Engendering Feudalism: Modes of Production Revisited

Abstract

How do we understand economic activity outside capitalist wage relationships? Capitalocentric analyses assign it to the local or cultural. This replicates previous approaches that assigned such activity to the “feudal.” Drawing on collaboration with Serap Kayatekin, this paper urges renewed attention to feudal subjectivity, as a way to work through this problematic and to build a communal politics.

Keywords:

• Feudalism
• Capitalism
• Communism
• Difference
• Subjectivity
• Feminism

Notes

¹.See, for example, Salzinger 2003; Mohanty 1997; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2004; and Ramamurthy 2004.

².The original paper presented at the symposium provided substantial discussion from this article. I have cut out much of that discussion here, including the detailed discussion of the European case which formed a key portion of our analysis, since it is already available in print.

³.This consent operates in addition to any physical coercion.

⁴. Georges Duby (1978) and Jacques Le Goff (1988) depict a tripartite society in medieval Europe—those who pray to secure the kingdom of God on earth, those who fight, and those who till the land. “The members of the highest order turn their attention heavenwards, while those of the two others look to the earth, all being occupied with the task of upholding the state … The intermediate order provides security, the inferior feed the two” (Duby 1978, 1).