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#silvia federici
femalethink · 10 months
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Why procreation should be "a fact of nature" rather than a social, historically determined activity, invested by diverse interests and power relations, is a question Marx did not ask. Nor did he imagine that men and women might have different interests with respect to child-making, an activity which he treated as a gender-neutral, undifferentiated process.
In reality, so far are procreation and population changes from being automatic or "natural" that, in all phases of capitalist development, the state has had to resort to regulation and coercion to expand or reduce the work-force. This was especially true at the time of the capitalist take-off, when the muscles and bones of workers were the primary means of production. But even later — down to the present — the state has spared no efforts in its attempt to wrench from women's hands the control over reproduction, and to determine which children should be born, where, when, or in what numbers. Consequently, women have often been forced to procreate against their will, and have experienced an alienation from their bodies, their "labor," and even their children, deeper than that experienced by any other workers. No one can describe in fact the anguish and desperation suffered by a woman seeing her body turn against herself, as it must occur in the case of an unwanted pregnancy.
—Silvia Federici, "Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation".
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milksockets · 3 months
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"Performance flattens the content of social action, suggesting that the only alternatives open to us are consent or dissent, thereby underestimating the rebellion brewing in many acts of consent--the many forms of sabotage built under our apparent yessing the system, which under particular historical conditions, can turn into powerful movements."
Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism - Silvia Federici (2020)
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liberashen · 10 months
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“Capitalism makes acquisition "the ultimate purpose of life," instead of treating it as a means for the satisfaction of our needs; thus, it requires that we forfeit all spontaneous enjoyment of life. Capitalism also attempts to overcome our "natural state," by breaking the barriers of nature and by lengthening the working day beyond the limits set by the sun, the seasonal cycles, and the body itself, as constituted in pre-industrial society.”
— Silvia Federici
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heterorealism · 11 months
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maaarine · 7 months
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Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Silvia Federici, 2012)
WAGES AGAINST HOUSEWORK (1975)
"We must admit that capital has been very successful in hiding our work. It has created a true masterpiece at the expense of women.
By denying housework a wage and transforming it into an act of love, capital has killed many birds with one stone.
First of all, it has gotten a hell of a lot of work almost for free, and it has made sure that women, far from struggling against it, would seek that work as the best thing in life (the magic words: “Yes, darling, you are a real woman”).
At the same time, it has also disciplined the male worker, by making “his” woman dependent on his work and his wage, and trapped him in this discipline by giving him a servant after he himself has done so much serving at the factory or the office.
In fact, our role as women is to be the unwaged but happy and most of all loving servants of the “working class,” i.e., those strata of the proletariat to which capital was forced to grant more social power.
In the same way as god created Eve to give pleasure to Adam, so did capital create the housewife to service the male worker physically, emotionally, and sexually, to raise his children, mend his socks, patch up his ego when it is crushed by the work and the social relations (which are relations of loneliness) that capital has reserved for him.
It is precisely this peculiar combination of physical, emotional and sexual services that are involved in the role women must perform for capital that creates the specific character of that servant which is the housewife, that makes her work so burdensome and at the same time so invisible.
It is not an accident, then, if most men start thinking of getting married as soon as they get their first job.
This is not only because now they can afford it, but also because having somebody at home who takes care of you is the only condition of not going crazy after a day spent on an assembly line or at a desk.
Every woman knows that this is what she should be doing to be a true woman and have a “successful” marriage."
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sublecturas · 2 months
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"Ir más allá de la piel", de Silvia Federici
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Was reading Caliban and the Witch and thought this passage sounded familiar.
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hymnsofheresy · 2 years
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“Wagelessness and underdevelopment are essential elements of capitalist planning, nationally and internationally. They are powerful means to make workers compete on the national and international labor market, and make us believe that our interests are different and contradictory.
Here are the roots of sexism, racism and welfarism (contempt for the workers who have succeeded in getting some money from the State), which are the expressions of different labor markets and thus different ways of regulating and dividing the working class. If we ignore this use of capitalist ideology and its roots in the wage relation, we not only end up considering racism, sexism and welfarism as moral diseases, products of “false consciousness,” but we are confined to a strategy of “education” that leaves us with nothing but “moral imperatives to bolster our side.””
Silvia Federici  | Counterplanning from the Kitchen (1975)
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feministamala · 2 months
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"No es sorpresa que la violencia contra las mujeres haya sido más intensa en aquellas zonas del mundo más ricas en recursos naturales (el África Subsahariana, América Latina, el Sudeste Asiático), que ahora son objetivo de empresas comerciales y en las que la lucha anticolonial ha sido más intensa. Vejar a las mujeres es funcional para los «nuevos cercamientos». Allana el camino al acaparamiento de tierras, las privatizaciones y las guerras que llevan años devastando regiones enteras". -Brujas, caza de brujas y mujeres. -Silvia Federici
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beguines · 2 years
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The history of the body is the history of human beings, for there is no cultural practice that is not first applied to the body. Even if we limit ourselves to speak of the history of the body in capitalism, we face an overwhelming task, so extensive have been the techniques used to discipline the body, constantly changing, depending on the shifts in the different labor regimes to which our body was subjected. A history of the body can be reconstructed by describing the different forms of repression that capitalism has activated against it.
Silvia Federici, Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism
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femalethink · 10 months
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For the witch-hunt destroyed a whole world of female practices, collective relations, and systems of knowledge that had been the foundation of women's power in pre-capitalist Europe, and the condition for their resistance in the struggle against feudalism.
Out of this defeat a new model of femininity emerged: the ideal woman and wife — passive, obedient, thrifty, of few words, always busy at work, and chaste. This change began at the end of the 17th century, after women had been subjected for more than two centuries to state terrorism. Once women were defeated, the image of femininity constructed in the "transition" was discarded as an unnecessary tool, and a new, tamed one took its place.
While at the time of the witch-hunt women had been portrayed as savage beings, mentally weak, unsatiably lusty, rebellious, insubordinate, incapable of self-control, by the 18th century the canon has been reversed. Women were now depicted as passive, asexual beings, more obedient, more moral than men, capable of exerting a positive moral influence on them.
—Silvia Federici, "Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation".
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milksockets · 2 months
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binosaura · 4 months
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Preferisco parlare di gioia piuttosto che di felicità. Preferisco la gioia perché è una passione attiva. Non è uno stagnante stato dell'essere. Non è l'essere soddisfatti delle cose come stanno. È sentire i nostri poteri, vedere la capacità di crescere in noi stessi e nelle persone intorno a noi. Significa, per usare le parole di Spinoza, che capiamo la situazione in cui ci troviamo e ci muoviamo in accordo con quanto ci è richiesto in quel momento. Così sentiamo di poter cambiare, sentiamo di stare cambiando, insieme agli altri. Non è un accettare ciò che esiste.
Oltre la periferia della pelle: Ripensare, ricostruire e rivendicare il corpo nel capitalismo contemporaneo, Silvia Federici
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heterorealism · 11 months
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Men in their thirties and forties definitely want kids so you’ll find them if that’s your only criteria for life partnership.
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itsagrimm · 5 months
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thinking of doing the most niche political science thing and going to a "cosmos & universe" theme faculty party dressed up as an Autumn Christian Girl because of the Essay Mormons in Space by Federici & Caffentzis.
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