Full Description
Abolitionist Archives, Feminist Futures takes up the work of three iconic feminist thinkers—Angela Davis, Shulamith Firestone, and Donna Haraway—to ask how each author's vision of work, the family, and the carceral state can expand contemporary feminism's ability to structurally analyze social problems. Kathi Weeks examines the archive of this unexpected collection of Marxist feminists whose works are united by their abolitionist approaches, arguing that feminism can gain a broader constituency by taking up anti-capitalist critique and praxis. Across the book's chapters, Weeks recontextualizes well-known feminist texts in a new and original light, bringing their insight from the past into the present and future of abolitionist politics.
Contents
Introduction. Periodizing the Archive 1
1. Structural Pedagogies 29
2. The Vanishing Dialectic: Shulamith Firestone and the Future of the Feminist 1970s 69
3. Systems and Standpoints in and Beyond Donna Haraway's "Manifesto for Cyborgs" 93
4. Archiving the Future 121
5. Angela Y. Davis and Prison Abolitionism as Politics and Method 143
6. The Abolition of the Family: The Most Infamous Feminist Proposal 171
7. Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the Ideologies of Work 191
8. The Lumpenproletariat and Marxist Feminist Political Theory 215
Acknowledgments 235
Notes 237
References 247
Index