Against economy-culture dualism

An Argument From Raced Economies

Bibliographic Data

ID4955893
AuthorsJessica Kaplan (0000-0001-7846-4006, University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume22
Issue3
Pages381-403
Publication date2021-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700120975699
OpenAlexW3110967738
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited35

In this article, I argue that a mistaken economy-culture dualism underlies the pitting of identity politics against class. I propose we be 'non-dualists' instead, viewing economic distributions and cultural representations as importantly co-constitutive, since this non-dualism lets us best theorise the intersections of injustices like class and race. I argue that the most sophisticated dualist attempt to transcend class versus identity debates - Nancy Fraser's 'perspectival dualism' - inadvertently instantiates 'methodological whiteness' and struggles to illuminate the intersections of race and class, overlooking how culturally specific representations and understandings importantly constitute economic structures and distributions. Jodi Dean's contemporary restaging of the class versus identity debate, I suggest, repeats some of Fraser's dualist missteps. To end, I propose a non-dualist approach which understands the economy as an ideological objectification of certain practices - an objectification which naturalises relations of raced, classed and gendered domination. Building on social reproduction currents of thought, I suggest a counter-hegemonic understanding of the economy - one informed by anti-racist, feminist and socialist rethinkings of what constitutes labour and who constitutes the 'public' of the economy's imaginaries of public value

Aesthetics · Dualism · Epistemology · Essentialism · Hegemony · Ideology · Objectification · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Studies · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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