Silvia Federici

Silvia Federici is a feminist activist, writer, and a teacher. In 1972 she was one of the cofounders of the International Feminist Collective, the organization that launched the Wages For Housework campaign internationally. In the 1990s, after a period of teaching and research in Nigeria, she was active in the anti-globalization movement and the U.S. anti–death penalty movement. She is one of the co-founders of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, an organization dedicated to generating support for the struggles of students and teachers in Africa against the structural adjustment of African economies and educational systems. From 1987 to 2005 she taught international studies, women studies, and political philosophy courses at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. All through these years she has written books and essays on philosophy and feminist theory, women’s history, education and culture, and more recently the worldwide struggle against capitalist globalization and for a feminist reconstruction of the commons.

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By Silvia

Titles with Introductions/Forewords/Contributions by Silvia

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Praise

“Silvia Federici’s work embodies an energy that urges us to rejuvenate struggles against all types of exploitation and, precisely for that reason, her work produces a common: a common sense of the dissidence that creates a community in struggle.”
—Maria Mies, coauthor of Ecofeminism

“Federici has become a crucial figure for young Marxists, political theorists, and a new generation of feminists.”
—Rachel Kushner author of The Flamethrowers

“Federici’s attempt to draw together the work of feminists and activist from different parts of the world and place them in historical context is brave, thought-provoking and timely. Federici’s writing is lucid and her fury palpable.”
—Red Pepper

“Real transformations occur when the social relations that make up everyday life change, when there is a revolution within and across the stratifications of the social body. . . . Silvia Federici offers the kind of revolutionary perspective that is capable of revealing the obstacles that stand in the way of such change.”
—Feminist Review

“Reading Federici empowers us to reconnect with what is at the core of human development, women’s labor-intensive caregiving—a radical rethinking of how we live.”
—Z Magazine

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Praise

“Federici’s attempt to draw together the work of feminists and activists from different parts of the world and place them in historical context is brave, thought-provoking, and timely. Federici’s writing is lucid and her fury palpable.”
—Red Pepper

“Real transformations occur when the social relations that make up everyday life change, when there is a revolution within and across the stratifications of the social body. . . . Silvia Federici offers the kind of revolutionary perspective that is capable of revealing the obstacles that stand in the way of such change.”
—Feminist Review

“Reading Federici empowers us to reconnect with what is at the core of human development, women’s labor-intensive caregiving—a radical rethinking of how we live.”
—Z Magazine

“It is good to think with Silvia Federici, whose clarity of analysis and passionate vision come through in essays that chronicle enclosure and dispossession, witch-hunting and other assaults against women, in the present, no less than the past. It is even better to act armed with her insights.”
—Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies, University of California–Santa Barbara

“Silvia Federici’s theoretical capacity to articulate the plurality that fuels the contemporary movement of women in struggle provides a true toolbox for building bridges between different features and different people.”
—Massimo De Angelis, professor of political economy, University of East London

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Praise

“Silvia Federici’s theoretical capacity to articulate the plurality that fuels the contemporary movement of women in struggle provides a true toolbox for building bridges between different features and different people.”
—Massimo De Angelis, professor of political economy, University of East London

“Silvia Federici’s work embodies an energy that urges us to rejuvenate struggles against all types of exploitation and, precisely for that reason, her work produces a common: a common sense of the dissidence that creates a community in struggle.”
—Maria Mies, coauthor of Ecofeminism

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Praise

“It is good to think with Silvia Federici, whose clarity of analysis and passionate vision come through in essays that chronicle enclosure and dispossession, witch-hunting and other assaults against women, in the present, no less than the past. It is even better to act armed with her insights.”
—Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Silvia Federici’s new book offers a brilliant analysis and forceful denunciation of the violence directed towards women and their communities. Her focus moves between women criminalized as witches both at the dawn of capitalism and in contemporary globalization. Federici has updated the material from her well-known book Caliban and the Witch and brings a spotlight to the current resistance and alternatives being pursued by women and their communities through struggle.”
—Massimo De Angelis, professor of political economy, University of East London

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Praise

“Federici has become a crucial figure for young Marxists, political theorists, and a new generation of feminists.”
—Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers

