Oltre la periferia della pelle. Ripensare, ricostruire e rivendicare il corpo nel capitalismo contemporaneo

by Silvia Federici, Patricia Badji (Translator)

Mai come oggi, “il corpo” è al centro della politica radicale e istituzionale. Movimenti femministi, antirazzisti, trans, ecologisti: tutti guardano al corpo come terreno di confronto con lo Stato e veicolo di pratiche sociali trasformative. Allo stesso tempo, il corpo è diventato un significante per la crisi riproduttiva generata dalla svolta neoliberista nello sviluppo capitalista e per l’impennata internazionale della repressione istituzionale e della violenza pubblica. In Oltre la periferia della pelle, Silvia Federici, attivista per tutta la vita e autrice di bestseller, esamina questi complessi processi, collocandoli nel contesto della storia della trasformazione capitalista del corpo in macchina-lavoro, ampliando uno dei temi principali del suo primo libro, Calibano e la strega. In questo processo affronta alcune delle questioni più importanti per i progetti politici radicali contemporanei. Cosa significa oggi “il corpo” come categoria di azione sociale/politica? Quali sono i processi, istituzionali o antisistemici, da cui è costituito? Come smantellare gli strumenti con cui i nostri corpi sono stati “chiusi” e rivendicare collettivamente la nostra capacità di governarli?

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theory, Gender, Sociology, Politics

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2020

About the author

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 the Midnight Notes Collective.

Reviews

[Quin Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easily the most disappointing of Federici’s usually excellent work I’ve read. This book is very vaguely organized around the theme of “body politics,” but it’s often unclear what Federici means by this or what’s at stake for her.

As with her other recent work, she evinces a strange and poorly reasoned technophobia. She valorizes the body and the natural world against technology, to the point where she says some almost transphobic things and condemns modern medicine. Surely there is a difference between accurately acknowledging the complicity of modern medicine and technology with capitalism and oppression and veering off into a total rejection of modernity.

Also out of place is a weird anti-surrogacy essay that is at odds with Federici’s own much more nuanced understanding of sex work politics. Surely, if sex workers can be understood as complex political agents capable of advocating for their own interests, the same can be said of surrogates. Again, there is a valorization of “natural” pregnancy and maternity against the supposedly “unnatural” character of surrogacy.

There are some truly great essays in this book that save it from being a total loss. But this is a far cry from “Caliban and the Witch” or “Revolution at Point Zero.”

[Constance Siobhán · Rating 4 out of 5]

While less thematically coherent than her other works, Beyond the Periphery of the Skin nevertheless makes for fruitful reading to those already familiar with her other work, especially Caliban and the Witch.

Unlike another reviewer, I did not, as a transgender person, find her work to be even marginally transphobic. Federici raises important concerns in general regarding the capitalist aim to neutralize gender, but nowhere does she impugn the trans or intersex community as de facto collaborators in this effort. Explicitly, she includes the trans community as one of the targets of capitalists intent on an ultimately gender neutral workforce.

For new readers of Federici, I strongly recommend reading Caliban and the Witch first. And, to be totally forthcoming, it would benefit them to read Marx’s Capital Vol. 1 as well, though that’s a tall order. The reward of reading at least the former will be a more ready grasp of the variety of topics presented in this work, which does not flow so much as it drops into its varied facets à la commentary on the longer work.

[Read me two times · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mammamia raga. Questo libro è tritolo puro. Fa esplodere ogni tua certezza, ogni tua radicata convinzione. Ti fa perdere l'equilibrio. Ma lo trovo assolutamente necessario (non perché sia d'accordo su tutto quello che dice l'autrice, ma perché ti semina dentro qualcosa, un dubbio, una stortura e se te ne accorgi sei al 50% di quello che ti manca per arrivare al cuore delle cose). Da leggere.

