Seeing with the Pandemic: Social Reproduction in the Spotlight

492 Feminist Studies 47, no. 3. © 2021 by Studies, Inc. Leslie Salzinger Seeing with the Pandemic: Social Reproduction in Spotlight The COVID-19 pandemic has inverted capitalism’s normal visibilities, bringing what were negative spaces to fore and throwing work of social reproduction into stark relief. Decades neoliberal governance have scrapped state support for care increased pressures on families where every adult is working pay. In response, reproductive labor been commodified racialized at scale, those who nourish others, whether unwaged or waged, left holding bag society as a whole. virus’s incursion thrown harsh light this non-system. From New York Times Twitter grocery lines, both pundits private citizens begun take note it takes make sustain human life well unfreedom perform that labor. But even appreciation washes through, workers are increasingly stepping out say garlands not enough.1 This emergent public reckoning comes heels an extended scholarly rethinking capitalism, growing group scholars argue capitalism always already embedded gendered 1. Karleigh Frisbie Brogan, “Calling Me Hero Only Makes You Feel Better,” Atlantic, April 18, 2020. 493 relations extraction expropriation.2 Especially generative Karl Marx’s remarkable historical account origins process he dubbed “primitive accumulation.”3 Intent forestalling moralistic justifications system’s origins, Marx argued elites used combination land expropriation violent vagrancy policing produce starter capital “free labor” needed bring life. Since Rosa Luxemburg, expanded challenge more abstract teleological formulations contained other parts larger oeuvre.4 Rather than see primitive accumulation focused exclusively domestic processes ownership , subsequent theorists pointed transnational, colonial, characterized its emergence, along persistence these putatively time-limited throughout existence.5 Prompted deep inequities neoliberalism, David Harvey present, fact, best understood new episode accumulation, which names “accumulation dispossession.”6 These rereadings suggest national never exhausted range power under relationships between structures historically contingent . elegant notwithstanding, exploitation operated from outset bed racialized, 2. See especially Silvia Federici, Caliban Witch: Women, Body Primitive Accumulation (New York: Autonomedia, 2004); Maria Mies, Patriarchy World Scale (London: Zed Books, 1986); Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: Making Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University North Carolina Press, 2000); Nikhil Pal Singh, “On Race, Violence, So-Called Accumulation,” Text 34, 3 (September 2016): 27–50. Marx, “Primitive Accumulation” Capital: A Critique Political Economy vol. 1 8 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1867; Vintage, 1977). 4. Capital, trans. Agnes Schwarzschild (1913; Routledge, 2003). 5. For illuminating reanalysis Robert Nichols Theft Is Property! Dispossession Critical Theory (Durham, NC: Duke 2019). 6. Harvey, “Neoliberalism Creative Destruction,” Annals American Academy Science 610 (March 2007): 22–44. 494 relations, themselves reconfigured, solidified, sustained interactions. distinct understanding system throws present. I will here constitutively one arena continues operate within fundamental structural element itself. production people vital unpaid, underpaid, formally unrecognized makes all rest possible. It...