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A review by akemi_666
One-Dimensional Woman by Nina Power
2.0
Kinda funny, mostly a mess.
I agree with the thesis: feminism has been co-opted by capitalism. Wokeness, girl boss, lean in, whatever. Individualist identification has replaced collective demands for systemic change. Feels like an old argument by now. We define ourselves through consumption, the endless accumulation of commodified experiences, unto a world of abstract signs — all the easier for us, as labouring bodies, to be measured and judged by the labour market.
But if someone gave me a t-shirt that had WITCH-SLUT printed on it, I'd wear it lol. As Helen Todd said, "bread for all, and roses too." I don't believe sex-positivity is at odds with direct action, even if sex-positivity has been co-opted by market forces. We don't just abandon everything that is taken from us — we take back. We re-appropriate, re-signify, and re-contextualise all that is stolen by capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism and fascism — otherwise, we're left with nothing but dispossession, resentment and nostalgia.
Power is snappy, but not particularly deep in her analysis. She doesn't seem to understand that life under capitalism is life in contradiction. How does she know the woman across the street buying a vibrator isn't also an anarchist, artist or indigenous scholar? She has no ethnography, no discourse analysis, no statistics to back up her claims. She collapses the market into the mindset of its consumers, and in doing so, gives into the pessimism of exchange value — of only seeing the world through exchange value. I don't know about you, but to me, that's entrapment in capitalist mindset, par excellence; or, at least, in an elitist disdain of the masses that will attract a few edgelords to your side (before leaving a trail of PTSD in their wake once they discover your WITCH-SLUT vibrator orgies).
Edit: okay, chapter 3 is fucking lit. It's where Power starts exploring alternative conceptions of sex, sexuality, reproduction and social organisation. Mostly socialist and socialist feminism communes and ideas. (Yo, get this: there was a commune where you had to fuck 5 times a day, and you couldn't fuck the same person each week, so you had to fuck 35 different people every week! That is hilarious — and awful.) I would have absolutely loved a whole book tracing these sexual relations across history. Guess it's time to dive into Foucault's lsd dream valley again.
I agree with the thesis: feminism has been co-opted by capitalism. Wokeness, girl boss, lean in, whatever. Individualist identification has replaced collective demands for systemic change. Feels like an old argument by now. We define ourselves through consumption, the endless accumulation of commodified experiences, unto a world of abstract signs — all the easier for us, as labouring bodies, to be measured and judged by the labour market.
But if someone gave me a t-shirt that had WITCH-SLUT printed on it, I'd wear it lol. As Helen Todd said, "bread for all, and roses too." I don't believe sex-positivity is at odds with direct action, even if sex-positivity has been co-opted by market forces. We don't just abandon everything that is taken from us — we take back. We re-appropriate, re-signify, and re-contextualise all that is stolen by capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism and fascism — otherwise, we're left with nothing but dispossession, resentment and nostalgia.
Power is snappy, but not particularly deep in her analysis. She doesn't seem to understand that life under capitalism is life in contradiction. How does she know the woman across the street buying a vibrator isn't also an anarchist, artist or indigenous scholar? She has no ethnography, no discourse analysis, no statistics to back up her claims. She collapses the market into the mindset of its consumers, and in doing so, gives into the pessimism of exchange value — of only seeing the world through exchange value. I don't know about you, but to me, that's entrapment in capitalist mindset, par excellence; or, at least, in an elitist disdain of the masses that will attract a few edgelords to your side (before leaving a trail of PTSD in their wake once they discover your WITCH-SLUT vibrator orgies).
Edit: okay, chapter 3 is fucking lit. It's where Power starts exploring alternative conceptions of sex, sexuality, reproduction and social organisation. Mostly socialist and socialist feminism communes and ideas. (Yo, get this: there was a commune where you had to fuck 5 times a day, and you couldn't fuck the same person each week, so you had to fuck 35 different people every week! That is hilarious — and awful.) I would have absolutely loved a whole book tracing these sexual relations across history. Guess it's time to dive into Foucault's lsd dream valley again.