Utopianism and Social Reproduction in Contemporary South Asian and Caribbean Literature

This study examines the role of social reproductive labour in structuring utopianism in select contemporary South Asian and Caribbean novels. Research on postcolonial utopianism has not addressed how social reproductive labour, including biological reproduction, the labour of nurturing, cooking, cleaning and rejuvenating the labourer/utopian subject, is integral. Hence, I investigate the importance of labour in social reproductive spaces such as households, schools, hospitals, and gardens in structuring utopian/dystopian conditions, rejuvenating the utopian/subject and maintaining hope as seen in the select texts. My research is original because it analyses utopianism in select texts that address reproductive labour and social reproduction from specific postcolonial nation-states in South Asia and the Caribbean and is original in its approach and scope.

I begin by considering Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s ‘Sultana’s Dream’ (1905) and Padmarag (1924) moving on to Mahasweta Devi’s short story ‘Breast-Giver’ and dystopian novels by Bina Shah, Prayaag Akbar and Manjula Padmanabhan. I juxtapose the utopian novella Herland (1915) and dystopian narrative The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) with Hossain’s and Devi’s short stories to discuss how feminist utopianism and social reproductive labour are portrayed. I study the Caribbean texts Midnight Robber (2000) by Nalo Hopkinson, The Marvellous Equations of the Dread (2018) by Marcia Douglas and Hardears (2021) edited by Matthew Clarke and Michael Lynch along with Woman World (2018) by Aminder Dhaliwal to discuss utopianism in contemporary narratives.

To analyse these texts, I use social reproduction theory which discusses the relationship between the sphere of capitalist production and the sphere of social reproduction, i.e., the indispensable role of reproducing and rejuvenating the labourer in the capitalist system. In these texts, social reproductive labour variously manifests across utopian social institutions, authoritarian nations, kinship networks, cyborg landscapes, and post-apocalyptic imaginaries playing a crucial role in structuring utopian/dystopian conditions. Eliciting forced reproductive labour can lead to exploitative and dystopian conditions, while social reproductive labour can also rejuvenate the utopian subject or the labourer at other times. Survival and rejuvenation of society after interrelated crises often necessitate envisioning utopian ideals that inspire collective models of social reproductive labour. Quotidian forms of social reproductive labour keep society functioning after cataclysmic events.