Synopses & Reviews
How do we take care of each other? Who raises us as children, is with us when we are ill, and provides a place to sleep when work is tight? We often rely on family for the care we all need. Yet even at their best families cannot carry the impossible demands placed on them, and for many, a family is a place of private horror of coercion and personal domination.
M. E. O'Brien uncovers the long history of struggles to go beyond the private family. She traces the changing family politics of racial capitalism in the industrial cities of Europe and the slavery plantations and settler frontier of North America, through the rise and fall of the housewife family. From Marx to Black and queer insurrection to today's mass protest movements, O'Brien finds revolutionary movements seeking better ways of loving, caring, and living. Family Abolition takes us into a speculative future of the commune, imagining how care could be organized in a free society.
Review
“impressive erudition to a vast subject, O'Brien takes a debate to new frontiers, illuminating how a family in perpetual crisis fuels racism and violence. From Oaxaca to Minneapolis, Family Abolition shows ‘insurgent reproduction’ preparing a world of ‘red love.'”
Peter Drucker, author of Warped: Gay Normality and Queer Anticapitalism
Review
“M.E. O'Brien tells us exactly how the family has delivered human survival throughout modern history even as it has served the needs of capital accumulation, cis-hetero-patriarchy, and the colonial state. Here is an accessibly written distillation of two centuries worth of reproductive class struggle; a revived vision of revolutionary ‘beloved community’ for an age of climate catastrophe and permanent pandemics. Spread this book around, and start communizing care!”
Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family
Synopsis
"An accessibly written distillation of two centuries worth of reproductive class struggle; a revived vision of revolutionary 'beloved community' for an age of climate catastrophe. Spread this book around, and start communizing care "--Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family
"Stunningly urgent and timely...Through an exhilaratingly accessible narrative, O'Brien moves effortlessly between history, current specificities, and future possibilities to show that communized care is not a far-off fantasy"--Lara Sheehi, Assistant Professor, George Washington University
For some of us, the family is a source of love and support. But for many others, the family is a place of private horror, coercion, and personal domination. In a capitalist society, the private family carries the impossible demands of interpersonal care and social reproductive labor. Can we imagine a different future?
In Family Abolition, author M.E. O'Brien uncovers the history of struggles to create radical alternatives to the private family. O'Brien traces the changing family politics of racial capitalism in the industrial cities of Europe and in the slave plantations and settler frontier of North America, explaining the rise and fall of the housewife-based family form. From early Marxists to Black and queer insurrectionists to today's mass protest movements, O'Brien finds revolutionaries seeking better ways of loving, caring, and living. Family Abolition takes us through the past and present of family politics into a speculative future of the commune, imagining how care could be organized in a free society.
M.E. O'Brien writes on gender and communist theory. She co-edits two magazines, Pinko, on gay communism, and Parapraxis, on psychoanalytic theory and politics. She co-authors the novel Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, and tweets @genderhorizon.
About the Author
M. E. O'Brien is a leading voice of revolutionary queer politics. She works as a Community Oral History Coordinator at the New York Public Library, and is a core member of the editorial collective for Pinko magazine. Her work has been published in the book Transgender Marxism and the journal Endnotes.