Take Back the Household: Emerging Alliances between Art Workers, Architecture Workers, and Domestic Workers

The question of the household points to the gendered nature of the division of labour, spaces, and resources. The household also leads to emergent political subjectivities, feminist activism, and political struggle. In the 1970s, feminist Marxist thinkers Dalla Costa and Federici analysed domestic reproductive labour. Today, under the regimes of neoliberal capitalism, structural precarization, global migration, and austerity, the household, once again, is the site of activist struggle and analysis. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I introduce three case studies to show the emerging alliances between art workers, architecture workers, and domestic workers who together turn the household into a site of activist research and political struggle. The Grand Domestic Revolution, 2009-2012, was a project by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht. Using an apartment as a test site for analysis and practices, they also initaited new political alliances. The Madrid-based architectural practice Estudio Sic collaborates with PAH, Platform of People Affected by the Mortgage, to analyse and practice the collective reorganization of the household when the house has been taken away by the bank. radical practices of collective care conducts research workshops to collectivize care work with domestic workers’ collectives, such as Territorio Domestico. Second, I will show how these alliances and collaborations of art workers, architecture workers and domestic workers make use of both 1970s reproductive labour theory and J-K. Gibson-Graham‘s approach to Take Back the Economy. Taken together, this will lead me to the proposition of Taking Back the Household.