Riot, Strike, Commune: Gendering a Civil War
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Joshua Clover
Abstract
This article departs from Joshua Clover’s historical and theoretical schema that locates riots and strikes within the categories of circulation and production struggles, moving from the categories of capital’s reproduction to the reproduction of the proletariat. Here it offers the commune as the exemplary form of the category of reproduction struggle. The commune is understood not as an intentional community of withdrawal but as something like counter-reproduction, able not just to reproduce itself but to strike at capital as an antagonistic force — striking at the vital exposure of an increasingly circulation-centered capitalism. Crucial examples are encampments against extractive capital such as Standing Rock or the ZAD. The article shows how political sovereignty and economic circulation are entirely entangled, pointing to the ways that social movements have looked upon them as separate domains. Therefore, the commune is a process at the crux of the political and the economic, overcoming the tendency to prefer one or the other. Finally, the article discusses the gendered aspect of the sphere of reproduction that makes possible the double confrontation of counter-reproduction.
References
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© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editors’ Forum
- Introduction: The Global Riot
- The Feminist Strike as Threshold
- Riot, Strike, Commune: Gendering a Civil War
- Labor, Debt, and Reproduction: The Feminist Strike as a Revolution of Everyday Life
- “We Were Like Slaves, All Women. But We Won’t Come Back.” On the Rebellions Sparked by the Disappearance of the Hacienda in an Afro-Ecuadorian Community
- Queering the Protest’s Temporalities
- Collective Violence and Politics in Argentina
- Trans-border Friendships and Strategic Inclinations: Some Insights on the Molecular Emergence of Subversion in Chile
- Protest and the City: On Object, Affect and Vulnerability
- Crossed Wires in the Motor City: A Genealogy and Analysis of the 1967 Riots and the 1968 Strike Wave in Detroit
- Containing the Surplus Rebellion: Prison Strike/Prison Riot
- Review Essay
- Sven Beckert and Dominic Sachsenmaier eds. Global History, Globally: Research and Practice around the World; John Harrison and Michael Hoyler eds. Doing Global Urban Research; Eve Darian-Smith and Philip McCarty. The Global Turn: Theories, Research Designs, and Methods for Global Studies
- Book Reviews
- Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines
- The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editors’ Forum
- Introduction: The Global Riot
- The Feminist Strike as Threshold
- Riot, Strike, Commune: Gendering a Civil War
- Labor, Debt, and Reproduction: The Feminist Strike as a Revolution of Everyday Life
- “We Were Like Slaves, All Women. But We Won’t Come Back.” On the Rebellions Sparked by the Disappearance of the Hacienda in an Afro-Ecuadorian Community
- Queering the Protest’s Temporalities
- Collective Violence and Politics in Argentina
- Trans-border Friendships and Strategic Inclinations: Some Insights on the Molecular Emergence of Subversion in Chile
- Protest and the City: On Object, Affect and Vulnerability
- Crossed Wires in the Motor City: A Genealogy and Analysis of the 1967 Riots and the 1968 Strike Wave in Detroit
- Containing the Surplus Rebellion: Prison Strike/Prison Riot
- Review Essay
- Sven Beckert and Dominic Sachsenmaier eds. Global History, Globally: Research and Practice around the World; John Harrison and Michael Hoyler eds. Doing Global Urban Research; Eve Darian-Smith and Philip McCarty. The Global Turn: Theories, Research Designs, and Methods for Global Studies
- Book Reviews
- Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines
- The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering
