Capitalist Realism and the politics of fertility: looking beyond the female identity in I Who Have Never Known Men
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism,” (Fisher, 2009, p.8) introduces us to the defining sentiment of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism ; that is, capitalism is so pervasive, any imaginations of an alternative system that is both politically and economically viable, are futile. Fisher uses the 2006 dystopian film Children of Men by Alfonso Cuarón to epitomise this idea of capitalist realism as a concept. In Cuarón’s film, late capitalism exists alongside ‘the end of the world’, acting as an exacerbation of our existing economic-political structure, rather than an opposition. Fisher goes onto argue that, where once, dystopian fiction had the ability posit such opposition – depicting “the emergence of different ways of living” (Fisher, 2009, p.8) through its imaginations of crisis – the introduction of Children of Men has effectively rendered this ability obsolete.
The crisis in Children of Men is the crisis of sterility; no children have been born in a generation. Significantly, this largely, if not wholly, underpins Fisher’s argument. Fisher states:
It is evident that the theme of sterility must be read metaphorically, as the displacement of another kind of anxiety. I want to argue this anxiety cries out to be read in cultural terms… (Fisher, 2009, p.9).
I will use Jacqueline Harpman’s dystopian novel I Who Have Never Known Men to critique this above sentiment. To do this, I will examine the idea that the inextricable link between the theme of sterility and the politicising of fertility so prolific in dystopian fiction, is not cultural, but part of a wider, more ubiquitous metaphor for the subjugation of women under capitalism. I will examine whether capitalist realism is still credible if the metaphor underpinning its theoretical framework is misplaced, and use Harpman’s novel to posit alternative, anti-capitalist notions through liberations of the female identity. This also raises questions regarding the role of dystopian fiction in contemporary society. Is it as obsolete as Fisher proposes, or does it serve a larger purpose in narrating femaleness through polyphonic feminism, that cannot be discounted through capitalist realism’s nature?
It is important to note that central to this argument is a discussion of the role of women. This is not to discount the experiences of trans or non-binary people, who too are integral to capitalism’s subjugation in their ability to gestate, but merely to examine the strict binary of gender identity capitalism and patriarchy seek to perpetuate, and the effect this has on the construction of female identity in relation to fertility. Additionally, it is essential to establish that Fisher’s use of the word ‘cultural’ in conjunction with the theme of sterility refers to the cultural arts.
Fisher draws upon the arguments of Deleuze and Guattari, who described capitalism as “a kind of dark potentiality which haunted all previous social systems”, and an “abomination, which primitive and feudal societies ‘warded off in advance’” (Fisher, 2009, p. 11). Relying on his interpretation of the metaphor of sterility as cultural, Fisher then goes on to argue that this process of laying the foreground for capitalism to emerge, referred to by Silvia Federici (2004) as ‘primitive accumulation’, brought with it “a massive desacralization of culture” (Fisher, 2009, p.12).
Assuming a critical Marxist-Feminist perspective, Federici critiques Marx’s original view of primitive accumulation by stating that it lacks any mention of “the profound transformations that capitalism introduced in the reproduction of labour power and the social position of women” (Federici, 2004, p.62). She highlights the birth of capitalism in conjunction with the earliest mode of monopolising fertility: witch hunts, outlining that “the female body, the uterus, [was placed] at the service of population increase and the production and accumulation of labour-power” (Bieler, 2019). Central to the politicising of fertility, sterility is therefore not a cultural crisis as Fisher proposes, but a socio-political one. Cut from the fabric of patriarchal ideology, capitalism subjugates women primarily through their reproductive health. The politicising of fertility thus sends ripples beyond the cultural sphere, and as outlined by Federici, is intrinsic to the very formation of capitalism in its transition from feudalism (2004).
