ABSTRACT
“Myth of ‘the Family’”, returns to the themes developed in the first chapter, but focuses on the economic division of the public and private via a history of the family and the state in relation to capitalism. Drawing from the critical work of Kathi Weeks, Silvia Federici, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, and others, this chapter considers how the so-called traditional family is anachronistically projected in traditionalist doctrines. In other words, its basis is implied in economic orthodoxy of perpetual growth at the expense of the commons, or any non-commodified relation (i.e. the eternally renewing structure of “original accumulation”, a theme to which I return in the last chapter). Paradoxically, it is this dominant logic that has eroded the conditions for the possibility of broader forms of solidarity and mutual relation. Also, brought into the picture are ways in which the idea of the “broken family” became a mechanism of racialization and outright racist justification for poverty, surveillance, and police brutality.
