Against the Hydra of Capitalism: Tales of Two Continents

Can the Working Classes Consciously Unite?

Silvia Federici: Revolution at Point Zero

Open Letter to James Nxumalo, Senzo Mchunu & Jacob Zuma on the Repression in Cato Crest, Durban

To:

James Nxumalo, Mayor, eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa
Senzo Mchunu, Premier, KwaZulu-Natal
Jacob Zuma, President, Republic of South Africa

We are writing to you to express our grave concern at events unfolding in the Cato Crest shack settlement in Durban.

After an illegal eviction in Cato Crest by the eThekwini Municipality in March this year, shackdwellers occupied an adjacent piece of land. They named the settlement “Marikana”. Since then, two activists have been assassinated -Thembinkosi Qumbelo and Nkululeko Gwala. A third, Nkosinathi Mngomezulu, is in critical condition after being shot by the Land Invasions Unit. A number of activists have been seriously beaten by the police. Other activists, including Bandile Mdlalose and S’bu Zikode of the shack dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who have been supporting the residents, have been threatened with death. 

Schedule of Public Events for Silvia Federici's Visit to Rhodes University 18 – 21 September 2013

18 September

Launch of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle and seminar presentation on Reproduction and Women's Struggles in an era of 'Primitive Accumulation.' - 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m., Humanities Seminar Room

19 September

Seminar for postgrad students on 'Feminism & the Commons' - 10:00 a.m. – 12: 30 p.m., New Seminar Room, Politics Department

Academic Freedom Lecture “Academic freedom and the enclosure of knowledge in the global university” - 6:00 pm, Eden Grove Blue

20 September

Workshop with activists hosted by the Unemployed Peoples' Movement – 2:00 p.m., UPM Office

21 September

Student organised seminar - 2:00 pm. - 5:00 p.m. Sociology A

Siliva Federici's new book launched in Johannesburg

WiSER and JWTC invite you to the Launch of a new Book by Silvia Federici

Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle

Written between 1975 and the present, the essays collected in this volume represent thirty years of research and theorizing on questions of social reproduction and the transformations which the globalization process has produced. Originally inspired by Federici’s organizational work in the Wages For Housework movement, topics discussed include the international restructuring of reproductive work and its effects on the sexual division of labor, the globalization of care work and sex work, the crisis of elder care, and the development of affective labor. Though theoretical in style, the book is written in an explanatory manner that makes it both accessible to a broad public and ideal for classroom use.

Speakers: Catherine Burns (WiSER) and Sharad Chari (CISA)
Tuesday, 17^th September 2013 6pm

Silvia Federici: An Interview on capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics

Silvia Federici: An Interview On capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics by TigersEye99

Reading group in preparation for Silvia Federici's visit to Grahamstown in September

Silvia Federici Frederici, the Italian–born, feminist scholar, and activist will be visiting Rhodes University in September!

Federici’s work is rooted in feminist, autonomist, and Marxist traditions that emphasize the centrality of people’s struggle against exploitation and of autonomous forms of social cooperation as driving forces of historical and global change. Her very accessible and incredibly inspiring work focuses on women, land, crisis and war, and the commons.

Permanent Reproductive Crisis: An Interview with Silvia Federici

by Marina Vishmidt, Mute Magazine, 7 March 2013

On the occasion of the publication of an anthology of her writing and the accession of a  Wages for Housework NY archive at Mayday Rooms in London, Marina Vishmidt interviewed Silvia Federici on her extensive contribution to feminist thought and recent work on debt activism (with contributions by Mute, Mayday Rooms and George Caffentzis)

Women, Witch-Hunting and Enclosures in Africa Today

Silvia Federici: Women, Witch-Hunting and Enclosures in Africa Today by TigersEye99

Feminism and the Politics of the Commons

Feminism And the Politics of the Commons by TigersEye99

Silvia Federici at the Historical Materialism 2012 Conference

Revolution at Point Zero

A review of Silvia Federici's anthology, Revolution at Point Zero, by Joshua Eichen, Mute Magazine

In 2012, we all pay at least lip service to the entanglements of class, gender, and race when not also struggling to incorporate other threads into our explanatory frameworks and actions. So when you come across clarity of vision that precisely explains those relations, one can only marvel that it was written 37 years ago and try not to be too dismayed that it isn’t more widely known. Hopefully this new collection of work by Silvia Federici will change that.

