The 2011 Historical Materialism Conference in London saw the launch of a Marxist-Feminist set of panels. This issue is inspired by the success of those panels, and the remarkably sustained interest in reviving and moving beyond older debates and discussions. The special issue’s focus, Social-Reproduction Feminism, reflects and contextualises the ongoing work and engagement with that thematic that has threaded through the conferences in the 2010s. This Introduction provides a summary overview of the Social-Reproduction Feminism framework, situating it within Marxist-Feminist thinking and politics more generally, and calls on readers to consider its promise and potential as an historical-materialist approach to understanding capitalist social relations in terms of an integrated totality.
This discussion between nine curators, theorists and art historians addresses some of the contemporary issues related to feminism and curating. Topics include the role of the geographical and geopolitical in curatorial projects; the place of canons and canon-making in feminist approaches; the nature of contemporary feminist collectivities; the importance of the museum and its context of capitalism within politicized curatorial practice; and the status of the object and aesthetics in feminist-oriented curatorial practice
The issue with DocumentaDocumenta takes place every ve years in the German town of Kassel. First launched in the mid-1950spartly as a regeneration initiative for a small town that had suffered extensive damage during World War II and partly as an attempt to counter the attack on modern art by the Nazis -Documenta has come to be today the most important international art event, with an agenda aided by, but also contesting, the increasingly global frameworks de ning the production and reception of art. The signi cance of Documenta has less to do with its rare but periodic occurrence and more with the fact that the curatorial teams involved in the show's production appear to be relatively uninhibited about working with the organising principle of 'politics', against the dominant trends in the art world and the world at large.Following on from this, the signi cance of Documenta also has to do with audience expectation and the promise of 'documentation' of current developments to which the name of the show itself alludes, although, in the case of Documenta 11, we are informed by Historical Materialism, volume 11:3 (153-176)
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