Historical Materialism Annual London Conference
November 2014

 

PANEL OUTLINE

Although feminist thought on the left has recently been paying much attention to questions of social reproduction, relevant debates have received scant attention in feminist art history and theory. Yet these debates are of central importance for a re-emerging materialist feminist discourse in the field, as indeed they are central for understanding the ‘survival of contemporary capitalism’, the theme of hm London conference 2014. The panel seeks to host papers that connect the concerns of social reproduction debates with developments in art and related paradigms (for example, curation and theory) from the mid-20th century to the present day. The relatively large chronological span will hopefully permit both a revisiting of debates in the 50s, 60s and 70s and an examination of recent and as yet uncharted conceptualisations, called forth by the transformation of capitalism in its global and biopolitical intensities.  Social reproduction tends to be connected to discussions on the private domestic sphere where the often hidden and typically undervalued work that (mostly) women perform sustains and then replenishes the working population across generations.  This work is therefore at the root of both the systemic exploitation of ‘female’ or feminised labour and the socialisation of humans as labouring subjects. In this panel however we seek to expand the remit of social reproduction practices, as art has been a site of experimentation with ‘emancipated’ human action that nevertheless often plays a key role in reproducing the dominance of capitalism in its ideological and material permutations.  Panel structure: three 20-min papers to be followed by 30-min roundtable with speakers and convenvers. The roundtable is essential in the case as so little work been done on the subject in art history and theory. The roundtable will draw out broader themes and questions across the three papers to lay the ground for further marxis-feminist thinking on social reproduction.

Convened by Angela Dimitrakaki and Kirsten Lloyd

 
ABSTRACTS
 

Social Practice/Social Reproduction

Larne Abse Gogarty (UCL, doctoral candidate)

 

In this paper I consider the recent emphasis on use value in socially engaged art, perhaps best exemplified in Tania Bruguera’s establishment of the Asociación de Arte Útil. I suggest we need to analyse this turn in relation to Marxist feminist theories of social reproduction in order to avoid returning to the moralistic ethics vs aesthetics debate of the 2000s. By thinking through Edith Segal’s dances from the 1930s and Mother Art’s Laundromat works from the 1970s I want to prise open the difference between representing and staging domestic labour as art and the current positioning of social practice art as an arena to affirm reproductive labour. Through this discussion, I hope to push forward the existing critique of social practice as a palliative measure in the face of a decimated welfare system. Austerity measures in Europe and the US have led to the attempted reinforcement of normative family roles with women expected to return to the role of carer as the state withdraws. How can we think the rise of social practice as equivalently centred on social reproduction? Moreover, is there a problematic parallel in the art historical aversion to such practices (though this has recently changed) and the ways in which reproductive labour has often been invisible, not only to capital but to political struggles? What are the politics of affirming or negating the affective and reproductive dimensions of social practice today?

 

 

New Materialisms? Social Reproduction and the Writing of Contemporary Art History

Vicky Horne (Edinburgh, doctoral candidate and Teaching Fellow)

 

The new art histories of the late 1970s, especially Marxist and feminism, expanded the boundaries of the discipline. And yet for a younger generation of art historians, any gains made in the 1970s are threatened to be marginalised as ‘of that moment’. This is a broader issue in the history of art history, where capitalism’s demand for ‘the new’ produces novel trends and approaches rather dialectical explication. The endless ‘turns’ of contemporary art have been resolutely mocked (Larsen 2013). Yet one’s commitment to methodologies and themes may well hinder politically meaningful understandings of a contemporary moment (Pollock 2014).

Arguably, the current ‘contemporary moment’ emerged out of the global economic transformations of 2008, when the Marxian language of ‘economy’, ‘labour’, ‘ideology’ and ‘social reproduction’ noticeably increased in prominence. Indeed, it has been argued that feminism is undergoing a materialistic or even ‘naturalistic turn’ (Gunnerson). But what are these new materialisms, and how is materialist feminist analysis placed in relation to them? More importantly, what would prevent the thawing of this ‘materialist’ moment as yet another ‘turn’ belonging to capitalism’s crisis but not capitalism’s assumed post-crisis condition? In this paper, I will consider if a focus on social reproduction in the writing of contemporary art history can help avert the danger of materialist feminism becoming ‘outmoded’.

 

The Paradoxes of Social Reproduction in Art

Marina Vishmidt (London, independent researcher)

 

The resurgence of social reproduction feminism alerts us to tensions in that tradition, which can be broadly discussed as tensions between affirmation and negation: the valorisation of gendered reproductive activity as a ground for social re-composition versus a rejection of this activity as irrevocably supportive of the exploitative status quo of capital or as ‘abject’. Cinzia Arruzza’s recent book is a succinct recapitulation of these debates, as well as a testimony to the difficulty of their resolution. While contemporary feminist art also finds itself riven by a historical as well as all too current bind between gender affirmation and gender disruption or negation, how do we see art itself behaving as a form of social reproduction? This gives us a new light on the affirmation/negation of gender debate through an example of prima facie ‘useless reproduction’, enabling us to see what political work the category of ‘social reproduction’ is being called upon to do in feminism. I will be focusing on several case studies ranging from 1970s feminist conceptualism to the present to illuminate several aspects of this larger study.