From Commoning to Debt: Microcredit, Student Debt and the Disinvestment in Reproduction

An audio recording of a talk by scholar, teacher and activist Silvia Federici at Goldsmiths University (London, UK) on 12 November 2012.

Metrópolis. Urban crisis, peripheries and activist research. Public activities.

Type of activity: lectures and debates Dates: May 5, 17, 18, 19, 31, June 1, 2, 14, 15, 16, 2012 Place: Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200 and Traficantes de Sueños Admission: free of charge, limited seating Organized by: MuseoReina Sofía with the collaboration of Fundación Banco Santander

Activity included in: Metropolis. Urban crisis, peripheries and activist research. Program for Advanced Studies in Critical Practices

Care Work and the Power of Women: An Interview with Selma James

by Julie McIntyre, Viewpoint Magazine, 19 March 2012

In their 1972 pamphlet The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, Selma James and Mariarosa Dalla Costa presented an original and influential analysis of “unwaged work.” This concept, which identified the care work that women do in the home as an essential element of the reproduction of capitalism, opened the door to powerful new forms of struggle among working class women and men. James founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign, based on the demand that women should be paid for their round-the-clock care work, since it reproduces labor-power day after day.

‘We no go sit down’: CAFA and the Struggle Against Structurally Adjusted Education in Africa

by Ousseina Alidou, George Caffentzis & Silvia Federici, 2008

This paper is a short history of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA) since its founding in 1991 to the present. It describes CAFA documentation of the formation of an Africa-wide student movement against the structural adjustment of African universities. It also details some of CAFA’s campaigns in defence of student struggles against both the World Bank’s role in propagating the introduction of tuition fees and the cutting of housing and food subsidies to students and the repressive action of the African governments against protesting students. We argue that academic freedom also includes the right to be involved in the production of knowledge and hence to have access to the means of its production. To deny Africans such a right in this period in history is to condemn them to the fate of being the damned of the earth once more and to put the ability of Africans to manage their own resources in peril.

Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint

by Silvia Federici

Precarious work is a central concept in movement discussions of the capitalist reorganization of work and class relations in today’s global economy. Silvia Federici analyzes the potential and limits of this concept as an analytic and organizational tool. She claims reproductive labor is a hidden continent of work and struggle the movement must recognize in its political work, if it is to address the key questions we face in organizing for an alternative to capitalist society. How do we struggle over reproductive labor without destroying ourselves, and our communities? How do we create a self-reproducing movement? How do we overcome the sexual, racial, and generational hierarchies built upon the wage?

All Knees and Elbows Of Susceptibility and Refusal

by Tom Roberts and Anthony Iles

This pamphlet is a sketch of some elements of what might constitute a 'history from below'. In it we have assembled quotations from esteemed historians, their lowly subjects and sometimes even their critics. Here, Thompson's phrase, 'all knees and elbows of susceptibility and refusal', from which we have made our clumsy title will help us express the necessary awkwardness of affecting transformation by writing history. For there are many attractions for the would-be radical historian here, but also obstacles and 'traps' of interest too. Firstly, we will attempt to reconstruct what is 'history from below' before we explore some tensions inherent in such a project. The phrase 'history from below' is the product of a group of French historians known as the Annales school. It is their description of an approach to subjects and areas previously considered historically unimportant. In England this approach was taken up by a group of Marxist historians who developed a set of methodologies and a world view at odds with the existing Marxist and historiographical orthodoxies.

Political Work with Women and as Women in the Present Conditions: Interview with Silvia Federici

by Maya Gonzalez and Caitlin Manning, Reclamations, 2010

You have written about university struggles in the context of neo-liberal restructuring. Those struggles responded to attempts to enclose the knowledge commons. Do you see the university struggles of the last years as a continuation of the struggles against the enclosure of knowledge? Or as something new? Has the economic crisis altered in some fundamental way the context of university struggles?