[Seher Andaç · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her gün işe giderken, hep bir telaşla sabahı beraber omuzladığım kalabalığın bedenini bu kitapla birlikte düşünmekten kendimi alamadım. Politik bir kontrol, toplumsal/ bireysel denetleme ve düzenleme aracı olarak beden. Kısırlaştırılan ya da daha çok doğurmaya teşvik edilen kadın bedeni. Felsefe, tıp ve psikoloji ile terörize edilen beden. Tarihsel örnekleriyle ve dayandığı tartışmalarla oldukça akıcı yazılan kitabı elimden bırakamadım.
Bedenin sınırlarının ötesinde ne vardan ziyade “ne olmalı” bu kitabın derdi:
“Beden, yalnızca ölümle son bulan yok edilemez bir kapasite olarak hareket etme ve harekete geçirilme, etkileme ve etkilenme gücünden oluştuğu için, bedende ikamet eden içkin bir politika vardır: kendini, diğerlerini dönüştürme ve dünyayı değiştirme kapasitesi.”

[Ivan R. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of those book that you read, and you keep thinking, “ok you’re onto something here”, only for Federici to take you to the worst possible conclusion you could’ve landed on. I’m disappointed to see a “Marxist feminist” say, explicitly, some of the most ridiculous and anti-feminist shit I’ve ever seen, like the idea that “our grandmas” somehow “had it better” because they got sexually assaulted, you see, but in exchange for “financial stability” (I mean… when have working class, proletarian, marginalized women ever gained financial stability from marriage, I wonder), it was transactional, whereas young women today don’t -materially- gain anything from the consensual sexual encounters they have. It’s sad to see her advocate against technology depleting our sexuality and sexual experiences just to launch, like four pages after that, into explicitly anti-sex, anti-sexuality positions. I’m also exhausted of seeing the terrible takes of cis women (who have clearly never considered listening to a transgender person in their life) about trans identities being based on performance (and therefore immaterial and fake- and no, saying you don’t know much about the subject is not a free pass to vaguely gesture at bullshit bioessentialist, conspiracy theory “the performativity theory pushed by the transes is destroying feminism” positions), trans bodies being artificial (and therefore bad and capitalist, compliant with the same medical system that patologises and seeks to eliminate us! When we are SO often the first to criticize and be against the way the medical system treats us!), trans politics being individualistic and anti-marxist (please, listen to trans people for once! ONCE!) and so on and so on. Her position on sex work was surprisingly nuanced for the tone of this book, but we plummet into the depths of hell with a critique of surrogacy that naturalizes the role of the “natural” family instead of -you would never guess- even taking into consideration the *MARXIST* position of family abolition, which is like, the one single thing id take for granted when reading a MARXIST FEMINIST theorist. I picked this up because I was interested in reading Caliban and the witch and wanted to get a sense of what Federici’s feminism entailed, more generally, when she speaks about 21st century politics and not 17th century capitalism. I can confidently say I’ve wasted my money in a pamphlet of the worst reactionary TERF, “retvrn to nature” regressive BS I’ve read in a while lmao

[s · Rating 3 out of 5]

bit scattered & i skipped one of the sections entirely but i don’t think this is TERF shit at all n you’d have to rly misread what federici is saying to get there. it’s a slim book that reads mostly like a collection of lectures or talks than a thorough investigation of any single subject. mostly good to get yr brain going for more in-depth reading

[Lucía Ruiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Súper bueno, se adentra en muchos conceptos y dilemas actuales del cuerpo, la presencia y habitar los espacios. Da muchas referencias y se comprende bien.

[Magda Brol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming from Caliban, this was a much less clean and focused read (granted, the format is very different, but it applies to the ideas too). The essays were uneven, some quite shockingly superficial, with bold, unbacked claims. A few of the places where she decided to include trans and intersex people in the conversation made me raise an eyebrow to say the least - while not outright transphobic they were definitely concerning (why talk about people becoming cyborgs with chips in their brains and trans people getting surgeries in the same sentence?). In her essays she also fails to include women with disabilities, especially those that would prevent them from procreating "naturally" - something she puts on a pedestal along with an air of anti-medicalism - which seems like an oversight that's just too obvious.
I was also quite taken aback by the misinterpreting of Butler's theory of gender performativity.