Critic Marlene Dixon echoes this, drawing a parallel to women following the emergence of late capitalism and post-war economic expansion. She states: “Women's labour power and reproductive power - the bearing and rearing of children - have economic meaning in the necessary production of capital's essential commodity” (Dixon, 1977, p.19). As such, capitalism has presented fertile grounds for the subjugation of women through its commodification of the female body through reproduction. This relationship between reproduction and late capitalism as a direct consequence of emerging capitalism and its ability to penetrate the female identity at present, can be seen in Harpman’s novel I Who Have Never Known Men . The premise of the novel is simple: thirty-nine women and one child awake from a catastrophe on Earth to find themselves imprisoned in a cage. Memories of their lives prior are fleeting. It is within these fleeting, perfunctory glimpses that we witness the lingering effects of capitalism in relation to fertility. The unnamed narrator – frequently referred to as Child and named as such for the purpose of this essay – observes: “In their previous lives the women had worked, borne children and made love. All I knew were that these things were greatly valued. What use were we here?” (Harpman, 1995/2019, p.23).
Here, Child shows us how encompassing concepts of fertility, such as reproduction in the form of work, reproductive labour or female sexuality, converge under a patriarchal-capitalist system to form female identities, by highlighting the “value” of such aspects in connection with their ‘usefulness’ as women. Utility and capitalism are one. Under capitalism, worth is assigned based on an individual’s ability to “contribute economically to society” (Allan, 2021) through labour. As discussed above, for women, this labour arguably cries out in the burden of reproductive labour. Harpman further emphasises this point through the use of the personal pronoun ‘we’, opposed to the detachment of ‘they’ to integrate these “things” they have bestowed with such value into their selfhood. Without reproduction, work, and thus contribution to society, the women believe they have no purpose.
This mirrors Fisher’s capitalist realism in the sense that, capitalism is so pervasive it has conditioned the female identity into vessels for reproduction. However, whilst this offers insight into how capitalism forms the female identity in relation to fertility, it doesn’t show us how the female identity in relation to fertility shapes capitalism. In omitting women’s voices from the conversation entirely, Fisher leaves us no choice but to infer broadly of their role under capitalism. This results in a reductionist viewing of women as a mere product of the capitalist realism system, in which Fisher has essentially reduced women to reproductive machines. Further, through this application of capitalist realism, we can see how in misplacing the metaphor of sterility and his omission of the role of women in the formation and livelihood of capitalism – eradicating half of capitalism’s subjects from his argument – it could be suggested that Fisher’s theoretical framework can only extend so far as to explaining capitalism as a whole.
The concept of fertility an umbrella term for its encompassing factors that shape the role of women under capitalism is useful to examine each of its component parts, and further expose the problems we encounter when using Fisher’s capitalist realism as a blueprint for a viable political-economic system. For instance, as discussed above, the concept of fertility cries out in ‘women’s work’: the bearing and rearing of children. This is touched upon in Harpman’s novel. The narrator comments “they were women who, before these mysterious events, had run their homes or raised their children” (Harpman, 1995/2019, p.78). Women’s work under capitalism as central to fertility is shown through Child. As the only woman of the group not to develop reproductive organs, from the beginning of the novel, she consistently reflects upon her identity in relation to the other women and their fertility. As an objective observer, she shows us what the women deem important now they are circumstantially rendered infertile themselves, by lamenting on aspects of their life they can no longer have. This is especially profound in the following quote by one of the women: “What are we, without a future, without children? The last links in a broken chain.” (Harpman, 1995/2019, p.33).
Harpman offers us an extreme of the female identity here and throughout these glimpses of the women’s early lives. Whilst such comments appear misogynistic in nature by the suggestion that reproduction is woman’s sole focus, it is important to note that Harpman’s narrative tone is not one of passivity amongst the women enacting their societal roles. Rather, Harpman primes the women with a somewhat sardonic weariness in an awareness of their fate, as a commentary on the societal pressures of fertility upon womanhood perpetuated by capitalism. Their nostalgia is not only tied to their loss but formed on the trauma of their separation from a capitalist society. As such, Harpman’s juxtaposing identities of Child and the women offer insight into the politics of fertility under capitalism.
Federici provides further illumination into the importance of fertility as women’s work under capitalism, by outlining what she refers to as a ‘crisis of social reproduction’. The foundations of capitalism relied on a separation of the spheres of reproduction and production, and the devaluation of reproductive work, deeming all women’s work to be ‘non-work’ (Gotby, 2020). Yet, as capitalism exploited female labour power and consumed female unemployment, working-class women still had to enter the workforce in order to successfully manage the bearing and raising of their children, (Dixon, 1977) and as a result of this strain, we enter a crisis of reproduction.
