In this episode we dig into some early writings by the incomparable black radical feminist and communist Angela Davis. We reflect on some of the contradictions involved in the transformation of women’s labor in the development of patriarchal capitalism and the latent potentials for the emancipated life in common that these developments nevertheless carry within themselves. We talk about the radical potential of industrializing housework, discuss strategies for the formation of effective solidarity, and—as usual—find a way to drag American suburbia. Get out there and contest capitalist power at the point of production! Those potentialities won’t actualize themselves, after all.

This is just a short clip from the full episode, which is available to our subscribers on Patreon:

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References:

Angela Y. Davis, "Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation," in The Black Feminist Reader, eds. Joy James and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (Malden: Blackwell, 2000)

Angela Y. Davis, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective”, in Women, Race, and Class (New York: Random House, 1983)

Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com