That being said, it's still worth reading, but definitely not over her other work. It's a good one to get the brain going and think deeper about the questions she raises, even in places of disagreement. There are some strong essays in this collection, and it's quite accessible. I especially loved the last one about joyful activism and her exploration of the history of sex work.

[Andrew Kornfeld · Rating 4 out of 5]

came for the feminism, stayed for the marxism.

[Noah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Of the nominal "rethinking, remaking, and reclaiming the body," Federici consistently does the third.

The nominal "the Body" is reified, limited, within its powers, a body-of-organs.

For Federici, there is revolutionary potential in the injunction of the woman's body, which I feel stupid writing, but Federici evidently does not feel stupid writing. Here it is as Our Body: "Our struggle then must begin with the reappropriation of our body, the revaluation and rediscovery of its capacity for resistance, and expansion and celebration of its powers, individual and collective." (p. 123) The terms of this statement at least have immediate sense: Federici privileges the powers [or capacities] of "our body," in individual and collective arrangements. Do not exceed the limits of the body, at which it becomes something other, but rather return (re-: "reappropriation," "revaluation," "rediscovery") to the powers immanent in Our Body.

[I am personally aware that you cannot stop exceeding the limits of the body. Exceeding the limits of your body describes all events yet to come in the course of your life. You become other. In experience: nothing to be lost, everything to be gained.]

Federici wants to arrest becoming around some form of "our body," womens' body. [Singular?] {'If you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere.'} The form of womens' body can change, but it must all be attributable to her: "This is a body that expands beyond the periphery of its skin, but by appropriating, ingesting all that is eatable[!?!?!?!] in the world, in an orgy of sensual pleasure and liberation from all constraints. My conception is equally expansive but of a different nature. For what it finds, in going beyond the periphery of the skin, is not a culinary paradise but a magical continuity[!] with the other living organisms that populate the earth: the bodies of humans and the not-humans, the trees, the rivers, the sea, the stars." (p. 5)

Being, but it's resignified as "our body." Keeping up? Well: there can't just be being, in-of-and-for-itself, in reciprocal being and becoming, powerful, and resonant. No, if this isn't lost, then it must be somewhere off on the horizon. "This is the image of a body that reunites what capitalism has divided, a body no longer constituted as a Leibnizian monad," certainly not that, the excess that is actually sensible in all becoming, but "moving instead in harmony with cosmos, in a world where diversity is a wealth for all and a ground of commoning rather than a source of divisions and antagonisms." (Ibid.) So that's "our body," no division, all diversity. Problematizing? Well, the problem certainly doesn't receive answers here, but handwringing about the forms of division under pesky ole capitalism.

Other reviews of this book get things right: Federici's emphasis on the uterus, and the potential for mothers to experience reproduction in their bodies, makes her arguments strangely resonant with standard TERF ideology. I do personally believe that there is room to discuss how surrogate motherhood is embroiled in core-periphery, service-labor dynamics without judgment of the surrogate mother or the service-contracting family. Federici even manages to say towards the end of her essay on this that she doesn't want to judge surrogate mothers, nor attribute the phenomenon to the service-contracting family who arise from forces outside themselves. But the essay (and the sheer volume of ink in the essay spent on the plight of the surrogate mother) doesn't develop anything new (that is, anything other than this judgment) that Federici has to say about womens struggle. No, the surrogate mother essay sounds the same alarm as ever in the book: the body has been lost, the body of experience immediate to the body has been lost, the pastoral scene of subsistent people living sustainably on the land has been lost. "We should also be concerned - as many feminists have - that the subdivision and specialization of mothering into gestational, social, biological, represents a devaluation of this process, once considered a power of women..." (p. 70). This is what's getting the book called TERFy, and I would like to stress that the post-structuralism feminism Federici professes disagreement with is the same feminism that would show her the plenitude she rejects:
(i.) instead of a "devaluation of [the mothering] process," understand that all processes are conditional, contingent products of other processes that could have ended;
(ii.) instead of rendering that "devaluation" absolute, understand that all things have manifold values and that the observer is one of the terms the valuation is contingent on;
(iii.) instead of merely indicating that a novel process (understood by a normal morality as grotesque, monstrous, and other) is an injunction to mount a collective resistance, arrive at a productive resistance that can redirect a process towards its own "better" potentials. Surrogate mothering has potential for "good." You know that there is the latent potential for "a work of love, a pure expression of altruism, 'a gift of life'" in surrogate mothering, even if these potentials demand under other conditions and other subjects. Not every substance or contentious expression present "under capitalism" needs to be absent in a better arrangement of affairs. {The irony is a surface effect, there is pure becoming in the depths.}

