Klei­nes Kol­lo­quium am CGI im WS 25/26 (November)

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Vortrag: “Reproductive Labour and Feminist Commoning. Practices of Self-Governance and Resistance to Neoliberal Capitalism in Latin America through the Lens of Silvia Federici’s Thought”
Vortragende Person: Chiara Langerame

This doctoral project aims to develop a genealogical reconstruction of the category of “reproductive labour”, beginning with a conceptual analysis of Silvia Federici's writings and extending to its potential applications as a political and collective practice in the framework of Latin America (with a focus on Chile). The broader objective of the research is to explore how the feminist commoning of reproductive activities can operate not only as a political alternative to the naturalised segregation of women, but also as a philosophical paradigm for reimagining forms of relationality grounded in reciprocity and interdependence, rather than in domination and subordination.

To this end, the project intends to explore the theoretical political thought of Silvia Federici who foregrounds the exploitation of women’s reproductive labor as essential to capital’s expansion, since it (re)produces labor-power in the invisibility of the private sphere. Federici (2004) reinterprets Marx’s analysis of primitive accumulation from a feminist perspective, highlighting overlooked historical processes such as the witch-hunt, which dismantled women’s social power, disciplined female sexuality and confined them to unpaid domestic roles. This epistemicide (Grosfoguel 2017) and genocide (Federici 2004) enabled capitalism to naturalize and exploit unpaid reproductive labor, framing it as mere “labour of love” (Dalla Costa 1978). In doing so, the capitalist system reinvented women’s oppression establishing an epistemic hierarchy among productive and reproductive labour, assigning the latter exclusively to women and other marginalized subjectivities.

This project also aims to explore the contemporary implications of Federici’s thought, particularly in relation to the processes of “new enclosures” and re-colonialization (Federici 2018, 2012) in the Global South. In response to the increasing marginalisation, privatisation and commodification that characterize reproductive and care work in the neoliberal present, Federici’s Marxist feminist theory of “commons” – means of the anticapitalist struggle – could offer alternative ways of resistance advocating for the communalization of reproduction.

Therefore, this project ultimately investigates feminist commoning practices as a strategy of resistance against the neoliberal hetero-patriarchal capitalism, focusing on case studies from Chile, where women and communities are resisting neoliberal extractivism through the collective reorganization of social reproduction. In dialogue with thinkers such as Verónica Gago and Julieta Paredes, the thesis argues that Federici’s framework not only unveils the historical entanglement of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, but also enables a renewed political imagination grounded in care, interdependence, and collective re-enchantment. Feminist commoning thus emerges as both critique and praxis: a transformative project of decolonial feminist resistance that seeks not merely to interpret the world, but to change it.

 

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