Automated Care in a Domestic Space

Reproductive Futurism in Hao Jingfang's 'The Question of Love

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2996802
AutoresY Wang (0000-0002-4822-6514, Washington University in St. Louis, autor correspondente), Yihan Lulu Wang (0009-0002-1872-2952)
Ano2025
Volume9
Fascículo2
Páginas22
Data de publicação2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoFeminist Encounters A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2468-4414 • E-ISSN: 2468-4414
EditoraLectito Publications (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.20897/femenc/16780
OpenAlexW4413872997
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas29

This article is a feminist reading of Hao Jingfang's science fiction story 'The Question of Love' (2017) which invites a dialogue between enduring feminist agendas and neoliberal conditions in contemporary China. The story offers near-future techno-imaginaries of a Chinese urban elite's household, and it problematises the privatisation of labour's social reproduction via techno-automation, especially the power relation of the non-caring subject-position over the caring subject-position. The article starts with a theoretical discussion of childcare, love, and automation of housework as they pertain to social reproduction theory. The origin and development of this feminist genealogy is introduced, followed by a historical contextualisation of how social reproduction is perceived and organised in People's Republic of China, differentiating between the socialist era and the post-socialist era, and between the rural residents and urban dwellers. The last section offers a textual analysis of Hao's story about love and care, interrogating the techno-othering of caregiving and the prescription of a productivist imperative through feeling rules. The reading reveals the story's critical unmaking of the patriarchal-corporate alliance and their underlying productivist imperative

Psychoanalysis · Space (punctuation) · Chinese history and philosophy · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy · Psychology · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction