My aim in this paper is to introduce a theory of affective labor as byproductive, a concept I develop through analysis of the phenomenology of various affective labor practices in dialog with feminist scholarship, both on gendered and racialized labor, and on affect and emotion. I motivate my theory in the context of literature on affective and emotional labor in philosophy and the social sciences, engaging the post-Marxist literature on affective and immaterial labor and emphasizing feminist critiques. I argue that (...) affective labor is not only the work of producing affects for others to consume or the reproductive work that rejuvenates and sustains labor power and social life, but also the work of metabolizing waste affects and affective byproducts. Thus, byproductive labor is a neologism I develop to bring into view an affective economy and indeed a political economy of affects to the side of the distinction between productive and reproductive labor in its paid and unpaid variants. I make three central c... (shrink)

In this article I explore love's relation to gendered power asymmetries by comparing Anna Jónasdóttir's, Jessica Benjamin's and Teresa Brennan's respective theorizations of this theme. Despite the considerable differences between these feminist frameworks, they can all be read in terms of what I call the figure of the Dominant and its Constitutive Other. This refers to the contradictory relation whereby the powerful and ‘independent’ existence of the one is premised on that which is other to it, as well as on (...) the denial and obscuring of this constitutive dependence. Via a dialogue with critical realist and metaReal themes I move from a concern with how the feminine ‘Other’ tacitly constitutes the masculine Dominant through practices of love, to thematizing the basic stratum of being as the constitutive Other of the oppressive economy of love. The structure of the self emerges as a central organizing principle in the oppressive relations considered, and the article explores what might be a non-violent mode.. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to reconcile two seemingly conflicting theorisations of love, the one elaborated by Roy Bhaskar as part of his philosophy of meta-Reality and Anna G. Jónasdóttir’s historical materialist-radical feminist theory of love power. While Bhaskar emphasises the essentially non-dual character of love, envisioning it as a ‘no-lose situation’, Jónasdóttir stresses the antagonistic features structuring love relations by conceptualising love as a productive power that men tend to exploit women of. Rather than seeing these accounts as mutually (...) exclusive I show that they can be reconciled by aid of the general ontology elaborated by Bhaskar in his philosophy of meta-Reality. (shrink)

This article considers whether there is room in the work of Goldenberg, which is characterized as materialist, for spirituality. The author shows how Freudian psychoanalysis gives the opportunity for the body to be resurrected from the place of signifier of death and dissolution. However, it is also argued that it is possible to bring body and spirit together in such a way as to allow the body to flourish. The author argues for a 'thinking through the body' that is best (...) accomplished when grounded in goddess spirituality. (shrink)

This article intervenes into contemporary scholarship on affect by bringing different affect theories into the same analytical frame. Analysing commercial surrogacy in India through three different conceptualizations of affect found in the work of Michael Hardt, Sara Ahmed and Brian Massumi reveals how affect emerges as a malleable state in the practice of, as a circulatory force in the debates around, and as an ephemeral intensity in the spontaneous resistance to surrogacy. Based on this analysis, I suggest that integrating different (...) theories of affect enables more holistic examinations of corporeal regulation by opening our understanding to the multiple lives of affect that operate on the level of political economy, cultural signification and material intensity simultaneously. (shrink)