ABSTRACT
The papers making up this book build on the two lines of inquiry I have been exploring for a number of years. It seemed, for a long time, that they traveled on parallel tracks and would not meet. Gradually I came to see them as aspects of one unfolding inquiry into contemporary history and society and, indeed, that the underground grubbing and molework that went into bringing them into coherent relation to one another was foundational to an ability to engage properly with either. These two lines of inquiry are, first, into what it means to explore the social from the site of women’s experience and beginning therefore with an experiencing and embodied subject, and second, into the social organization of the objectified knowledges that are essential constituents of the relations of ruling of contemporary capitalism. The methods of inquiry developed and used in these chapters have emerged from conjoining these lines of inquiry.
