From Utopian Collectivity to Solitary Precarity: Thirty Years of Feminist Theory and the Cinema of Women’s Work

This essay proposes that current feminist theory shows a renewed interest in materiality, economics, and work. It refers to scholarly arguments that criticize second-wave feminism for preparing the ground for neoliberalism and contrasts those claims with Helke Sander’s Die Allseitig-reduzierte Persönlichkeit—Redupers (1978, The all-around reduced personality—Redupers). A reading of a more recent film, Tatjana Turanskyj’s Eine flexible Frau (2010, The drifters), illustrates the continuities and discontinuities from the earlier to the later feminist film in their discussions of women and work. The essay then turns to new materialisms to probe their productivity for an analysis of filmic representation of economy and materiality. Arguing for the continued importance of the study of texts for our concern with economy and labor, the essay concludes with an analysis of Martina Priessner’s independent documentary Wir sitzen im Süden (2010, We are based down south).