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Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons
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In this edited collection of work spanning more than 20 years, Silvia Federici provides a detailed history and critique of the politics of the commons from a feminist perspective. In her clear and combative voice, Federici provides readers with an analysis of some of the key issues in contemporary thinking on this subject. Drawing on rich historical research, she maps the
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Paperback, 256 pages
Published
November 1st 2018
by PM Press
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I skimmed this and even skipped a few chapters because I once saw a wise tweet about how all nonfiction books should be 7k word magazine features... So this is maybe a poorly informed review, also because I'm not super familiar with Marxist theory (skimmed those readings in college too) and haven't read Federici's previous book Caliban and the Witch, which seems to contain a lot of the premises here.
This book is divided into 2 parts, the first on why capitalism/globalization are bad, contrary to ...more
This book is divided into 2 parts, the first on why capitalism/globalization are bad, contrary to ...more
As a rule, I love Federici’s work, and this volume did not disappoint. However, I must admit that I did not find this collection of republished essays as compelling as some of her other volumes.
I would have liked to have seen more integration between the chapters, updates to the early chapters on “the new enclosures” (originally written in the 1990s), and more theoretically rich chapters. I was also quite disappointed by the one chapter specifically on North American indigenous peoples; it name ...more
I would have liked to have seen more integration between the chapters, updates to the early chapters on “the new enclosures” (originally written in the 1990s), and more theoretically rich chapters. I was also quite disappointed by the one chapter specifically on North American indigenous peoples; it name ...more
Silvia Federici in this book walks through an array of global cotemporary and historical struggles against capitalism oppressive and suppressive institutions and their mechanisms on the assault on the planet, women, children, and humanity as whole. She challenges us to reconnect ourselves to mother earth and to the commons. Through her illustrations in this book of the collective struggles lead by woman she proves to us the possibilities and challenges us at every step. I really enjoyed this boo
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Easily one of my favorite writers & revolutionaries, Federici has advanced the idea and necessity for the commons: social spaces & relations NOT governed by the logic of the capitalist market. Upholding indigenous commons & other international examples of rejecting capitalist enclosures, it is women can be found at the center of resistance. Women are the most exploited workers, doing the daily reproductive (& unpaid) work that are essential for the production of labor power and allows for the wh
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Feminism & the Politics of the Commons
by Jim Feast
Fifth Estate # 404, Summer, 2019
a review of
Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons by Silvia Federici, Foreword by Peter Linebaugh. PM Press, 2019
Silvia Federici was born in Italy, taught for years in Nigeria, made many visits to South America, and now lives and teaches in the U.S. This broad experience, along with extensive scholarship, provides the wide angle lens which enables the perspective on view in her new book, ...more
by Jim Feast
Fifth Estate # 404, Summer, 2019
a review of
Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons by Silvia Federici, Foreword by Peter Linebaugh. PM Press, 2019
Silvia Federici was born in Italy, taught for years in Nigeria, made many visits to South America, and now lives and teaches in the U.S. This broad experience, along with extensive scholarship, provides the wide angle lens which enables the perspective on view in her new book, ...more
This collection of essays from Marxist feminist thinker Silvia Federici charts two current trends: the ways that neoliberal global interests are taking land for use in the global market by invoking the language of “environmental protection,” “women’s rights,” and “progress;” and the creative ways women across the world are maintaining communal lives to resist these encroachments. Federici talks about reproductive labor—the labor that’s needed to reproduce life. She means childbearing and rearing
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For me Federici's Caliban and the Witch was ground breaking and illuminating. This series of essays, written over 20 years is equally as informative and brilliant. To try to capture all her analysis in this review would be a disservice to her work. One of the most important aspects of her work is her centering of women and the centrality of the oppression of women in the development of patriarchal capitalism. Her extensive analysis, not only of the history of this oppression but also how it has
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Incredibly readable and interesting. Federici's, "Re-Enchanting The World", is a fantastic read if you're looking to learn more about how the commons are made and enacted in our current world and in the past. I've learned a lot reading this book, Federici has an incredibly capacity to synthesize thoughts and ideas out of social movements, and you get the sense that she has talked to a person involved with every social movement she discusses.
