Dismantling Capital and Turning to Activism: Prospects of Radical Care in Feminist Legal Theory
*This essay was a submitted assignment in fulfilment of my Master’s at SOAS.
The prospect of care speaks to the necessary but often invisible work that goes on in private. In response to widespread burnout, global and state socio-political precarity, as well as the rising urgency of activist work – care is crucial. Moreover, care is also necessary to meet the demands of capitalist labour work. Perhaps intuitively, the first image that comes to mind when we think of ‘care’ might be the mother figure, who tends to the domestic sphere by nurturing and feeding her community, an inherently ‘feminine’ mode of labour. An emerging discourse of care appears in two strands, summarised by Hobart and Kneese, and Horn respectively: ‘care’ as “popularly associated with self-optimisation, or a way of preparing individuals for increased productivity in demanding [capitalist] workplaces,” or in activist groups, providing “more structured, organisational responses to a movement’s demands for support in sustaining the collective care that keeps its activists – and its political agenda – buoyant.” In both strands of discourse, though ideologically contrasting, a focus on the prospect of care aims to make visible the individual care work necessary for its respective wider political agendas.
This essay will analyse the potentiality and use of ‘care’; it will discuss how feminist legal theory can aid in prospects of radical care within spheres of activism, tracing how legal forms of stringency and logic have traditionally regulated access to capitalist forms of care (medicine, mental health resources, wellness and leisure sites, etc.) according to patriarchal and capitalist ideals. If legal subjectivity determines the care one is able to access, the law thus upholds these patriarchal and capitalist structures of labour. Where traditional law relies on quantitative evidence and is immovable in its reasoning, feminist legal theory aims to allow space and empathy for the intangible nuances and needs present in lived experience. If activism is central to prospects of social and legal change, feminist legal theory and activism certainly share a common goal. Thus, feminist legal theory is crucial to the dismantling of traditional labour relations, and as a result, creating space for ‘care’ and alternative kinship structures. First, this essay will discuss how the law upholds capitalist labour relations through an analysis of family law, demonstrating care is inseparable from systemic inequality and power structures. Second, it will discuss how care is leveraged in self-care movements to forward the labour relations of capitalist society. Lastly, it will discuss how feminist legal writing and activism propels the prospect of radical care, a beacon of hope to “enduring precarious worlds”.
The family: reproducing a productive labourer
In capitalist structures, the family is foundational to creating productive labourers but also ensuring reproductive futurity. This is further solidified by family law through its exclusive recognition of heteronormative family ideals. Though problematic in its logic, this structuring thus considers queer beings as less productive in terms of capital production. Not coincidentally, these beings are also mostly rendered invisible in the eyes of the law. Thus, it is not simply the law’s exclusion of these bodies, but an exclusion on the basis of their perceived value in producing capitalist labour.
Furthermore, the use of identity as an organising structure is a concept enmeshed in historical and cultural memory. In colonial times, identities of sexuality and gender were used to organise and exert control over indigenous people. The shuffling of identities into the binary of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is echoed in Hamzić’s analysis, that the “societal organisation of one’s place and these modalities of desire” require “clustering and crude organisation.” This rigid and utilitarian stance on identities of gender and sexuality feel hauntingly reminiscent within contemporary governances of labour structures. In contrast to the inherently ‘feminine’ care work, these organising structures place themselves in direct opposition, a decidedly ‘masculine’ approach. Lamble argues ideas of identity politics as organisation trickle down to contemporary understandings of categorisation, stating “sex, gender and sexuality are not discrete categories, but are inextricably bound up with one another, each concept relying on the others for its logic.”
It is widely known that queer families will face more challenges than heterosexual couples in obtaining family and marriage legal status. In dismantling legal structures to create space for alternative kinship structures, queer families directly reveal the heteronormative centre in traditional notions of “family”. Family law and institutionalised marriage thus contribute to keeping the heteronormative and productive family intact. McCandless and Sheldon analyse the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990 and 2008; they point to the recognition of same-sex couples as a child’s legal parents, but doing so in the same language and format as a male-female marriage. It is an “assimilation to (and extension of) this marital ideal rather than any radically new way of recognising parent-child legal ties.” They argue further that “parallel treatment will deliver unequal results because men and women are not similarly (biologically) situated with regard to reproduction.” This echoes the law’s focus on biological fact and the invisibility of the unique lived experience of queer families, especially their access to resources, amenities and care.
Furthermore, the status of ‘mother’ is exclusively reserved for women who have given birth, while her female partner may be recognised as ‘female parent’. McCandless et al describe this as “a status awarded on grounds which closely parallels those by which men obtain fatherhood,” which demonstrates the persistence of an organising binary to exist. More specifically, the need for a ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ parent. Attempting to ‘make sense’ of queer families by using a language that has historically excluded them is problematic; they will never truly be included in current legal structures in a meaningful way. In a quote below from Auchmuty’s analysis of Wilkinson v. Kitzinger, this demonstrates the challenges of accessing resources if a couple is not recognised under marriage law:
I want to be able to refer to Celia as my wife and have that immediately and unproblematically understood as meaning that she is my life-partner with all the connotations and social consequences that using the term ‘wife’ or ‘husband’ has for a heterosexual couple. I want our marriage to be recognised institutionally by banks, insurance companies, the tax office, and so on.
The value of marriage and family law is still imprinted on the collective psyche, both sentimentally and practically. These capitalist structures thus make it challenging for families to access basic resources and amenities if they are not institutionally recognised by law, and consequently, limiting the care one can access. As such, care is entangled with systemic inequality, leveraged within power structures to ensure productive labour. It is thus usually most accessible to the politically and socially privileged in society. Further, Spade argues “in capitalism, social problems resulting from maldistribution and extraction are seen as individual moral failings of targeted people,” and as such, “care is unevenly distributed and cannot be disentangled from structural racism and inequality.”
