Doing the Unspeakable: Material Participation in Reprod-estr-uctive Labour

Abstract

This article examines everyday labours of life-maintenance – cooking, cleaning, child-rearing – for what they tell us about participation in a moment of environmental devastation. Building on feminist theories of reproductive labour, I use the term reprod-estr-uctive labour to explore a contemporary tension: how to reproduce life in a dying world? What forms of participation is this tension producing? This article is based on qualitative work with French families and weaves together: (eco)feminist theories of reproductive labour and care work, ethics of care, (Feminist) Science and Technology Studies, theories of environmental and epistemic justice, (Rancièrian) critique of pedagogy, and ecological thinking. It argues that reprod-estr-uctive labour offers speechless participation for speechless times. Reprod-estr-uctive labour allows a space for material participation which is particularly worthy of attention in a moment where words seem to fail us. How can we possibly talk about it (climate changing, species dying, oceans rising)? In the impossibility of expressing concern, doing care remains. The article contextualises material participation in a logocentric political regime which predominantly situates participation in public-oriented discourse. Yet having no words for it does not mean not caring about/for it. This article argues that the environmental situation accentuates two problems with logocentric politics: first, it calls us to the materiality of our Earthly footing, which makes ever-more problematic the disregard for unspoken, material, life-tending labours; second, it produces a moment of epistemic instability that questions the very possibility of an expert metadiscourse on the catastrophe. Attention to the material everyday can alert us to participation done in gendered, classed, and raced ways. This has the potential of decluttering our democratic imagination. It can help us move past dichotomies that pit those who care about the environment against those who do not, by reminding us that some who might not express audible concern can nevertheless care.