Sexual Difference or the Desire to Change It All

Abstract:Argentinean sociologist Verónica Gago argues for an expanded understanding of extractivism. Extending the conventional meaning of the term beyond the agricultural and mineral export economies of the former colonial world, Gago repurposes the word in order to refer to contemporary forms of accumulation via rent. The present text discusses the author’s recent account of the 2017 women’s strike in Argentina, one of whose aims is to reframe debates about the social reproduction of labor among an earlier generation of theorists. Reading with and against Gago, the present intervention asks how to conceive of the specifically feminine nature of the collective subject/object of contemporary accumulation beyond either descriptive notions of femininity or historicist approaches to the issue of so-called primitive accumulation. It goes on to argue that Lacan’s logical approach to sexual difference might serve as the starting point for a more nuanced historical view of the expropriation of feminine sociality, knowledge, and work.