Introduction: (Re)producing Subjects, Objects, and Resistances

Abstract:This essay introduces the Cultural Critique special issue "Communication, Biopolitics, and Social Reproduction." Social reproduction has been a central concept for theorizing the relationship between economic exploitation and oppression along axes of race, gender/sexuality, nationality, and ability, as well as for considering how capitalism shapes contemporary subjectivity. First, I situate social reproduction's relationship to communication and biopolitics, discussing rhetoric and communication as key modalities of contemporary capitalist social reproduction. Second, I consider the ways that scholars in rhetorical studies and in the critical humanities have turned to biopolitics as a vocabulary for theorizing power and resistance under capitalism. Finally, I introduce the special issue conversation, discussing the essays' contributions to biopolitical readings of Marx, to theories of affect and extractive capitalism, and to strategies for resisting capital's reproduction.