by Leopoldina Fortunati
Verso
2/25/2025, paperback
SKU: 9781839767401
The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and 'caring' labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s
Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of labor globally in the 1970s, Leopoldina Fortunati's classic work expands and transforms how we analyze the sphere of reproduction, redefining the value of the individual's life and the labor performed in the home.
Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical notation and contemporary commentary, The Arcana of Reproduction is a foundational text and essential contribution to today's discussions of social reproduction and the history of Italian feminism. Fortunati's work provides some of the earliest theorizations of 'immaterial, ' 'affective, ' and 'caring' labor, and of the role of technology in reproduction, articulated decades before their popular reception in English academic literature.
Reading this work some 50 years after its original publication gives us the tools to analyze the contemporary state of capitalist development and of women's lives today. The text remains prefigurative and essential in our era of digital labor.
Translated by Arlen Austin and Sara Colantuono.
Reviews:
"The Arcana of Reproduction is a true tour de force, unique both in the world of Marxism and Feminism. Whereas Marxist-Feminists have generally only elaborated on the significance of Marx's work for understanding women's oppression and exploitation, Fortunati 'sweeps away' our common sense notions of production and reproduction by testing Marxian categories through their unorthodox application to the realm of reproduction. The result is a painstaking analysis that explores these two interlocking spheres as both interdependent and different--radically unsettling our understanding of both." -- Silvia Federici
"Fortunati's work is a groundbreaking classic of workerist feminism, distilling and elaborating critical concepts from an era of revolutionary feminist thought and politics. The work expands and moves beyond traditional Marxist categories, offering a bold and innovative analysis of the unpaid labor of the reproductive labor sphere that forms the basis of the capitalist system. In providing an analysis of a historical moment, she gives today's feminists an indispensable guide to understanding the importance and complexities of struggles over reproduction." -- Mariarosa della Costa, author of Family, Welfare and the State: Between Progressivism and the New Deal
About the Author:
Leopoldina Fortunati was a core member of Lotta Femminsta and the Wages for Housework Movement internationally. Along with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James and Silvia Federici, she composed many of the group's core theoretical and political texts. Her early work continues to inform movements concerned with struggles over reproduction globally and in subsequent work as a theorist of media and technology, Fortunati has been at the vanguard of contemporary theory addressing the relation between gendered labor and technology.