On reproduction as an interpretative framework for social/gender relations

Abstract

This manuscript is a response to the articles that Sutapa Chattopadhyay has collected in this themed section, which takes different pathways to analyze ‘reproduction’ as the analytic category best fit to think a complex web of social and gender relations that have been at the center of my work. Already, in her introduction Sutapa Chattopadhyay describes how the authors of the essays she has selected to interact with my theorization of reproductive activities especially in Caliban and the Witch and Revolution at Point Zero. In this response, I limit myself to comment on some of the questions the contributed articles raise which, I believe, are of particular significance and open new lines of investigation.

Keywords:

• Caliban and the Witch
• commons
• reproduction
• Revolution at Point Zero
• social and gender relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Silvia Federici is scholar-activist and teacher from the radical autonomist Marxist tradition. She is a professor emerita at Hofstra University. She has previously taught at University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She co-founded Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, International Feminist collective and Radical Philosophy Association (RPA) anti-death penalty project. She is a member of Midnight Notes Collective and an organizer of Wages for Housework movement in Italy (1973) and later on in the United States (1975) which motivated feminist scholarly and radical campaigns, research, organizations all over the world. Federici is best known for Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, expands on the work of Leopoldina Fortunati investigating the reasons for the witch hunts of the early modern period, giving a feminist interpretation to the interlinkages across accumulation of bodies, capitalism and rebel subjects. She is also known for Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, Feminist Struggle. This book covers her reasons for organizing Wages For Housework movement, international restructuring of reproductive work, sexual division of labor, the globalization of care work and sex work, and commons as an alternative to capitalist repression.