This work is certainly a page turner by theory standar ...more
This work is certainly a page turner by theory standar ...more
This book is a collection of essays by Silvia Federici on enclosures and commoning. In Part One she describes the new enclosures over the past few decades in China, many countries in Africa, and in massive increases in debt worldwide. In Part Two she talks about resistance movements to these new enclosures in Africa and Latin America, and North America. She also presents a vision for what commoning might look like and why women should be (and are) at the centre of it. The last three chapters rea
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Federici is one of my pole stars. Full stop. So I devoured this. A few notes:
A brisk 200 pages, somewhere between academic and polemic, Federici’s most recent work links histories of the privatization of communal lands and social welfare programs to crises of the current moment and argues we should constitute struggles around the commons—the revaluation and collectivization of reproductive life/work that this would entail. She leaves her reader with the warning of history and a set of principles ...more
A brisk 200 pages, somewhere between academic and polemic, Federici’s most recent work links histories of the privatization of communal lands and social welfare programs to crises of the current moment and argues we should constitute struggles around the commons—the revaluation and collectivization of reproductive life/work that this would entail. She leaves her reader with the warning of history and a set of principles ...more
Federici is one of the leading US-based academics working in feminism and Marxism, and her writing has that corrosive edge of someone who has had to fight against a systematic hegemony throughout her career. That serrated edge is welcome, and this book exemplifies that voice. Section One has three essays written more than 20 years ago (freshly edited) that focus on the spread of capitalism into eastern Europe and China. The second section contains more recent papers about the role of women in th
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Interesting reminder that economics and feminism can't really be separated. I'm listening to Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America right now too, and male failure on household responsibilities comes up there, but Federici reminds us it's a deeper thing than the habits of time at home. It's an entire neglect of the home and food and childbearing and rearing by economics as a field. An assumption of women getting pregnant, having kids, raising kids, and never getting paid for that,
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Out of all the thinkers who emerge out of Italian Autonomist Marxist theory, I can think of no one else more important than Federici. Her insistence to tie abstract theorizing to racialized, gendered, and classed bodies is an important move to counter the much more idealized theorizations found in the dense pages of people like Hardt and Negri. As collections tend to do, there is a bit of repetition in this one along with some essays that have been published extensively elsewhere. With that said
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A strong collection of essays looking at both theory and practice. At times repetitive in content, which is understandable. In particular, I appreciated her conceptualization of the idea of the commons, the framing of neoliberalism as an ongoing process of enclosure and primitive accumulation, and of course her strong focus on the impact these processes have on reproduction and women, as well as women's resistances to them.
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Lots of information here, but more familiar and far less world transforming than Caliban and the Witch. The final chapter was also much less conclusive. There didn’t seem to be a thesis to this in the way that there was in C&tW. Worth reading anyway, and provides some ways to think those ideas (about accumulation and enclosure) through in the present day, which is needed!
I love Silvia Federici. Caliban and the Witch literally changed my life. But this collection of essays fell short for me - a little too disjointed and outdated. There were certainly some that were super interesting and I had some solid takeaways I found myself a little bogged down in the intangibles and struggling to form a clear path forward.
I recommend reading Federici's earlier book, Caliban and the Witch as it thoroughly covers the historical concepts that Federici frequently mentions in this book. This was an excellent expansion on the ideas in Caliban and the Witch and the examples used were wonderfully inspiring.
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On Dec 13, 1968, Garret Hardin published an article called "The Tragedy of the Commons", which explained in extensive details the problem with common ownership of resources. When resources are owned "in common" then they are not owned at all, there is no incentive economize on there use, and they are eventually destroyed (see, fisheries). You'd think that book about the commons would deal with this underlying problem, but, no, not this book. In this book the commons are just an never ending supp
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Aug 08, 2021
Audra
added it
Enjoyed the title essay, but the jist of this book was not what I anticipated.
Federici is a hero of the contemporary left, and was the keynote speaker at the Howard Zinn Book Festival in December 2019; I heard her speak there, and later the same week in a local bookstore.
The book is a collection of essays, a few from 1990 and the rest from the last six or seven years. Federici is a deeply serious thinker, a woman with huge international experience, and extremely observant. She’s interested in the commons, in how people come together to fight enclosure capitalism, and in ...more
The book is a collection of essays, a few from 1990 and the rest from the last six or seven years. Federici is a deeply serious thinker, a woman with huge international experience, and extremely observant. She’s interested in the commons, in how people come together to fight enclosure capitalism, and in ...more
Along with "Witches, Witch Hunting, and Women", this is one of two books I ordered from PM Press after meeting one of their staff members at a conference. (Their whole collection is fascinating, btw.) I'm looking forward to the deep-dive into Silvia Federici's work after the release of my next novel. (Coming in November.) These kinds of thought-provoking reads are what I enjoy in my spare time.
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Silvia Federici is an Italian and American scholar, teacher, and activist from the radical autonomist feminist Marxist and anarchist tradition. She is a professor emerita and Teaching Fellow at Hofstra University, where she was a social science professor. She worked as a teacher in Nigeria for many years, is also the co-founder of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, and is a member of th
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