Fisher scratches the surface of this crisis, stating that the “situation of the family in post-Fordist capitalism is contradictory,” (Fisher, 2009, p.39). He touches on the family as “an essential means of reproducing and caring for labour power”, and states that capitalism undermines this family dynamic by denying children time with their working parents, thus “putting intolerable stress on couples” (Fisher, 2009, p.39). This is a loose definition of such a prevalent crisis. Any mention of the exploitation of women as an integral cog in this system as outlined above, and the economic stress this places on the family is sorely absent. The family dynamic is the very site of capitalism’s exploitation of women. It stands to reason that this undermining of the family structure stems from the devaluing of women’s domestic labour under capitalism. In reading the metaphor of sterility as cultural sterility, Fisher’s capitalist realism ignores the role of women in the labour force and its importance in perpetuating the capitalist system. As a result, capitalist realism arguably fails to grasp the full economic impact of capitalism.
We can posit a further contradiction of the metaphor of sterility as cultural by referring back to the above quote by Harpman, specifically the latter half: “The last links in a broken chain” (1995/2019, p.33). The idea of humanity acting as a ‘chain’ is a significant metaphor. In referring to themselves as ‘links’, the women highlight how, without children and unable to reproduce, the chain is broken. Sterility here is directly linked with the construction of female identity and reproduction. Perhaps the ‘anxiety’ Fisher calls upon is an anxiety from capitalism’s viewpoint; that capitalism’s reliance on women to carry the sole burden of reproduction will falter when they become aware of and begin to resist their ‘link’ in an exploitative chain. Dixon mirrors this point by highlighting that laws on reproductive health indicate that it is undesirable, from capitalism’s viewpoint, for women to control their own bodies, “i.e., for women to control the means of reproduction,” (1977, p.19). Thus, any autonomy women have over their reproductive health would threaten the capitalist dynamic.
Fisher states that capitalist realism can “only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable,” (Fisher, 2009, p.22). Yet, his ignorance of women’s voices results in a theory counter-intuitive to his main issue: that there is no alternative to capitalism. Women are central to the formation of capitalism. If capitalism was built on the subjugation of women through the control of reproduction, and capitalism relies on this subjugation as central to its livelihood, then surely the liberation of women is a fundamentally anti-capitalist notion?
Harpman postulates this anti-capitalist notion through the character of Child. In applying Sara Ahmed’s version of Affect Theory from ‘The Promise of Happiness’ to examine Child as an affect alien, we can see how, in Harpman’s novel, the women’s perception of Child pit her as a character outside of the capitalist locale, and capitalist modes of identity construction. Operating on the principle that feelings are culturally mediated and defined by the promise of ‘the good life’, anyone who experiences feeling outside of this realm, according to Ahmed, is an affect alien. Ahmed states that:
You can be affectively alien because you are affected in the wrong way by the right things. Or you can be affectively alien because you affect others in the wrong way: your proximity gets in the way of other people’s enjoyment of the right things, functionating as an unwanted reminder of histories that are disturbing (Ahmed, 2010, p.67).
Child applies to Ahmed’s sentiment to the extent that the women do not bother to educate her on reproductive health. Child pragmatically observes, “The women would sigh and look away, saying ‘What use would it be for you to know if we told you?’, which made me feel I was disturbing or upsetting them” (Harpman, 1995/2019, p.5). Child’s character is instrumental to observations of fertility under capitalism in the way the women interact with and perceive her as an outsider. In her sterility, and as the only woman to have been raised in the cage, Child is presented as a social experiment, untainted by the pervasive effects of capitalism. She is an example of a woman “raised without culture, without social constructs, without knowledge” (Mackintosh, 2019, p.viii) of her body and others’ influence over it. Liberated in her existence outside of what capitalism and patriarchy have conditioned women to believe is the ‘good life’: fertility and reproduction, Child disturbs the women’s atmosphere. Her curious and objective attitude towards reproduction render her affected by the ‘right’ thing in the ‘wrong’ way.
