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Critical analysis of the biotechnological reproduction of biological life increasingly emphasises the role of value-producing labour in biotechnologically reproductive processes, while also arguing that Marx’s use of the terms ‘labour’ and ‘value’ is inadequate to the critical scrutiny of these processes. Focusing especially on the reformulation of the value-labour relation in recent work in this area by Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby, this paper both critiques this reformulation and questions the explanatory efficacy of the category ‘labour’ in this context. Emphasising the contemporary global expansion of capital relative to value-producing labour – specifically, the expansion of fictitious capital and debt on the one hand, and of global surplus populations on the other – it argues that this reformulation misrepresents the mediated capacities of capital as the immediate capacities of labour. This reformulation, moreover, is indicative of broader tendencies in the contemporary theorisation of labour, tendencies exemplified by autonomist Marxism.
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Adkins Lisa ‘From Retroactivation to Futurity: The End of the Sexual Contract?’ NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 2008 16 3 182 201
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Adkins Lisa ‘Feminism after Measure’ Feminist Theory 2009 10 3 323 339
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Anagnost Ann Clough Patricia Ticineto & Willse Craig ‘Strange Circulations’ Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death 2011 Durham, NC. Duke University Press
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Bakker Isabella Bakker Isabella & Gill Stephen ‘Neo-Liberal Governance and the Reprivatization of Social Reproduction: Social Provisioning and Shifting Gender Orders’ Power, Production and Social Reproduction: Human In/security in the Global Political Economy 2003 Basingstoke Palgrave
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Chang Grace Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy 2000 Boston South End
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Clover Joshua & Benanav Aaron ‘Can Dialectics Break BRICS?’ South Atlantic Quarterly 2014 113 4 743 59
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Cohen Lawrence Scheper-Hughes & Wacquant ‘The Other Kidney: Biopolitics beyond Recognition’ 2002 2002
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Cooper Melinda Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era 2008 Seattle University of Washington Press
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Cooper Melinda & Waldby Catherine ‘From Reproductive Work to Regenerative Labor: The Female Body and the Stem Cell Industries’ Feminist Theory 2010 11 1 3 22
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Cooper Melinda & Waldby Catherine Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy 2014 Durham, NC. Duke University Press
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Dalla Costa Mariarosa & James Selma The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community 1972 Bristol Falling Wall Press
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Dickenson Donna Property in the Body: Feminist Perspectives 2007 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Dumit Joseph Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health 2012 Durham, NC. Duke University Press
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Dyer-Witheford Nick Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex 2015 London Pluto Press
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Endnotes ‘Misery and Debt: On the Logic and History of Surplus Populations and Surplus Capital’ Endnotes 2: Misery and the Value Form 2010 London Endnotes
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Endnotes ‘The Logic of Gender’ Endnotes 3: Gender, Race, Class and Other Misfortunes 2013 London Endnotes
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Federici Sylvia Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle 2012 Oakland PM Press
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Ferguson Susan & McNally David Vogel ‘Capital, Labour-Power, and Gender-Relations: Introduction to the Historical Materialism Edition of Marxism and the Oppression of Women’ 2013 2013
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Ferguson Susan & McNally David Panitch Leo & Albo Greg ‘Precarious Migrants: Gender, Race and the Social Reproduction of the Global Working Class’ Socialist Register 2015: Transforming Classes 2014 London Merlin
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Fortunati Leopoldina The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital 1995 New York Autonomedia
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Foster John Bellamy, McChesney Robert W. & Jonna R. Jamil ‘The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism’ Monthly Review 2011 63 6 1 31
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Fumagalli Andrea ‘Twenty Theses on Contemporary Capitalism (Cognitive Biocapitalism)’ Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 2011 16 3 7 17
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Gonzalez Maya ‘The Gendered Circuit: Reading The Arcane of Reproduction’ Viewpoint Magazine 2013 available at: <http://viewpointmag.com/2013/09/28/the-gendered-circuit-reading-the-arcane-of-reproduction>.
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Hardt Michael & Negri Antonio Empire 2000 Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press
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ILO Global Employment Trends 2014: Risk of a Jobless Recovery? 2014 Geneva International Labour Office
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Kliman Andrew The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession 2012 London Pluto Press
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Kurz Robert Larsen, Nilges, Robinson & Brown ‘The Crisis of Exchange Value: Science as Productivity, Productive Labor, and Capitalist Reproduction’ 2014 [1986] 2014
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Larsen Neil, Nilges Mathias, Robinson Josh & Brown Nicholas Marxism and the Critique of Value 2014 Chicago MCM′.
