Abstract
Political theorists and feminist scholars, among others, have long analyzed the collapsing of the so-called “public” and “private” spheres of economic life. If it is true that these two spheres—the public-facing world of work and the domestic world of reproduction—are increasingly one and the same, how will different types of work be valued and organized? In Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype, Jennifer Denbow seeks to answer these questions by examining the fetishization of innovation and showing how it is pitted against reproduction. Via what she terms the “innovation/reproduction binary,” Denbow demonstrates how innovation—a variety of technological “fixes” most often developed and put forward by individual, entrepreneurial, “risk-taking” white men—has come to be understood as a kind of panacea, the only thing that will save the nation, the planet, and the human species. Not only this, but it has been constituted as such at the expense of reproductive labor, or the unpaid or poorly paid work that is most often done by women and feminized people—especially feminized people of color and Black women, specifically.
This is the point that Denbow comes back to again and again throughout the book: as the public/private distinction is increasingly dismantled in a gig-ified world in which we are all entrepreneurs of the self, the innovation/reproduction binary has come to take its place. This is largely because it is more compatible with the digital platforming and Uberizing of a variety of types of work, including all the work that now involves personal branding (which is pretty much all of it). And with this new binary, the reproductive term in the equation is always the devalued one (i.e., child and eldercare in their collectiveness can’t be solved through innovation—or at least it is not so easy to do so, even when “there’s an app for that”).
Combining what is at heart a Marxist feminist analysis with a Foucauldian interpretation, Denbow demonstrates how innovation has also become a powerful discourse and logic, one that is so ideologically compatible with the contemporary zeitgeist that it is now taken for granted, fully naturalized. How could anyone deny that innovation is a good thing, whereas reproduction just is?
In the book’s introductory chapter, Denbow explores the history, evolution, and discursive power of the term “innovation.” She also shows how innovation—taking off in full force in the 1990s—becomes shorthand for technological innovation, specifically. Here, we also see how reproduction—both biological and social—becomes stratified through the mantra of “personal responsibility” as it is embedded in neoliberalism and financialized capitalism: “At the very moment when policy became increasingly oriented toward spurring innovations, the material support for the social reproduction that serves as the basis for innovation and the economy and society as a whole were further eroded” (p. 16).
In Chapter One, Denbow analyzes the Bezos Center for Innovation, a permanent installation at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry, as a site in which the innovation/reproduction binary can be linked directly to histories of colonialism, ableism, accumulation by dispossession, and racist developmental logics. One of the key arguments of this chapter is that settler colonialism has been rationalized by the notion that “the Indigenous inhabitants of North America . . . were not putting the land to ‘productive’ use” (p. 37). Thus, when settlers “find new ways to extract wealth from the land” (p. 31) they become entitled to it—similar to the way the tech bro billionaires of Silicon Valley are purportedly entitled to all their money because they earned it by being so “innovative” (but don’t worry; the [non-monetary] benefits of their wealth will eventually trickle down!).
Chapter Two furthers this analysis of the ubiquitous logic of innovation, examining how the discourse of being a self-made entrepreneur even extends to the education of elementary school and kindergarten-age children. Here, Denbow interrogates her own child’s exposure to “innovative habits” via an Apple initiative called “iInnovate.” Through iInnovate, young children are inculcated with the values of self-entrepreneurialism and “solving” for society by developing product ideas—and these values are posited as more important than those of collective struggle and democratic participation. The rest of the chapter explores human capital theory, the ways in which care and education are managed as a business, the intensification of mothering and the development of “parenting” as a verb, and how children themselves are positioned as human capital, as entities to be speculated on and invested in: “When individuals are interpellated as individual business enterprises, reproductive labor becomes just another investment” (p. 63).
Chapter Three explores biotechnology and reproductive futures through non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Here, Denbow argues that the logic of finance capitalism has been extended to optimizing the fetus, and that a logic of enhancement (part and parcel of eugenics) is deployed in discourse surrounding what feminist disability theorist Alison Kafer has called the “curative imaginary” or the expectation and assumption of intervention when it comes to disability.
In Chapter Four, Denbow expands this discussion of neoliberal eugenics, considering the branding of fertility and baby-making as part of projects of enhancement and empowerment. This chapter looks to the world of “X-risk genetic engineering”—guided by a seemingly niche pocket of libertarian philosophy—and how it has come to influence the biotech world. This philosophical strand (bandied about by public figures with increasingly large platforms) argues that “smarter humans are more innovative and will thus be better able to solve social problems” (p. 112). In this way, X-risk extends the curative imaginary into a “transhumanist” (read: colonial, white supremacist) imaginary, making a case for elitist forms of genetic engineering in which “optimal” traits will be selected during artificial gestation and biotechnologically enhanced reproduction. But genetic engineering is framed as ultimately for the common good, as smarter, more optimized humans will make the world a better place for everyone.
The Epilogue devotes some time to thinking alongside theories and social movements that advocate structural critiques of the devaluation of care, and which instead seek to uplift care, reproductive labor, and those who perform this work. These strands come primarily from disability and reproductive justice frameworks, and also from Black feminist, abolitionist, and decolonial scholarship on how care is co-opted and commodified under neoliberalism. It is in this chapter that Denbow’s commitments to social justice are solidified, and the book comes together as a well-written, thoroughly researched, and clearly organized contribution to the contemporary canon of feminist political theory. Denbow is, without a doubt, in the good company of incisive scholars of neoliberalism such as Wendy Brown, Melinda Cooper, Catherine Waldby, Michel Feher, and M. Murphy.
This book makes many excellent points, and Denbow’s arguments about the innovation/reproduction binary and the flaccidness of the “tech fix” are sharp and well taken. At times, I wished she incorporated more data and told us more about the consequences of the aggrandizement of innovation at the expense of reproduction—there is a lot of historical, textual, legal, and policy analysis, but not as much from the voices of care gig-workers, pregnant people (or those who are trying to become pregnant), or other reproductive laborers themselves. The snippets about her own experiences with the neoliberalization of higher education and about her child’s indoctrination into innovation in kindergarten are some of the most compelling pieces of data in the book.
Beyond this, the book suffers from the fact that it appears to have been published just before Trump took office for the second time in January 2025. Of course, there is no way Denbow could have known exactly what was coming. But because of this, many of the critiques of neoliberalism that Denbow offers may be moot sooner than later (if they are not already). For example, it remains to be seen how a “tech fix” like NIPT will operate in a climate in which abortion is fully illegal and in which the biggest problems we face are no longer public/private partnerships nor undisclosed corporate funding of governmental initiatives and policymaking, but rather a complete absence of any type of regulation and a total lack of public investment in or funding for research, development, or even innovation. In short, the critique of neoliberalism itself may soon be an anachronism in a world of unbridled fascism and unmasked white supremacy, where the powers that be no longer pay any lip service at all to “liberal” values—because those values have been made obsolete.