Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

of god by humans, does not mean that Deus absconditus is
replaced by a known, identifiable person, but rather that the
place of the latent, hidden God is taken by a latent, hidden
human, homo absconditus.ll The figure behind the mask is,
of course, homo absconditus, the hidden man: hidden because
repressed, hidden because creator, hidden because un-finished in
his becoming. This is the doer, repressed, un-become, in-finite,
undefinable.
Should this not be mulier abscondita, the hidden woman? Of
course. Homo clearly stands for 'man' in the sense of human:
it is a case of man embracing woman, he including she. But, as
we have all become aware over the last thirty years or so, this
is a linguistic expression of the social suppression of women.
Identitarian subjectivity is a male-dominated subjectivity, the
identitarian subject is undoubtedly a 'he', with many of the characteristics
associated with masculinity. The crisis of the 'he' and
the critiques of male subjectivity can be seen as part of the more
general crisis of identitarian subjectivity and indeed of abstract
labour. The doer is not, of the same gender as the labourer. Doing
implies a much richer concept of human activity, the varied and
multi-skilled activity traditionally associated with women rather
than the narrower, monothematic activity more typical of men.
If we must attach a gender to the doer, then certainly we should
think of her as a 'she' rather than a 'he': mulier abscondita.
This corresponds to a real change in the gender composition
of anti-capitalist struggle which has often been noted. Whereas
the traditional world of the labour movement, of trade unions
and revolutionary parties, is very clearly dominated by men,
women play a much mOre obvious role in the new wave of
anti-capitalist struggle: whether it be the struggle for water in
Latin American cities, the struggle against the destruction of
nature, the struggle against war, the alter-globalisation struggle
for another world. And it is impossible to overlook the role of
the women's movement in opening up a new understanding of
what struggle means, the forms of organisation, the concept of
time and of change.
But do we need to attach a gender to our shadowy figure? For
the sake of exposition, it is easier to do so: 'it' would not solve
the problem because we are talking of human subjectivity; and
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