SD48 Alessandra Mezzadri "The Scalation of Struggles: Social Reproduction and Formal Subsumption"

The Escalation of Struggles: Social Reproduction & Formal Subsumption Alessandra Mezzadri discusses how formal subsumption can be understood through the diverse and rich perspectives of social reproduction, drawing in particular on the Italian Marxist Feminist tradition, to which the concept of the social factory owes a great deal. Through a feminist reading of her fieldwork in India, and in dialogue with the work of Jairus Banaji, she shows how the Global South reveals the ways in which formal subsumption continues to function through multiple, heterogeneous forms of labour. Rather than understanding these processes as producing paralysis and political powerlessness, she suggests that they may also open up new forms of antagonism, creating the conditions for the escalation of new struggles.