workers rights → women back to exclusive reproduction work (not in all classes) → decrease of exploitation level ● Bourgeouis women as the ideal in all classes: at home, dedicating herself to the household, children and husband ● Man become the wage laborer and the bread-winner ● Reproduction and care work are innate in female nature and acts of love ● State creates schools for the proletarian kids → family is not anymore the educational center → proletarian children educated to be labor power ● Invention of insurance system ● “Social peace” → Nationalism 3.4. Second Wave Feminism ● The personal is political ● gender and sexuality as social construct ● interseccionality as tools for analyzing the 3 classes system of capitalism: race, sex and class ● Separatism ● Criticism of obligatory heterossexuality and heteronormativity ● Lesbian feminism 4. The State counterattacks again: Neoliberalism, Post-structuralism and Identity Politics 4.1. Neoliberalism ● Attacks worker union: class doesnt exist → reinforcement of individuality and identity. ● Every individual is responsible for its own well being ● Liberalism → “the supreme system” ● Fascism and comunism → bad and failed “socialists” dictatorships ● !!!! There is no alternative !!!!! ● No other system is possible → end of history. 4.2. Neoliberalism in Feminism (a third wave “feminism”?) ● sex revolution: prostitution, porn and sadomasochism (bdsm) ● women is not a class ● Biological sex is social constructed (queer) ● gender is identity (queer) ● Sexuality is innate ● Identity politics Discussion :) ● Some suggestion of questions and topic to guide discussion: – Do you have any criticism to the political analysis we brought? – How to keep feminism radical and anticapitalist in Neoliberal times? – How to organize women in the neoliberal era? – How are the lesbian history connected to all this? – Lets talk about decolonial feminism! Addendum Structural oppressions in Capitalism: ● Classes of sex oppression : male x female → productive x reproductive division of work ● Classes of race oppression: white x racialized people → racist division of labor ● Classic marxist classes → bourgeoise x proletarian → workers x holders of ways of production Addendum
Texts and Books Reference
● Der Wert ist der Mann (O valor é o Homem) - Roswitha Scholtz – available on pt (portuguese) and de (german). ● Patriarchy and Commodity Society: Gender without the Body (2009) – Roswitha Scholtz – en (We have not read this book yet but it is the only text from Scholtz that we found in English language. Most part of her work is available in german or portuguese). ● Calyban and the witch - Silvia Federici – es (Espanol), pt, en…. Probably French too. ● Wages against Housework - Silvia Federici – en (maybe other languages too) ● The power of women and the subversion of the community - Mariarosa Dalla Costa & Selma James – en (other languages?) ● Toward a decolonial Feminism - María Lugones – es, en ● Colonidad y Género - María Lugones – es, en. ● Identidades essencialistas o construcción de identidades políticas - Ochy Curiel – es ● La Nación Heterosexual – Ochy Curiel – es (maybe also in english?) ● Superando la interseccionalidad de categorias por la construcción de un proyecto político feminista radical - Ochy Curiel – es. ● Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America - Aníbal Quijano (Peruan male author – clear exposition and discussion of decolonial thought ideias) – en, es. ● If you have suggestions of texts and books to us, please send us by the email in the first page. We would love to receive suggestions.