In her introduction to the republished version of novel, Mackintosh points out that the women are recognizant of the fact that Child “is of this world in a way they are not, a bridging person between the old order and the new,” (2019, p.x). The women exist in a world socialised differently to Child. Child’s world is a world in which the value of reproduction is lost in its detachment from men, and as such, the women no longer feel the need to inform Child of such things. Thus the women show us that they are painfully aware of what defines a patriarchal-capitalist society, in denoting their value in relation to men. Overhearing the women discussing such memories, Child observes that men must have been very important. One of the women reply with “Men mean you are alive, Child.” (Harpman, 1995/2019, p.33). Interestingly, despite their current circumstances, that are by no means new to the women at this point in the novel, they still use present tense through their use of the word ‘mean’ to describe the dead patriarchal system, as though it is still very much alive. Child seems to reinforce the women’s unease, as she exists as a juxtaposition to them, not unaware of this attachment, but without the experience of biological and gendered subjugation in relation to her own body.
We are reminded again of Ahmed’s affect alien. Child functions as the unpleasant reminder of the women’s disturbing histories – represented by what Mackintosh refers to above as ‘the old order’ – both in a reminder of the faults of the patriarchal-capitalist system as a whole, and specifically in relation to their past lives as it sits in a continuation of this historical narrative.
Mackintosh also notes that, as the women continue to cling onto their past identities, Child “discovers her own sense of selfhood and agency,” (2019, p.x). She is more than a mere plot device, and Harpman’s development of Child’s character continues the anti-capitalist notion as she develops a purely “human” female identity. What I intend by this idea of a “human” identity is not to disregard existing aspects of the female identity as trivial or inhuman, rather, to examine the markers of personhood Child develops as a woman socialised outside of capitalism and patriarchy as a potential template for an anti-capitalist hypothesis. Harpman offers an exploration of what femaleness can become in liberation.
Ultimately, Child remains objective in forming her own identity. As the women and Child are freed from their prison in the latter half of the novel due to a freak event that leaves their cage open, the women make no attempt to exert control over one another in their new world. Instead, they form a community. Their community is one of humanity and survival until their unfortunate ends, their deaths “repeatedly exhorted as human,” (Mackintosh, 2019, p.xi). Free of patriarchy, and therefore of capitalism – in a dichotomous state to reproduction, it is Child’s fundamentally “human” identity that allows her to provide the women with dignity in death. Perhaps this is Harpman’s subtle nod to “the natural peacefulness that a world without men might possess” (Mackintosh, 2019, p.xii).
Fisher proposes that notions of anti-capitalism are propagated in capitalism itself. He states, “Far from undermining capitalist realism, this gestural anti-capitalism actually reinforces it,” (2009, p.18). As discussed in the introduction to this essay, Fisher demarcates Children of Men as the cut off point for which dystopias are able to posit alternatives to capitalism. With capitalist realism in mind, to Fisher, Harpman’s dystopian novel is merely a reinforcement of capitalist ideals. Yet, there is a reason the politicising of fertility is so prolific in dystopian fiction. Many contemporary and seminal dystopian fictions focusing on the politicising of fertility such as The Handmaid’s Tale , or even the original novel by P.D. James that the film Children of Men was based on, were written by women. Consequently, the theme of sterility can be observed as the concern that women will experience this subjugation they imagine in fiction. The politicising of fertility reflected in dystopian fiction is therefore polyphonic, crying out in oppressed voices, and is in itself a form of protest.
Dystopia as a genre has plasticity in that it is able to reflect society’s failings through various imaginings of crises. As a result, dystopia can often transcend culture and amount to reflecting, or even influencing, modern law and social justice movements. It is no surprise that Harpman’s novel then, originally published in 1995, was recently republished and has made its way smoothly back into circulation alongside contemporary fiction from 2019 onwards. Following a string of assaults on female bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, such as the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade in 2022 and the threat of pro-natalist policies, such as Trump’s Project 2025 to monitor reproduction, (Wendling, 2024), it seems more than ever, women are looking to dystopias to see their concerns reflected within them. For this reason, dystopia cannot be discounted under the veil of capitalist realism, as we may become in danger of silencing women’s voices altogether.
