Why ecosocialism is not enough: ecofeminist reflections on another value form

Abstract

In the context of contemporary social movement politics, the paper offers an ecofeminist argument that globalisation should be analysed as the effect of a single entangled system, a unity of ‘patriarchal-colonial-capitalist’ practices. On this basis, the author reflects on the emergence of time dissociation and spatialised abstraction as constitutive of the globally dominant patriarchal episteme; ‘a libidinal rift’ projected in the dualisms of Masculine vs Feminine, North vs South, Production vs Reproduction, Humanity vs Nature. With reference to feminist thinkers from several traditions, the author speculates on the origins of this exploitive ‘1/0 imaginary’ wherein the distinction between production versus reproduction is pivotal. A case is made that to build movement unity in a time of ecological crisis, ecosocialists should recognise dissociated constructs as appear in Marxist productivism and orient their politics around the reproduction of Life- on-Earth. The ‘meta-industrial labours’ of household care-giving and indigenous subsistence economies exemplify this holistic, time sensitive attunement to living processes. An ‘embodied materialism’ would replace the Left focus on use and exchange value with a regenerative eco-centric value form, a ‘meta-value’.