Contradictions of Empire and Care

• In Event: The US Empire in the Present

Abstract

In Nancy Fraser’s now seminal "Contradictions of Capital and Care”, she claims “that every form of capitalist society harbours a deep-seated social-reproductive ‘crisis tendency’ or contradiction: on the one hand, social reproduction is a condition of possibility for sustained capital accumulation; on the other, capitalism’s orientation to unlimited accumulation tends to destabilize the very processes of social reproduction on which it relies” (2016:100). Moreover, this contradiction for Fraser,“is not located ‘inside’ the capitalist economy but at the border that simultaneously separates and connects production and reproduction” (2016:103). How can we account for contradictions of care under modern US empire? In similar ways, imperial expansion that subordinates national sovereignties to imperial hegemony can destabilize both an imperial power and subordinated territory's domestic capacity for social reproduction. In this paper I begin theorizing the relationships between empire and care by examining subjects of empire and their practices of social reproduction through the unit of the transpacific veteran family. Through analyses of 10 interviews with children of American GIs in transpacific veteran families who serve as their fathers primary caregivers, I map the militarized terrain of emotional labor necessary for providing care for veterans.

Author

• Amy Chin, Vassar College