Silvia Federici
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Silvia Federici | |
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Born | 1942 (age 81–82) Parma, Italy |
Partner | George Caffentzis |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University at Buffalo, NY, USA (PhD) |
Academic work | |
Institutions |
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Notable works | Caliban and the Witch (2004) |
Silvia Federici (born 1942) is a scholar, teacher, and
For several decades, Federici has been working in a variety of projects with feminist organizations across the world like Women in Nigeria (WIN), Ni Una Menos, the Argentinian feminist organization, and Feminist research on violence in New York.[citation needed] For the last five years,[when?] she has been organizing a project with feminist collectives in Spain to reconstruct the history of the women, who were persecuted as witches in early modern Europe, and raise consciousness about the contemporary witch-hunts that are taking place across the world.[citation needed]
Federici is considered one of the leading feminist theoreticians in
Background
Federici was born in
She was co-founder of the International Feminist Collective, and an organizer with the wages for housework campaign. In 1973, she helped start Wages for Housework groups in the US. In 1975 she published Wages Against Housework, the book most commonly associated with the wages for housework movement.[6]
She also co-founded the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA), and was involved with the Midnight Notes Collective. In 1995, she co-founded the Radical Philosophy Association (RPA) anti-death penalty project.
Federici lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with her partner George Caffentzis.[4]
In March 2022, Federici was amongst 151 international feminists signing Feminist Resistance Against War: A Manifesto, in solidarity with the Feminist Anti-War Resistance initiated by Russian feminists after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[7]
Scholarly contributions
Federici's best known work,
Federici connects this expropriation to women's unpaid labour, both connected to reproduction and otherwise, which she frames as a historical precondition to the rise of a capitalist economy predicated upon wage labor. Related to this, she outlines the historical struggle for
She situates the institutionalization of rape and prostitution, as well as the heretic and witch-hunt trials, burnings, and torture at the center of a methodical subjugation of women and appropriation of their labor. This is tied into colonial expropriation and provides a framework for understanding the work of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and other proxy institutions as engaging in a renewed cycle of primitive accumulation, by which everything held in common—from water, to seeds, to our genetic code—becomes privatized in what amounts to a new round of enclosures.
Publications
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Books
Part of Feminist critique of economics |
- (1975) Wages Against Housework. Bristol: Published jointly by the Power of Women Collective and the Falling Wall Press. Link goes to full text of the book.
- (1984, with Leopoldina Fortunati) Il Grande Calibano: Storia del corpo sociale ribelle nella prima fase del capitale. Milan: Franco Angeli
- (2004) "Il Femminismo e il Movimento contro la guerra USA", in DeriveApprodi #24
- (2004) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. Licensed online copy at the Internet Archive.
- (2012) Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, Brooklyn/Oakland: Common Notions/PM Press. Links to full text: epub,pdf
- (2018) Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. Oakland, CA: Kairos/PM Press.
- (2018) Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women. Oakland, CA: PM Press
- (2020) Beyond the periphery of the skin: rethinking, remaking, reclaiming the body in contemporary capitalism. Oakland, CA: PM Press
- (2021) Patriarchy of The Wage: Notes on Marx, Gender, and Feminism. Oakland, CA: PM Press.
As editor
- (1995) (ed.) Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and Its "Others". Westport, CT, and London: Praeger.
- (2000) (ed.) A Thousand Flowers: Structural Adjustment and the Struggle for Education in Africa. Africa World Press.
- (2000) (eds.) African Visions: Literary Images, Political Change, and Social Struggle in Contemporary Africa. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger.
Articles
Free online access:
- Feminism and the Politics of the CommonsThe Commoner, 2011
- On capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics, Politics and Culture 2009 (2) - Special Issue on Food (&) Sovereignty Archived 2017-10-11 at the Wayback Machine
- Witch-Hunting, Globalization, and Feminist Solidarity in Africa Today, The Commoner, 2008
- Precarious Labour: A Feminist Viewpoint, 2008
- Notes on the edu–factory and Cognitive Capitalism, 2007 (with George Caffentzis)
- Theses on Mass Worker and Social Capital (1972, with Mario Montano)
- War, Globalization and Reproduction
- Mormons in space (with George Caffentzis)
- Why Feminists Should Oppose Capital Punishment
- Donne, Globalizzazione e Movimento Internazionale delle Donne
- The great Caliban:The struggle against the rebel body, from Caliban & the Witch
- All the World Needs a Jolt: Social Movements and Political Crisis in Medieval Europe, from Caliban & the Witch
- The Debt Crisis, Africa and the New Enclosures
- The War in Yugoslavia. On Whom the Bombs are Falling? (1999, with Massimo De Angelis)
- "Viet Cong Philosophy: Tran Duc Thao". Telos 06 (Fall 1970). New York: Telos Press
- Development and Underdevelopment in Nigeria (1985)
- On Elder Care
Notes and references
- ^ "Silvia Federici biography". Interactivist. 28 September 2007. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- ^ "Silvia Federici biography". Democracy Now. Archived from the original on 20 April 2006. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- ^ "On capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics". Politics and Culture. 2 (Special Issue on Food & Sovereignty). 2009.[dead link]
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
- ^ "Silvia Federici, On capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics" Archived 2017-10-11 at the Wayback Machine, interview by Max Haiven, Politics and Culture, 2009, Issue 2.
- ^ Vishmidt, Marina (March 2013). "Permanent Reproductive Crisis: An Interview with Silvia Federici". Meta Mute. Mute.
- ^ "Feminist Resistance Against War: A Manifesto". Specter Journal. 17 March 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
- ^ "January 2018 (Volume 69, Number 8) | The Editors | Monthly Review". Monthly Review. 1 January 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ^ Cervantes, Hugo (22 January 2018). ""Out of this World": How Mykki Blanco and i-D highlight Johannesburg's queer life - Highlander". Highlander. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ^ Duffau, Helene. "Caliban et la sorcière: femmes, corps et accumulation primitive" [Caliban and the Witch: Women, Bodies, and Primitive Accumulation]. Club de Mediapart (in French). Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ^ "Le corps, terrain originel de l'exploitation des femmes" [The body, the original terrain of the exploitation of women]. Le Monde.fr (in French). 9 July 2014. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
External links
- Silvia Federici page at Generation Online
- Silvia Federici page at LibCom
- Midnight Notes Collective
- Silvia Federici Papers - Pembroke Center Archives, Brown University
- Tribute to Silvia Federici in The Commoner
- Audio from a talk entitled "The Body, Capitalist Accumulation And The Accumulation Of Labour Power" by Silvia Federici for Bristol Radical History Group
- "Academic Freedom and the Enclosure of Knowledge in the Global University" by Silvia Federici at Grahamstown, South Africa. 19 September 2013.