Feminism and the Politics of the Commons
Why has the idea of the commons become important in radical circles – signifying an alternative to capitalism – and how it is politically interpreted in different social movements ? What is the importance of a feminist perspectives on this? In her public lecture, Silvia Federici, will address these questions and focus on the centrality of reproduction for the construction of societies that are built on the principle of cooperation and equal sharing of the wealth produced.
Silvia Federici is a researcher, activist and educator. She was born and raised in Italy but came to the US in 1967 on a scholarship to study Philosophy at the University of Buffalo. Since then, she has taught at several universities in the US and also at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. She is now Emerita Professor at Hofstra University (Long Island, NY) and lives in Brooklyn.
Federici has also been a central part of the Midnight Notes Collective and a co-founder of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA), a support organization for the struggles of students and teachers in Africa against structural adjustment. Between 1991 and 2003 she was a co-editor of the CAFA Bulletin. In 1995, she co-founded the Radical Philosophy Association (RPA) anti-death penalty project.
Her ground-breaking 2004 book Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation (Brooklyn: Autonomedia), received critical acclaim as it presented a historically rigorous picture of the intersections of patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism and violence from the 15th to the 18th century. The book served as a crucial corrective to both Marxist analyses of the period of primitive accumulation which write gender out as well as to the fashionable academic discourse of biopolitics.
The lecture will be held in English.
18:00, Performeum
Akademie des Verlernens
Laxenburgerstrasse 2A, 1100