I think that when Federici stresses the importance of goodness and joy in activism, in the book's small conclusions, it definitely stands in contradiction with the rest of the book. If you want processes to close on goodness, you can change goodness or you can change the process. When I say that this book is too negative I mean: I am not convinced that Federici has the right idea of the good, and she isn't planning processes. She'll mention mutual aid and other forms of positive action mediated by hardened forms of social arrangement, but only as asides. She'll mention transgender, queer, and intersex activism, but only as asides. Don't stay aside. Go in. Good things are possible.

Federici reminds me here of Bifo and little else I've read.

[Agus · Rating 5 out of 5]

La historia del ser humano es la historia de su cuerpo.
El cuerpo ha sido el elemento central del que se ha servido la humanidad para construirlo todo. Con el capitalismo dominando el mundo, esto no ha dejado de ser así, de hecho las élites repiensan el cuerpo como una herramienta más a su disposición para seguir alimentando el sistema, ya no solo el de hombres y mujeres, sino también el de los animales, aunque estos últimos únicamente son mencionados de manera muy superficial.
Federici se centra en especial en el cuerpo de la mujer, considerado el Capital como medio de producción del que tomar posesión, puesto que el suyo es el más necesario para el sistema debido a su capacidad reproductiva ya que "El Capitalismo necesita trabajadores, consumidores y soldados".
Además el Estado refuerza esa idea implementando medidas de control como las del "derecho" al aborto, que en muchos casos son prohibiciones expresas al mismo o los vientres de alquiler que en la práctica no es más que la mercantilización del cuerpo de la mujer. Además de políticas educativas que convierten las clases en una especie de preparación previa a la incorporación al mercado laboral.
Es por ello que debemos repensar nuestro cuerpo y deshacernos de la idea de que es una máquina de trabajo, rehacerlo a nuestros intereses, individuales y colectivos y reivindicarlo como la mayor forma de resistencia contra las injusticias del propio sistema.

[Abi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me parece que algunos temas los trata de forma muy acertada y la contextualización entorno al cercamiento del cuerpo dentro de la máquina productiva también. Tiene puntos anticapacitistas y antiespecistas que me han gustado, y un final optimista en cuanto a la reivindicación de la militancia gozosa. Hace énfasis en la necesidad de cambiar las condiciones materiales de nuestra vida para recuperar nuestro cuerpo. Algún capítulo también me sobra though...

[Sloane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agreeing with other reviewers, this book best functions as an appendage to Federici's other works for those who are already familiar with them. Developed from lectures given in 2015, Beyond the Periphery of the Skin elaborates on old themes, intertwining them with the contemporary moment. It's fascinating to read one the foundational Marxist feminists of the past 50 years (and, ever) writing in the current moment, using her wide lens of lived experience to aid in her critique of the today's leftist organizing. This is rare and to be appreciated. Federici largely lauds contemporary anti-racist, feminist, etc. movements, but stresses the lack of material, structural analysis. On the #metoo movement, she writes, "again many women fail to recognize that violence is a structural problem and not an abuse of power by perverse men. To say that it is a structural problem means that women are set up to be sexually abused by the economic conditions in which the majority of us are forced to live." She notes the same failure in the feminist movements of the '60s and beyond (the very same ones she was involved in).

