Al Owski > Recent Status Updates

“In Mariarosa Dalla Costa's words, the heterosexual woman must try to emulate the image of the "heroic mother and happy wife" whose sexual identity is pure sublimation, whose function is essentially that of receptacle for other people's emotional expression, who is the cushion of the familial antagonism'. Women are required to perform happiness while simultaneously being on the receiving end of negative emotions...”

“According to Federici, women are made to service men 'physically, emotionally, and sexually, to raise his children, mend his socks, patch up his ego when it is crushed by the work and the social relations (which are relations of loneliness) that capital has reserved for him'. Emotional reproduction is a central condition for the continuation of capitalist labour relations, as it seeks to compensate for the harms...”

“This production of other people's status means that women's emotional labour also reproduces their own lack of status. The exploitation of women's capacities for work continually reinforces their subordonated position.”

“Women tend to do more emotional labour than men, and they generally do it in a specifically feminised way. Feminised forms of emotional labour often involve smiling, showing deference, and smoothing over any upset feelings. Women have a weaker socio-economic position in society, and are socialised to privilege the emotional needs of others over their own.”

“It is the legitimacy of normative heterosexuality, compared to sexual relations outside the heterosexual work ethic, that binds women to their work. It offers the emotional reward of being a properly gendered subject. This legitimacy produces emotional investment in the institution of heterosexual monogamy, which, as Lauren Berlant suggests, maintains the association between the good life and heterosexuality.”

“Love becomes the reward for desiring the right things - desiring a life based on gendered forms of labour and heterosexual complementarity.”

“it is considered natural that men consume love, whereas women's generous personalities are productive of love. The construction of women as generous also implies that for women, love is its own reward — to perform the work of love is a sufficient source of pleasure, so that no other remuneration is needed.”

“The emotional labour that women perform — by creating niceness and emotional attachments to a particular form of life — is a very effective way of ensuring the reproduction of society as we know it. We come to desire a certain way of life and the forms of labour that come with it, even if the labour itself feels bad.”

“The suburban family home becomes a symbol of the good life, and we invest emotionally in achieving it.”

“The labour of creating good feeling is seen as a natural aspect of women's personalities. This work is also the work of creating an emotional investment in good feeling itself — taking pleasure in niceness and learning to desire it. In that way, creating good feeling becomes a way of creating an emotional investment in the good life — normative ideals for what a life should look like.”

“Women's labour, especially that which is sexual or maternal, is conflated with their bodies and constructed as a natural instinct. This naturalisation is essential for the capitalist use of reproductive labour.... reproductive labour is turned into a natural quality of certain bodies ... If it is not work, it is worthless economically, but also natural and therefore good.”

“Women's naturalised skill in managing the emotional needs of others seems to reduce their own capacity for independence and sovereignty. The labour of care becomes read as an expression of the personality of the carer, inverting the dependency of others on this labour. According to Fraser and Gordon, 'The persons of female nurturers became saturated with the dependency of those for whom they care.”

“Despite this skilled performance of feminised emotional labour across private and public spheres, femininity is seen as fundamentally passive.”

“Federici and Nicole Cox write that a woman has to work on her body to reproduce her own labour power, and 'women well know the tyranny of this task, for a pretty dress and hairdo are conditions for their getting the job, whether on the marriage market or on the wage labor market' ”

“This natural niceness depends on women's physical presentation of normative femininity. Much of women's consumption is often best conceived of as working on the body rather than a result of leisure time. The gendered body, while appearing as a natural given, is in fact the result of labour.... The feminised body is part of the product of gendered labour.”

“To achieve critical consciousness of the facts that it is necessary to be the "owner of one's own labor," that labor "constitutes part of the human person," and that "a human being can neither be sold nor can he sell himself" is to go a step beyond the deception of palliative solutions. It is to engage in authentic transformation of reality in order, by humanizing that reality, to humanize women and men.”

“every authentic revolution is a cultural revolution”

“The essential elements of witness... include: consistency between words and actions; boldness...to confront existence as a permanent risk; radicalization (not sectarianism) leading... to increasing action; courage to love (which, far from being accommodation to an unjust world, is rather the transformation of that world in behalf of the increasing liberation of humankind); and faith in the people...”

“Organization is not only directly linked to unity, but is a natural development of that unity...pursuit of unity is necessarily also an attempt to organize the people, requiring witness to the fact that the struggle for liberation is a common task. This constant, humble, and courageous witness emerging from cooperation in a shared effort—the liberation of women and men—avoids the danger of anti-dialogical control.”

“The individual is divided between an identical past and present, and a future without hope. He or she is a person who does not perceive himself or herself as becoming; hence cannot have a future to be built in unity with others.”

“Further, domination is itself objectively divisive. It maintains the oppressed I in a position of "adhesion” to a reality which seems all- powerful and overwhelming, and then alienates by presenting mysterious forces to explain this power. ...the mysterious forces which are regarded as responsible for a reality about which nothing can be done.”

“The unity of the elite derives from its antagonism with the people; the unity of the revolutionary leadership group grows out of communion with the (united) people.”

“The revolution loves and creates life; and in order to create life it may be obliged to prevent some men from circumscribing life. In addition to the life-death cycle basic to nature, there is almost an unnatural living death: life which is denied its fullness.”

“In dialogical theory, at no stage can revolutionary action forgo communion with the people. Communion in turn elicits cooperation, which brings leaders and people to the fusion described by Guevara. This fusion can exist only if revolutionary action is really human, empathetic, loving, communicative, and humble, in order to be liberating.”

“It was, then, in dialogue with the peasants that Guevara's revolutionary praxis became definitive. What Guevara did not say, perhaps due to humility, is that it was his own humility and capacity to love that made possible his communion with the people.”

“As a result of daily contact with these people and their problems we became firmly convinced of the need for a complete change in the life of our people. The idea of an agrarian reform became crystal-clear. Communion with the people ceased to be a mere theory, to become an integral part of ourselves.” (Guevara)

“Dialogue does not impose, does not manipulate, does not domesticate, does not sloganize.”

“Cooperation, as a characteristic of dialogical action which occurs only among Subjects... can only be achieved through communication. Dialogue, as essential communication, must underlie any cooperation. In the theory of dialogical action, there is no place for conquering the people on behalf of the revolutionary cause, but only for gaining their adherence.”

“leaders—in spite of their important, fundamental, and indispensable role—do not own the people and have no right to steer the people blindly towards their salvation. Such a salvation would be a mere gift from the leaders to the people-a breaking of the dialogical bond between them, and a reducing of the people from co-authors of liberating action into the objects of this action.”

“In the theory of anti-dialogical action, conquest (as its primary characteristic) involves a Subject who conquers another person and transforms her or him into a "thing." In the dialogical theory of action, Subjects meet in cooperation in order to transform the world.”