Laura Bear, Karen Ho, Anna Tsing, Sylvia Yanagisako: Gens: A Feminist Manifesto for the Study of Capitalism (2015)

“Our title signals a major redefinition of the multilayered historical meanings of the term gens. Gens began as the Roman concept of a family unit descended from a common male ancestor and was scaled up to social distinctions like aristocratic lineage. It was transformed by Lewis Henry Morgan to found the anthropological study of kinship and reveal the “original” matriarchal origins of community. Friedrich Engels then drew on Morgan to argue that the patriarchal form of gens led to the end of matriarchal systems. Gens is also, of course, the etymological root of gender, genus, genre, generations, and generate. We find this term broadly helpful because it carries a long history of the appropriation of human and non-human life-forces by social forms. Its varied usage inspires reflection on the depictions of these life-forces that in turn contribute to forms of social inequality. Moreover, it specifically refers to a history of contradictions between male authority and female kinship ties that signals the mix of capture and generativity that characterizes all social power. Finally, by adopting this term, we play with the irony that a patriarchal unit provides the root for the word gender even as we found our approach to capitalism on a more liberating (but hidden) ancestry of feminist analyses of gender, kinship, and race, as well as other forms of epistemological insights garnered from the margins.” (opening paragraph)

Part of the series Generating Capitalism, Fieldsights – Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology Online, March 2015.

Commentary: Donna Haraway (EnviroHumanities 2015, see note 16)

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Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 1(1): Inaugural Issue (2015)

“Catalyst is an online, juried journal that expands the feminist and critical intellectual legacies of science and technology studies into theory-intensive research, critique, and practice. It supports intersectional and transnational scholarship and seeks to foster accessibility and experimentation in scholarly form. The inaugural issue demonstrates the scope of Catalyst‘s intellectual and political vision.”

With contributions by Lindsey Andrews, Neda Atanasoski, Kalindi Vora, Jih-Fei Cheng, Anne Pollock, Elizabeth A. Wilson, Jackie Orr, Joanna Zylinska, S. Lochlann Jain, Jackie Stacey, Lilly Irani, Monika Sengul-Jones, Jenny Reardon, Jacob Metcalf, Martha Kenney, Karen Barad, Daphna Joel, Anelis Kaiser, Sarah S. Richardson, Stacey A. Ritz, Deboleena Roy, Banu Subramaniam, a.o.

Publisher University of California, San Diego, September 2015
Open access
ISSN 2380-3312

HTML, PDFs

Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa (eds.): This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981–) [EN, ES]

“This book is a testimony to women of color feminism as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as co-editor Cherríe Moraga writes, “the complex confluence of identities—race, class, gender, and sexuality—systemic to women of color oppression and liberation.””

First published by Persephone Press, Watertown, MA, 1981

Second edition
Publisher Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, New York, 1983
ISBN 091317503X, 9780913175033
xxvi+261 pages
HT Lisa Nakamura

Third edition, revised & expanded
Publisher Third Woman Press, Berkeley, CA, 2002
ISBN 0943219221, 9780943219226
lviii+370+[8] pages

Commentary: Cassius Adair & Lisa Nakamura (Am Lit, 2017).

Wikipedia
Publisher (4th ed.)
WorldCat (3rd ed.)

PDF (English, 2nd ed., 1983, 4 MB, updated on 2021-3-16)
PDF (Spanish, 1988, 8 MB, added on 2021-3-3)
PDF (English, 3rd ed., 2002, 14 MB, added on 2021-3-16)

See also Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983) and Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought (1995).