Contribution short abstract:

Domination and exploitation arise as different and sequential critical focuses in feminist Western canon. The talk will take the perspective of valorization to investigate the interplay of the discursive and economic dimensions.

Contribution long abstract:

Between the 1970s and 1980s, there is a tension between feminisms that emphasise power relationships and/or discursive orders to highlight a woman's specific place in production and those that emphasise power relationships and/or discursive orders to define her social and cultural position. The relevance of this debate and its political options to contemporary analysis stems from the shift towards the productivity of reproductive activities, which changes both the concept of labour and the resulting forms of exploitation, as well as the dimensions on which transformation and liberation operate. Assuming the valorisation perspective delineates a dynamic field that fosters the interaction between these two tendencies: it is only through relational and linguistic work of self-consciousness that it is possible to grasp the conditions of exploitation; and together, only by putting the actual material conditions of life into words can analysis have transforming force.