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Lazzarato Maurizio ‘From Capital-Labour to Capital-Life’ Ephemera 2004 4 3 187 208
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Martin Stewart Bewes Timothy & Hall Timothy ‘Capitalist Life in Lukács’ Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence 2011 London Continuum
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Marx Karl Nicolaus Martin Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 1973 Harmondsworth Penguin
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Marx Karl Livingstone Rodney & Benton Gregor Early Writings 1975 Harmondsworth Penguin
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Marx Karl Fowkes Ben Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume One 1976 Harmondsworth Penguin
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Negri Antonio Fleming Jim Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse 1991 New York Autonomedia
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Negri Antonio ‘The Labor of the Multitude and the Fabric of Biopolitics’ Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group 2008 23 2 9 24
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Pande Amrita Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India 2014 New York Columbia University Press
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Patnaik Prabhat ‘A Perspective on the Growth Process in India and China’ International Development Economics Associates 2009 IDEAs Working Paper no. 05/2009, available at: <http://www.ideaswebsite.org/networkideas/editorfiles/file/Prabhat_Patnaik_1(1).pdf>
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Postone Moishe Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory 1993 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Read Jason The Micro-Politics of Capital 2003 Albany State University of New York Press
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Rosewarne Stuart ‘Trading on Gender: The Perversity of Asian Labour Exports as an Economic Development Strategy’ Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation 2012 6 1 81 102
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Sassen Saskia ‘Women’s Burden: Counter-Geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival’ Journal of International Affairs 2000 53 2 503 524
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Sassen Saskia Ehrenreich Barbara & Hochschild Arlie Russell ‘Global Cities and Survival Circuits’ Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy 2002 New York Henry Holt
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Scheper-Hughes Nancy Scheper-Hughes & Wacquant ‘Commodity Fetishism in Organs Trafficking’ 2002 2002
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Scheper-Hughes Nancy Ong Aihwa & Collier Stephen J. ‘The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in “Fresh” Organs’ Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems 2005 Malden, MA. Blackwell
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Scheper-Hughes Nancy & Wacquant Loïc Commodifying Bodies 2002 London Sage
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Scholz Roswitha Larsen, Nilges, Robinson & Brown ‘Patriarchy and Commodity Society: Gender without the Body’ 2014 [2009] 2014
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Shah Sonia The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients 2006 New York The New Press
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Standing Guy ‘Global Feminization through Flexible Labor: A Theme Revisited’ World Development 1999 27 3 583 602
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Sunder Rajan Kaushik Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life 2006 Durham, NC. Duke University Press
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Sunder Rajan Kaushik ‘Pharmaceutical Crises and Questions of Value: Terrains and Logics of Global Therapeutic Politics’ South Atlantic Quarterly 2012 111 2 321 46
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Sunder Rajan Kaushik Lively Capital: Biotechnologies, Ethics, and Governance in Global Markets 2012 Durham, NC. Duke University Press
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Thacker Eugene The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture 2005 Cambridge, MA. The MIT Press
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Toscano Alberto ‘Abstract Life: The Biopolitical Logic of Capitalism and Empire’ 2008 ‘Italian Thought Today’ conference 5 April 2008 University of Kent paper delivered at the
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UNCTAD Trade and Development Report: Capital Accumulation, Growth, and Structural Change 2003 New York United Nations
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UNIDO Industrial Development Report: Sustaining Employment Growth 2013 New York United Nations
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Virno Paolo Makdisi Saree, Casarino Cesare & Karl Rebecca E. ‘Notes on the “General Intellect” ’ Marxism beyond Marxism 1996 New York Routledge
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Vogel Lise Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, Historical Materialism 2013 Leiden Brill Book Series
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Vora Kalindi ‘Others’ Organs: South Asian Domestic Labor and the Kidney Trade’ Postmodern Culture 2008 19 1 available at: <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/270615>
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Vora Kalindi ‘Limits of Labor: Accounting for Affect and the Biological in Transnational Surrogacy and Service Work’ South Atlantic Quarterly 2012 111 4 681 700
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Vora Kalindi Life Support: Biocapital and the New History of Outsourced Labor 2015 Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
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Waldby Catherine Gunnarson Martin & Svenaeus Fredrik ‘Reproductive Labor Arbitrage: Trading Fertility across European Borders’ The Body as Gift, Resource, and Commodity 2012 Stockholm Södertörns högskola
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Waldby Catherine & Mitchell Robert Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism 2006 Durham, NC. Duke University Press
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Witheford Nick ‘Autonomist Marxism and the Information Society’ Capital & Class 1994 52 85 125
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Zeller Christian ‘From the Gene to the Globe: Extracting Rents Based on Intellectual Property Monopolies’ Review of International Political Economy 2008 15 1 86 115
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3
See, e.g., Cohen 2002; Scheper-Hughes 2002, 2005; Sunder Rajan 2006, 2012; Sunder Rajan (ed.) 2012; Vora 2008; Anagnost 2011; Cooper and Waldby 2014; Dumit 2012.
