Empire's Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper

The historiography of social reproduction and reproductive labor

“…The full-scale ascendancy of neoliberalism since the time of Davis's writing in Women, Race, and Class has further complicated the matter. For reasons laid out in Cooper (2017), Gonzalez (2021) and Gonzalez et al (2019), I do not see neoliberalism as antithetical to the family. By the same token, it is clear that textured, context-specific analyses are necessary in order to produce analyses of reproduction and the family that do not reify the family as a universal category.…”

“…Using Apartheid South Africa as a case‐study, Davis asserts, “The deliberate dissolution of family life in South Africa could not have been undertaken by the government if it were truly the case that the services performed by women in the home are an essential constituent of wage labor under capitalism… It seems futile to argue that on the basis of capitalism's internal logic, women ought to be paid wages for housework.” The full‐scale ascendancy of neoliberalism since the time of Davis's writing in Women, Race, and Class has further complicated the matter. For reasons laid out in Cooper (2017),Gonzalez (2021) and Gonzalez et al. (2019), I do not see neoliberalism as antithetical to the family.…”