Feminists strike against neoliberalism: social reproduction, financial extractivism, and debt

In this text, I start by proposing that the feminist strike is a key praxis to understand anti-neoliberal politics. Taking into account the recent cycle of feminist mobilizations, particularly in Latin America, I consider that an important cognitive and organizational “accumulation” of the strike is an achievement of the feminist movement. I argue that it is something that is disseminated and that today translates into forms of politicization of struggles in social reproduction. Doing so, I develop the idea that the feminist strike provides us with a specific point of view about social reproduction. Then I analyze why the so-called “popular economies” are an important precedent of the politicization of precarious lives in the sphere known as informal work. Finally, I ask, what is the role of finance in relation to reproductive labor today? I suggest the notion of “financial extractivism” because it enables us to connect debt with political-ecological struggles against neo-extractivist projects, thereby revealing the linkages between debt, dispossession, and exploitation.