Feminism after measure

Abstract

This article engages the crisis of measure currently being articulated within social and cultural theory and the associated claim that this crisis should compel an embrace of methods which seek to know the heterogeneous, the multiple, the complex and the vague. Taking the rise of immaterial forms of labour and value as paradigmatic of the crisis of measure, it questions the use of the figure of a domestically labouring woman who lacks ownership of her labour to illuminate this crisis, as well as the structural equivalence currently being forced between ‘women’s work’ (especially the work of social reproduction) and productive activities. It does so with reference to the changing relationship between women and social reproduction, a changing relationship which suggests that at the heart of the crisis of measure is a restructuring of time. This article therefore adds fuel to the view that the relations of temporality are now a key ground for feminist theory.