Self-care or capital-care?
Kisner points out American citizenship historically revolved around an ability for self-care, moreover, “self-care in America has always required a certain amount of performance: a person has to be able not only to care for herself but to prove to society that she’s doing it.” In contemporary versions of self-care, the widespread social movement speaks to burnout, and has emerged from the “stresses of state crisis, patriarchal violence and economic precarity [that] shape our world.” Today, the self-care movement also encourages participation in forms of care such as modern medical treatments, wellness retreats, and gym memberships. Forlano shares her experience with diabetes, and the relationship she has with medical devices to ‘care’ for it, stating “my care for the pump also reveals the significance of the attachment and intimacy that I feel for these medical things.” She analyses how the “ethics of mutual care and responsibility places the moral burden not only on humans but also on the things that we are entangled with and depend on.”
Care work is often overlooked by legal discourses, due to its intangible and often invisible nature. Yet, care work is essential for social and labour reproduction, making it an apt target for capitalist exploitation and monopolisation. Federici analyses the Wages for Housework campaign, arguing, “by denying housework a wage and transforming it into an act of love, capital has killed many birds with one stone.” Here, care was quickly monopolised by capital society to maximise gain and further its political agenda. Kisner argues the irony of the self-care movement post-Donald Trump’s 2016 election, that it was “powered by straight, affluent white women, who, although apparently feeling a new vulnerability in the wake of the election, are not traditionally the segment of American society in the greatest need of affirmation.” Similar to the movement as appears on social media platforms, it is marked by online personalities advertising various lifestyle or wellness products one might purchase in order to care for oneself. One resonates with self-care campaigns to self-soothe from the cyclical demands of capitalist labour, in turn failing to incite meaningful change to the legal discriminations or systemic violence that led to its need in the first place.
As Hobart et al argues, “self-care is a solution to and a symptom of the social deficits of late capitalism.” However, it is the ‘feminine’ care work that takes place in the private and domestic spheres that propel activist groups forward; the kind that is invisible to the law and unquantifiable in capitalist structures. This second strand of care found its roots in feminist activist groups, a radical reclaiming of the prospect of care. In the words of Sara Ahmed:
Self-care: that can be an act of political warfare. In directing our care towards ourselves we are redirecting care away from its proper objects, we are not caring for those we are supposed to care for; we are not caring for the bodies deemed worth caring about. And that is why in queer, feminist and anti-racist work self-care is about the creation of community, fragile communities, assembled out of the experiences of being shattered. We reassemble ourselves through the ordinary, everyday and often painstaking work of looking after ourselves; looking after each other.
Radical care work in activist projects
Kisner points to a conversation he had with Devin-Norelle, a young black trans man, who uploaded a mostly naked self-portrait. When asked about the photo, Devin-Norelle told Kisner that making self-care public is “informed by resistance towards the forces that tell me that people like me shouldn’t be.” This act of radical care is twofold: as he cares for himself, he also cares for his community. By challenging the notions of self-care that are self-serving and labour driven, Devin-Norelle also mirrors the ‘feminine’ care work that entails caring for the home and the kinship structure.
As we turn to activism, the Black Panther party is credited by many scholars and activists as the first to organise “mutual aid efforts to attract people to movements” and “to build shared analysis of problems as collective rather than individual.” The care efforts of the party stemmed from the observation that “being able to get help with a crisis is often a condition of being able to politically participate.” Consequently, they developed a strategy of care work that would foster the ability to challenge the bounds of capitalism. They did so by providing holistic support to both affected subjects within the community, as well as their activists. Moreover, Spade argues engaging in care work creates solidarity, “that [having] a political analysis of the conditions that produced your crisis also helps break stigma and isolation.”
However, I would like to acknowledge the complexity of the relationship between activist projects (such as mutual aid and NGOs) and capitalist players. It is notable that the reality of activist care work is not without its challenges and risks, especially when the movements are led by those who are already vulnerable. Activist projects and capitalism often depend on each other on the grounds of funding, visibility, or social capital. In the context of NGOs, they are often pressured to place their focus on a singular issue, counter-intuitively aligning with elites instead of communities in need. Spade characterises the marginalisation of care work as “uncompensated feminised labour,” further as “the mystification of law and policy reform,” and the “demobilising liberal mythology of moving hearts and minds that keeps people busy expressing themselves online” which ultimately obstruct the intentions of care work.
In thinking about contemporary feminist legal writing, the discourse of radical care must also address the ways in which care has been entangled and situated within a complex set of power relations itself. According to Horn, the prospect of care is “caught between the exigencies of a precarious labour market that demands our constant participation, yet with minimal protections in return,” stating it is the “persistent non-recognition of the value of social reproductive labour” that keeps us alive “as labourers but also as humans in society.”
Conclusion
In this essay, I have hoped to demonstrate how an analysis of care work has in turn highlighted those who are uncared for, by peeling away the organisational structures of care distribution in capitalist societies and breaking down what makes a subject entitled to care. As Spade argues, “providing for one another through coordinated collective care is radical and generative.” Horn calls for a feminist Africa through radical care work, but it resonates just as deeply when translated to the global feminist movement, “we must continue to consider how the normative political, economic and social structures we live can be reimagined in ways that nourish rather than constrain life, and contribute themselves to sustain healthy, agented collective and individual selves.” Calls such as Horn’s shift the focus of care from the self to the collective - a radical alternative to modern notions of self-care. These calls encourage the use of care to challenge existing structures instead of working within them. In contrast to the harsh masculine labour of capitalist worlds and activism, care work is certainly a crucial feminist response – radical in its softness.
Bibliography
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