Reproductions

Abstract

As a counterpart to the discussion of recent theories of “social reproduction” and their confrontation with the Marxian critique of political economy, this essay develops a genealogy of the concept of “reproduction” itself, from a semantic and historical point of view. Observing the intersection of problems coming from the realm of natural history and from classical political economy, which involve three different significations (remaining invariant despite displacements in their uses) and which we identify by means of the classical categories of mimesis (reproduction of a model), genesis (continuation of life), and poiesis (restoration of a stock), the essay is consequently able to compare strategies of crisis resolution and to reconstruct an imaginary of revolution based on mutation and interruption.