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4
Cohen 2002, p. 13. On the role of debt as a motivator to sell or rent one’s biological material or capacity, see Scheper-Hughes 2002; Vora 2015.
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5
Vora 2015, pp. 1–2.
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6
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 7.
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7
Scheper-Hughes 2002.
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8
Pande 2014, p. 7.
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9
Vora 2015, p. 13.
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10
Sunder Rajan 2012.
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11
Anagnost 2011, p. 214.
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12
Cooper 2008, p. 3.
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13
Cooper and Waldby 2014.
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15
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 7.
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16
Marx 1973, p. 100. The term population is most closely associated with the Foucauldian account of biopolitics.
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17
Martin 2011.
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18
Waldby and Mitchell 2006.
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19
Pande 2014, p. 1.
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20
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 80.
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21
Vora 2015, p. 9.
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22
Vora 2012, pp. 694–5.
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23
Vora 2012, p. 695. See also Dickenson 2007, pp. 58–9.
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24
Cooper and Waldby 2010, pp. 5, 13.
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25
Cooper and Waldby 2014, pp. 63, 72.
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26
Waldby 2012, pp. 284–5.
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27
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 68.
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28
Vora 2012, p. 683.
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29
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 105.
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30
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 18.
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31
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 32.
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32
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 228.
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33
Cooper and Waldby 2014, pp. 85, 84; emphasis in original.
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34
Cooper and Waldby 2014, pp. 84, 87.
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35
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 83.
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36
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 111. Sunder Rajan 2006 provides a detailed elaboration of contemporary biotechnology’s thorough conditioning by finance capital.
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37
Cooper and Waldby 2010, p. 12.
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38
Zeller 2008, p. 93.
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39
Cooper and Waldby 2014, pp. 108, 107.
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40
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 114.
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41
Cooper and Waldby 2014, pp. 113, 111.
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42
Thacker 2005, pp. 104, 127.
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44
Vora 2015, p. 31.
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45
Adkins 2008, 2009.
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46
Cooper and Waldby 2014, p. 6. See Lazzarato 2004; Fumagalli 2011.
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47
Negri 1991, pp. 162–3.
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48
Virno 1996, p. 270.
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49
Witheford 1994, p. 95.
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50
Hardt and Negri 2000, p. 385.
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51
Postone 1993, p. 161.
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52
Read 2003, pp. 76–7.
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53
Read 2003, pp. 80, 136, 81.
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54
Negri 2008, p. 13.
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56
Endnotes 2010, p. 23.
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61
Foster, McChesney and Jonna 2011, pp. 20–1.
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62
Endnotes 2010, p. 32.
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63
Marx 1973, p. 706.
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64
Sassen 2000, pp. 518–19.
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65
Chang 2000, p. 4.
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66
Rosewarne 2012, p. 96.
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67
Chang 2000, pp. 130–1; see also Sassen 2000, pp. 519–23.
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68
See Dickenson 2007, p. 60.
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69
Vora 2015, p. 3.
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70
Foster, McChesney and Jonna 2011, pp. 25–6.
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71
Standing 1999, p. 585.
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72
Endnotes 2013, pp. 61–2. See also Vogel 2013; Scholz 2014.
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73
Endnotes 2013, p. 76.
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74
Standing 1999, p. 600.
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75
Marx 1975, p. 327.
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76
Sunder Rajan 2006; Cooper and Waldby 2014, pp. 159–94. For an enlightening journalistic account, see Shah 2006.
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77
Scheper-Hughes 2005, pp. 145, 150. See also Cohen 2002; Scheper-Hughes 2002.
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78
Anagnost 2011, p. 225.
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79
Anagnost 2011, p. 226.
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Search for other papers by Kevin Floyd in
Current site
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Critical analysis of the biotechnological reproduction of biological life increasingly emphasises the role of value-producing labour in biotechnologically reproductive processes, while also arguing that Marx’s use of the terms ‘labour’ and ‘value’ is inadequate to the critical scrutiny of these processes. Focusing especially on the reformulation of the value-labour relation in recent work in this area by Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby, this paper both critiques this reformulation and questions the explanatory efficacy of the category ‘labour’ in this context. Emphasising the contemporary global expansion of capital relative to value-producing labour – specifically, the expansion of fictitious capital and debt on the one hand, and of global surplus populations on the other – it argues that this reformulation misrepresents the mediated capacities of capital as the immediate capacities of labour. This reformulation, moreover, is indicative of broader tendencies in the contemporary theorisation of labour, tendencies exemplified by autonomist Marxism.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2432 | 438 | 56 |
| Full Text Views | 1547 | 52 | 4 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 818 | 112 | 6 |