Final Exam Flashcards
Alienated Labour
separated from labour
- created private property and legitimizes it as a commodity to be sold to renter
4 types of alienation
from the product
from work activity
from others
from humanity
The proletariat
the working class sells their labour to live and don’t own means of production
The bourgeois
owns means of production, business owners, factories with miserable conditions, ruling class/elite
Proletarian revolution
represents the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist system by working class
-would result in classless society based on common ownership of the means of production therefore ending exploitation
Class antagonism
-bourgeois created proletariat
-inherent and inevitable in capitalism
-tensions between both sides
-they have conflicting interests
-this would lead to revolution
-capitalism would destroy itself because of this
Capitalism
based on reward system and hard work and serves interests of the wealthy and powerful
Marx’s analysis of capitalism
historical materialism, class antagonisms, surplus value, and alienated labour
Historical materialism
social organization by production and exchange
- economic relations move history and struggle between rich and poor
-governed by class struggle
Surplus value
-secret to capitalism
-worker doesnt get entire value
-desires manipulated by surplus value/the market
Surplus labour
amount of labour workers perform beyond what is necessary for surplus value they do not earn
Capitalism as accumulation at one pole and misery at the other
bourgeois: accumulate $
proletariat: accumulate misery
2 phases of revolution
- Proletariat overthrow bourgeois and become a dictatorship temporary because eventually the state would have no purpose if there is no wealth
- Bourgeois give in because they would have accepted their new system as better
Manichean world
- 2 species, two worlds
-divided by race
-colonists fear freedom of colonized
-violence is inevitable
-colonial world makes colonized envious
History of society
history of class struggles
Gender blindness of marx
saw women as victims, not subjects and ignores unpaid labour of reproductive labour
Capitalist principle
work first, then get paid
The debt economy
primary tool for current capitalist exploitation
How debt operates
-creates new class relation
-individualizes mechanism of exploitation
-hides exploitation
-illusion of self-investment
-causes shame, guilt, anxiety
Microfinance
-women borrowers
-promoted to alleviate poverty for poor and women
-allows exploitation, shame is self-managed
-it is a trap that erodes solidarity and makes capitalism hard to resist
Student Debt crisis
-parallel to microfinance
-individualization of debt
-power relations are invisible
Financialization of everyday life
more people forced to borrow from banks, debt drives this
Frederici’s response
-working class not united due to colonialism - race/gender divides
-reproductive labour maintains system
-debt economy and foundation of everyday life
-marx ignores women and sees them as victims rather than subjects
-responsibility to please men
-unwaged not valued
Capitalist perspective of women
sees them as property and uses them for the transmission of private property
Marx’s blindspot
unwaged labour, he only focused on waged labour
Debt’s design
as a standard condition of working-class conditions
Self-empowerment
is hard and requires the acknowledgement of pain from the enemy and the absence of this limits black sisterhood
Self-love
is hard to mother themselves and limits black sisterhood because BW cannot love others until they love themselves
Pain
event, experience, and must be recognized to be changed
Hatred
emotional habit/attitude that is purely negative and destroys. it is internalized by BW from the White people
Anger as a survival strategy
BW internalize hatred and anger from whites to oppress each other this legacy is based on what was needed for survival
anger becomes invisible
Anger
-passion of displeasure that may be excessive or misplaced but not always harmful
-does not destroy but can help clarify differences
intersectionality
-no hierarchy of oppression
-interlocking systems of oppression
-Lorde: black and lesbian
Solidarity
-yearn for collective without hate
De beauvoir
- femininity is in danger
-being a man is obvious
-woman reduced to anatomy
-woman does not see herself without man
muthos
authority - defines masculinity
patriarchy as unique
- women are not minorities
- women do not have their own history so they have no solidarity
-women are too tied to men to disconnect from them because their loyalty is to the man and protecting their perception to men
structural basis of patriarchy
- women as other
- men as the default
- asymmetric relationship
- subordination for women, domination for men
Why patriarchy persists
- powerful due to male sovereignty
- women consent to it
- man assume privilege as natural (entitlement)
- reinforcement of inferiority
- women are complicit by agreeing to system and living through men within their relationships
Gender blindness
problematic, must recognize sex due to its visibility
- women experience is not equal to manhood
Patriarchy as profitable
- unpaid labour
- men escape vulnerability
Women as “other”
she submits to power and does not define herself therefore staying stagnant
Beard on the public voice of women
-public speaking as exclusive to men
-gendered speaking
-solution: go back to why spoken authority is framed as masculine
-silencing is why women as dissociated from power
Miss Triggs question
how to be noticed or heard
redefining power (Beard)
- restate women as inside power not about reform
Medusa myth
assaulted, could turn anyone to stone
Faultlines of patriarchy
gendered public speaking
-must restate women
-reform cant fit women into a male structure
Is revolutionary violence justifiable?
-self-defence (counter violence)
-irreconciable sides so one must destroy tthe other
-can’t reason with colonist, so only violence is possible
objections: cycles of violence, victims become perpetrators, and might not succeed
colonized
- wants freedom in future
- human again through violence
- unprivileged
- always on guard because they are always presumed guilty
- dreams of freedom and this is what gives them freedom at night
colonist
- fear future for colonized
-privileged
Making of the colonized subject
- fabricated by colonists
- Black people exist in related to whites and are reduced to objects or animals
Decolonization
substitution of one species on mankind by another
agenda for disorder
creation of new man
Colonized recognition as man
When they see themselves as equal their fear turns to rage and they become free by exercising liberation through violence that rids them of their inferiority complex
Indigenous men
took on colonizer’s belief and continue to inflict violence as a result
Dilemma of intersectional domination
-patriarchy and colonialism
-rationalizing violence of colonialism denies agency and condones colonizers
-consequence of colonialism is patriarchy and they operate together
Colonial strategy of violence against women
women are excluded from self-determination and self-governance discussions
-must dismantle patriarchal power relations
-colonists see women as reproduction and that is it
Colonial strategy
- construct as deviant (hypersexualized) to justify colonialism
- expect them to replicate victorian family
Indigenous women as killable
for representing land, reproduction and indigeniety
Violence against Indigenous women in canada
systemic and private
-minimal data
-victimized by the state
systemic- indian act
Indigenous womens sovereignty
over their bodies cant be separated from claims to indigenous sovereignty claims for land rights
Indigenous self-determination
measured by eliminating violence against women, failure to address leads to a failure of collective self-determination
Resistance
Marx: mass revolution to end class (utopian) he saw resistance of mass rev.
Arendt: solidarity as resistance, power from collective
Lorde: self-empowerment as resistance
Spectacle of resistance
not always productive, can be performative