“Federici’s attempt to draw together the work of feminists and activist from different parts of the world and place them in historical context is brave, thought-provoking and timely. Federici’s writing is lucid and her fury palpable.”
—Red Pepper

“The zero point of revolution is where new social relations first burst forth, from which countless waves ripple outward into other domains. For over thirty years, Silvia Federici has fiercely argued that this zero point cannot have any other location but the sphere of reproduction. It is here that we encounter the most promising battlefield between an outside to capital and a capital that cannot abide by any outsides. This timely collection of her essays reminds us that the shape and form of any revolution are decided in the daily realities and social construction of sex, care, food, love, and health. Women inhabit this zero point neither by choice nor by nature, but simply because they carry the burden of reproduction in a disproportionate manner. Their struggle to take control of this labor is everybody’s struggle, just as capital’s commodification of their demands is everybody’s commodification.”
—Massimo De Angelis, author of The Beginning of History: Values, Struggles, and Global Capital

“In her unfailing generosity of mind, Silvia Federici has offered us yet another brilliant and groundbreaking reflection on how capitalism naturalizes the exploitation of every aspect of women’s productive and reproductive life. Federici theorizes convincingly that, whether in the domestic or public sphere, capital normalizes women’s labor as ‘housework’ worthy of no economic compensation or social recognition. Such economic and social normalization of capitalist exploitation of women underlies the gender-based violence produced by the neoliberal wars that are ravaging communities around the world, especially in Africa. The intent of such wars is to keep women off the communal lands they care for, while transforming them into refugees in nation-states weakened by the negative effects of neoliberalism. Silvia Federici’s call for ecofeminists’ return to the Commons against Capital is compelling. Revolution at Point Zero is a timely release and a must read for scholars and activists concerned with the condition of women around the world.”
—Ousseina D. Alidou, Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA), Director of the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University and author of Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger

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Praise

“In the neoliberal era of postmodernism, the proletariat is whited-out from the pages of history. Silvia Federici recovers its historical substance by telling its story starting at the beginning, with the throes of its birth. This is a book of remembrance, of a trauma burned into the body of women, which left a scar on humanity’s memory as deep and painful as those caused by famine, slaughter and enslavement. Federici shows that the birth of the proletariat required a war against women, inaugurating a new sexual pact and a new patriarchal era: the patriarchy of the wage. Firmly rooted in the history of the persecution of the witches and the disciplining of the body, her arguments explain why the subjugation of women was as crucial for the formation of the world proletariat as the enclosures of the land, the conquest and colonization of the ‘New World,’ and the slave trade. Documenting the horrors of state terror against women, Federici has written a book truly of our times. Neither compromising nor condescending, Caliban and the Witch expresses an unfailing generosity of spirit and the dignity of a planetary scholar. It is both a passionate work of memory recovered and a hammer of humanity’s agenda.”–Peter Linebaugh, author of The London Hanged

Titles with Introductions/Forewords/Contributions by Silvia

Praise

“All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger, and the Female Body is not your typical feminist anthology, mostly because it busts open binaries, gender and otherwise, in brave and fierce ways. I have been thinking about the importance of feminism with regards to intimacy—in relation to ourselves, to our stories, to our work, to each other, and to the planet. This wide-ranging collection of stories and interviews is deeply intimate in all of these ways. All of Me brings you on a journey through people’s lives, connecting you to each story, whether the writers and storytellers are sharing personal narratives or ideas, they tell them in intimate, courageous, and beautiful ways. Bravo to Dani Burlison for creating the space for all these diverse and inclusive stories to be shared. By the way, reading this book will crack you open towards feeling more compassion and love. Read it. Read it out loud. Buy it for everyone you know. And then read it again.”
—carla bergman, coauthor, Joyful Militancy: Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times

“Visceral, raw, and personal, All of Me is the barbaric yawp of womanhood unrestrained. Ranging from the confessional to the call to action, this collection of deeply personal writings tears back the veil of womanhood to show the glorious and gritty guts of it all. Unfiltered, unadulterated, open; witness the wounds and the wisdom of what it means to be a woman today.”
—Lasara Firefox Allen, author of Jailbreaking the Goddess: A Radical Revisioning of Feminist Spirituality