Just as capitalist realism operates on the illusion of excluding women’s voices, capitalism is built on the same illusion, uniting with patriarchal ideals to erase women from its historical foundations, using oppression to promote a viable system. Could it be argued that the projection of women’s voices into mainstream activism, and the dismantling of oppression within a political-economic structure could shatter the illusion capitalism is built upon? Silvia Federici agrees that the emancipation of women is central to the dismantling of capitalism, stating that the emancipation of the female body is the final frontier of capitalism (Federici, as cited in Lyons, 2019).
Of course, Fisher argues capitalism is capable of “metabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact,” (2009, p12.). Though, patriarchy is equally fluid, mutating any feminist protest into a fundamental fault within women themselves. Patriarchy has the ability, just as capitalism does, to pigeon-hole women’s experiences as insular, opposed to universal. Under this system, there is a tendency for dystopian fiction written by women to be reduced to the genre of ‘angry feminist dystopia’, (Gilson, 2020). For instance, in P.D. James’ original, novelised version of Children of Men , it is men who are sterile. Grounded in her lived experiences, this is James’ positing of a society in which the burden of reproduction is shifted onto men, and therefore her voice cannot be discarded. Perhaps Fisher has fallen victim to a ‘Patriarchal Realism’ and is unable to see past the metaphor of sterility in Children of Men for its original intentions, because the metaphor of women’s experiences under patriarchy and capitalism are fed back into the patriarchal sphere as trivial.
Needless to say, capitalist realism is in its infancy. Without intersectionality, you cannot consider capitalism’s impact on the political sphere, the economy, or culture in its entirety. Fisher adopts a white, male, western stance of explaining the effects of capitalism, and whilst many of his arguments have led to new ways of observing oppression under capitalism, it cannot narrate the oppression of those it discounts.
With characters like Child in Jacqueline Harpman’s novel, we can look beyond capitalist realism and posit alternatives through the liberation of the very people capitalism subjugated in order to build itself as a viable, pervasive system. Embedded within this argument is the question of whether the metaphor of sterility could be used credibly as a foundation for arguments outside of the identity of those who gestate. Ultimately and finally, I believe it cannot. Having been the focal point of so much oppression experienced by those who gestate under patriarchy long before capitalism arrived, it can only be examined in reclamation. To do otherwise, is to perpetuate systems that govern oppression by eradicating histories, resulting in theories that discount the voices those systems teach us to ignore – just as capitalist realism does.
References
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Allan, E. (2021, 20 March). Capitalism and patriarchy are inseparable. https://www.thegazelle.org/issue/199/opinion/capitalism-patriarchy-inseperable
Bieler, A. (2019, 7 March). Witch-Hunts and the Birth of Capitalism: Reflections on Caliban and the Witch. https://www.ppesydney.net/witch-hunts-and-the-birth-of-capitalism-reflections-on-caliban-and-the-witch/
Dixon, M. (1977). The subjugation of women under capitalism: The bourgeois morality. Synthesis, 1 (4), 18-30. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43783332
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Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism . Zero Books. https://archive.org/details/capitalist-realism-is-there-no-alternative/page/n39/mode/2up
Gilson, N. (2020, 7 July). ‘I’m trying to dig into our deepest fears rather than make a political statement’: an interview with Sophie Mackintosh. https://hazlitt.net/feature/im-trying-dig-our-deepest-fears-rather-make-political-statement-interview-sophie-mackintosh
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Harpman, J. (2019). I who have never known men (Schwartz. R, Trans.). Vintage Classics. (Original work published in 1995).
Lyons, S. (2019, 15 February). Silvia Federici on witch hunts, body politics, and rituals of resistance. PM Press. https://blog.pmpress.org/2019/09/15/silvia-federici-on-witch-hunts-body-politics-rituals-of-resistance/
Mackintosh, S. (2019). Introduction. Harpman, J., (Schwartz. R, Trans.). I who have never known men (pp. vii-xiii). Vintage Classics. (Original work published in 1995).
Wendling, M. (2024,11 September). What is project 2025? Wish list for a Trump presidency, explained. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c977njnvq2do.amp