Reproductive Racial Capitalism

Contributors to this special issue explore the histories and afterlives of hereditary racial slavery and the radical refusals of its logics, arguing that contemporary racial capitalism is always already reproductive. The authors demonstrate that reproductive labor and the experiences of conception, gestation, parturition, and childrearing are the heart and engine of both slave racial capitalism and contemporary forms of reproductive racial capitalism. At the same time, the authors assert, reproductive labor and experiences are also the sites from which reproductive racial capitalism and its exploitative conditions have been resisted, are currently being challenged, and might still be altogether refused.

Contributors: Halle-Mackenzie Ashby, Laura Briggs, Jessica Marie Johnson, Caleb Knapp, Jennifer L. Morgan, Rickie Solinger, Sigrid Vertommen, Alys Eve Weinbaum, SJ Zhang