“These stories of resilience center the voices and experiences often overlooked and unheard. All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger, and the Female Body is just what is needed to balance the torrents of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and violence filling our everyday newsfeeds.”
—Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

“All of Me celebrates rage as a way to reject a culture that isolates women from one another. Such a necessary read!”
—Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

“An incredible array of voices gather together in this tightly-packed, raucous anthology. If ever you felt the need to focus feelings of deep anger, All of Me serves as an almost step-by-step manual of rage.”
—Inga Muscio, author of Cunt: A Declaration of Independence and Rose: Love in Violent Times

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Praise

“I love this book, all of it. The polished essays and the interviews with birth workers dare to take on the deepest questions of human existence.”
—Carol Downer, cofounder of the Feminist Women’s Heath Centers of California and author of A Woman’s Book of Choices

“This volume provides theoretically rich, practical tools for birth workers and other care workers to collectively and effectively fight capitalism and the many intersecting processes of oppression that accompany it. Birth Work as Care Work forcefully and joyfully reminds us that the personal is political, a lesson we need now more than ever.”
—Adrienne Pine, author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras

“All we are doing in this world is living and dying, creating and destroying. We generate new life in our children and in our ideas. Becoming a birth supporter, getting to be an attendant to the miracle of childbirth, has transformed my social justice work. Our visions for justice are what we are birthing in this world. Learning to listen, learning to trust the body and the people, and learning to breathe will transform our movement work. Birth Work as Care Work demonstrates these lessons through showing us ways we can learn together to support the birth of new worlds.”
—Adrienne Brown, coeditor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“This book places the doula—as a caring birth activist—at the heart of reproductive care work in our modern society. Doula, a new name for an ancient traditional role, reappears today as women daring to reclaim their power through birthing and caring for their children.”
—Valérie Dupin cofounder and cochair of the Association Doulas de France

“Alana Apfel is an artist and a robust one. Weaving the logic behind birth, care, and reproduction together, Birth Work as Care Work documents how caregivers and communities are marginalized in society on a daily basis whilst working to sustain themselves and ironically, to sustain life itself. Her thesis seeks to put the human back into being.”
—Chitra Subramaniam, editor in chief of The News Minute

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Praise

“Black Box subverts the implicit agenda of most media outlets to deny the truth or to distract us from it. The journal investigates what is a necessary step towards understanding what needs to be.”
—Gabor Maté, MD, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“What happens if you walk away? What happens if you don’t? Black Box is both a philosophy of the street and a poetics of revolutionary encounter. Every page is voltage, orientation, verge.”
—Bhanu Kapil, author of Ban en Banlieue

“To think against and beyond the human catastrophe that is capitalism, we need to break down walls, open doors, cross thresholds, communize wherever we can—a black box not as containment but as focal point of the movement of undefined, undefinable rupture.”
—John Holloway, author of Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today

“Black Box is either our collectively written obituary or a time capsule of capitalism in its death throes. Let’s make it the latter.”
—Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege

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Book Events

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Reviews

• Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women in The Sociological Review
• Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women in Red Pepper Magazine
• Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women in Random Length News
• Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women in Race & Class Journal
• Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women in Anarchist Studies Journal
• Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women and Re-enchanting the World in the Feminist Review
• Wages Without Work: Revolution at Point Zero Review in Red Pepper Magazine
• Undoing Patriarchy— Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women in The Progressive Populist
• This is Not a Witch Hunt
• Silvia Federici on Witch Hunts, Body Politics, and Rituals of Resistance
• Revolution At the Witching Hour: The Legacy of Midnight Notes
• Revolution at Point Zero reviewed in Feminist Review
• Revolution at Point Zero on Z Magazine
• Revolution at Point Zero in Mute Magazine
• Refusing the Planetary Work Machine
• Reclaiming the Body of the Witch in Gods & Radicals
• Re-enchanting the World with Silvia Federici in PPE
• Re-enchanting the World in The Fifth Estate Magazine
• Re-enchanting the World in Socialism and Democracy Journal
• More Smiles? More Money: A Review and exploration of Revolution at Point Zero
• Marx and Feminism
• Engaging Federici on Marx, Capitalism, and Social Reproduction
• Engaging Federici on Marx, Capitalism, and Social Reproduction
• Birth Work as Care Work: Stories from Activist Birth Communities: A Review
• Birth Work as Care Work: A Review in SQUAT
• Birth Work as Care Work: A Review & Interview on Motherworldly
• Birth Work as Care Work: A Review
• Patriarchy of the Wage: Notes of Marx, Gender, and Feminism in College & Research Libraries
• “…women’s work, burdensome and invisible, has been naturalized as a primary structure of capitalism.”

