AUT: Re: Fortunati

["Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chris

Here are a couple of quotes that you might like to comment on. The first one, from page 39, seems to me to be quite unambiguous:

"... male/female inequality, far from being a relic of barbarism, is inherent, inborn and necessary for the functioning of the capitalist mode of production. Under capitalism, men and women cannot be exploited equally; capitalist society is built upon the inequalities of power between and within the class."

This next one, on prostitution from p. 44-45, is more open to interpretation but certainly contains the idea of prostitution as a threat to capital as I mentioned earlier:

"The division in the female job market between prostitute and non-prostitute is thus blurring. Entering and leaving the two markets has become far easier than in the past, and prostitution has risen above capital's optimum levels. The rise in prostitution, coupled with women's increased absenteeism from housework, is dangerously changing the face of male worker's consumption, where his consumption of housework should not only be complementary but also fundamental to his consumption of prostitution work, and vice versa. In response capital has intensified its efforts to regain its quantitative control over the supply of prostitution work. The wave of repression of prostitutes is in reality capital's attempt to re-establish the complementary aspects of the exchange, and to once more place prostitution work in a secondary position to housework in terms of the male worker's quantitative consumption of it."

Regards
Tahir

>>> cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 08/22/02 05:29PM >>>
Hey Tahir,

Long time no hear.  I just read the book a few weeks ago and walked away
with a completely different take.  I did not find her to believe that the
family had to take one form at all.  Of course, I just read Mariarosa Dalla
Costa and Selma James' Women and the Subversion of the Community, which took
that up, so maybe I am mixing them up, but I don't think so.  Nor did I see
Fortunadi as saying that prostitution posed any kind of threat to capital,
but that it was the other side of the process of reproduction of labor, pure
sexual reproduction in a near-wage form.

Now, alternative lifestyles might be a threat to capital, as a form of
social struggle, in so far as they fail to ensure reproduction.  This is
part of the implicit and explicit hostility to homosexuality, though capital
is most certainly finding ways to adjust, in part because gays and lesbians
have forced the situation, in part because bourgeois sexual relations are so
solidly entrenched.  I think that attempts at alternative lifestyles form
part of the web of continuous class struggle, and are therefore
contradictory.  But then again it depends on what you mean by 'alternative
lifestyles', too.  I assume you are including co-op housing, different
family types, etc.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 7:19 AM
Subject: AUT: Fortunati


> I've been reading the Fortunati book, Arcane of Reproduction, and I
wondered if anyone else has been doing likewise recently. Obviously this is
an essential work in understanding gender, but I must say that I've
experienced a bit of disappointment as I've been proceeding with it. I'm
almost finished now with a careful reading of the book and I wanted to make
a couple of quick critical comments. It seems to me that the author
seriously overstates the functionality of the family and its gender
relations for capital. She would like to show that alternative lifestyles,
prostitution, etc. are somehow threatening to capital. I started out as
being fairly sympathetic to this sort of idea and became less and less
convinced the more I read. I am more and more seeing these different
positions, conservative pro-family and progressive pro-choice (in the matter
of lifestyle and sexuality), as being a conflict internal to capital and
perhaps even equally functional for capital. Am I wrong? Comments needed.
> Cheers
> Tahir
>
>
>
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