Marx, Irigaray, and the politics of reproduction

Differences. 1994;6(1):98-128.

Abstract

PIP: Both the concept and practice of reproduction have been newly configured, with reproductive labor assuming an abstract value as social labor and women around the globe work to produce baby commodities which enter the market along with other domestic and imported products. This situation dictates that surrogacy not be treated as an aberration. One must instead reconceptualize the maternal body as a reproductive resource and rethink the relationship between mother and fetus. This paper attempts to develop a materialist analysis of reproductive labor by offering a strategy for renarrativizing the mother. It briefly explains what feminists involved in the pro-abortion movement could gain by incorporating a Marxist understanding of reproductive labor as productive in the strictest sense, and then suggests, through an analysis of the work of Luce Irigaray, the simultaneous need for a self-reflexive renarrativization of the maternal body which may account for women's role as reproductive laborers. Sections are on reproduction, maternal as mimetic matrix, and reproductive ethics and sexual rights.

MeSH terms

  • Behavior
  • Communism*
  • Economics
  • Employment*
  • Health Workforce
  • Political Systems
  • Reproduction*
  • Social Behavior
  • Socialism