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Interviews

• Witches, The Commons, Reclaiming the Body and Discovering Our Power— Silvia Federici
• Witch Hunts Are Back — And This Time They’re Targeting Female Activists: Silvia Federici on HuffPost Brazil
• Witch Hunts and Enclosures: Bodies, Land and Women— Silvia Federici on Making Contact
• Why ‘Wages for Housework’ Needs to Make a Comeback
• What Happens When Democracy Fails? Women Know.
• Watch Silvia Federici in conversation with Jenny Brown at Moe’s Books
• Watch Silvia Federici @ The Lab 12/7/2019
• Sipping Tea with Silvia Federici
• Silvia Federici— Women Challenge Capitalism on Making Contact
• Silvia Federici talks about Beyond the Periphery of the Skin
• Silvia Federici talk at Goldsmiths University 11/12/2012
• Silvia Federici Speaking at the 2018 Antipode AAG Lecture
• Silvia Federici on Women and Capitalism on The Dig
• Silvia Federici on Post-Growth Societies
• Silvia Federici on How Capitalism Endures on Against the Grain
• Silvia Federici on Capitalism & Witches on Letters and Politics
• Silvia Federici Interview on New England Public Radio: 2018 Schocket Lecture
• Silvia Federici in Conversation with Astra Taylor
• Silvia Federici at the Wooden Shoe in Philly on Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women and Re-enchanting the World
• Silvia Federici and Peter Linebaugh on The Laura Flanders Show
• Primitive Accumulation Closing Talk— Silvia Federici
• Patterns in Resistance – Witches, Work and Womxn: Revolution from the Kitchen— Silvia Federici
• Olga Rodríguez conversa amb Silvia Federici
• Marx imagined a totally asexual worker— Silvia Federici
• Many Movements, Many Steps Forward, a “Movements of Movements conversation”
• Dani Burlison on This is KRJF
• Collective Learning / Collective Care— Silvia Federici
• Capitalism and Witch-Hunts— Silvia Federici on Against the Grain
• Book Discussion of No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries
• Birth Work as Care Work: A Review & Interview on Motherworldly
• 8 Minutes with Silvia Federici

Silvia Federici on Witches, The Commons, Reclaiming the Body and Discovering Our Power at the Howard Zinn Book Fair 2019

Silvia Federici in conversation with Jenny Brown at Moe’s Books 2019

Silvia & Peter Linebaugh talking about Commoning Our Cities on The Laura Flanders Show

Check out Silvia Federici speaking at the 2018 Antipode AAG Lecture – “Between the Wage and the Commons: Directions for a New Feminist”

Check out Silvia Federici speaking at the Historical Materialism Conference in London, 2012.

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Mentions

• Wendy’s Subway Is Right On Track After Moving Further Down the L Line
• Silvia Federici Sees Your Unpaid Work
• Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle: Book of the Year
• Radical Doula Profiles: Alana Apfel
• Most Anticipated Small Press Releases: August 2021— The Big Other
• Forget Pancakes. Pay Mothers.— Kim Brooks in the NYTs
• Birth Work as Care Work Firestorm Books and Cafe 2016 Best Seller

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Blog

• Many Movements, Many Steps Forward, a “Movements of Movements conversation”
• Women’s Poetry + Prose for a People’s Strike: Roses & Bread at 25! with Silvia Federici
• Gossip Girls: Emily Janakiram on Silvia Ferderici
• Report From Greece, Part 2
• On the Labour of Activist Birth Work