Among the most interesting and unique essays in the book are in the second half: "With Philosophy, Psychology and Terror: Transforming Bodies into Labor Power," "Origins and Development of Sexual Work in the United States and Britain," "Mormons in Space Revisited with George Caffentzis", and "In Praise of the Dancing Body." Writing on capitalism's history and future of the mechanization and dematerialization of the body, which is indeed terrifying, the last essay, "Joyful Militancy," becomes all the more heartful. Federici writes, "I prefer to speak of joy rather than happiness. I prefer joy because it is an active passion. It is not a stagnant state of being. It is not satisfaction with things as they are. It is feeling our powers, seeing our capacities growing in ourselves and in the people around us. This is a feeling that comes from a process of transformation. It means, using Spinoza's language, that we understand the situation we are in and are moving along in accordance to what is required of us in that moment. So we feel that we have the power to change and that we are changing, together with other people. It is not acquiescence to what exists."

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series of collected essays (with one coauthored by George Caffentzis) by Federici stems from a series of lectures she gave on the meaning of the body--specifically focused on women's bodies, but not exclusively-- and capitalist body politics in general through the 16th through 21st centuries. Some essays are trained on discrete technological innovations (such as surrogacy) that point to the reduction of women to reproductive vessels, where not only their bodies but their children become commodities, in extreme manifestations of class hierarchies. Most essays though are focused on three themes or threads.

The first thread includes Caliban-reminiscent explorations of how women's bodies, sexual and intellectual expression, and reproductive function have been the subject of often violent repression in the service of accumulation and economic imperatives for recreating the labor force.

A second thread is her trenchant critique of Judith Butler, deconstructionists, and others concerned with gender as happening purely at the level of performance or discourse. She beautifully argues the acknowledgment of millions of years of evolution, of our rootedness in the body, and how women as biological beings must continue to constitute a political subject not only because of our history, but continued shared realities demanding political consciousness of women as a 'class.'

A third thread is more related to work in Revolution at Point Zero, more of a direct conversation about women's sexual pleasure as workers and partners. She explores how within the context of both the imperatives of the economic system's changes and within the context of psychology/psychoanalysis--it is an object of pathologizing, transformation into duty and work as such, and ultimately, made subservient, contained, joyless.

I particularly liked her last two essays about joy and the body, which takes to task her fellow leftists for the misery and self-sacrifice they demand of others and selves, rather than emphasizing the possibilities of the collective from the point of shared understanding and happiness, the possibilities of the body, the joy of the struggle.

Overall an accessible introduction to some of the themes she explores more at length in her earlier work.

[Paula Lahoz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aún no habia leído nada completo de Federici a parte de alguna Introducción para otres autores y he agradecido que su estilo de hacer ensayo sea tan directo y, a mi parecer, bastante accessible.

Las únicas cosas que no me han convencido han sido las afirmaciones muy contundentes ( sobre temas que estoy bastante de acuerdo con ella) pero que no se seguian de ejemplos o de citas para poder contrastarlas y el final del libro.

Me hubiera gustado que alargara más el capítulo de "militancia gozosa". La última página final sobre el daño superior que podemos sentir de abusos de poder viniendo de mujeres me ha sobrado muchísimo y me ha dejado con un sabor de boca algo raro al final.

Creo que de las partes más interesantes que tiene el libro son las puntualizaciones sobre la performance, que puntos flacos ve de quedarnos unicamente en esa retórica y el concepto de los límites físicos del cuerpo como lugar de resistencia. Y toda la parte de analisis sobre la evolución del trabajo sexual también me ha encantado.

Es un buen ensayo y tengo muchas ganas de leer más.

[catita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livro obrigatório, assim como O Ponto Zero da Revolução. É uma leitura que confronta qualquer ideia de emancipação que a gente tenha e mostra a superestrutura que coloca nossos corpos sob as moratórias do capitalismo desde antes de nossos próprios nascimentos. É um livro que mostra como as mulheres são corpos/produtos pro sistema. Corpo político, corpo discurso, corpo biológico, corpo social, tudo é posto à prova. Pesado!

[nunete · Rating 3 out of 5]

un baixón con respecto a Calibán y la Bruja, mais ben un compendio de ensaios non tan ben fiados que unha investigación exhaustiva como si o era Calibán y la Bruja. Algunha cousa interesante, pero moitas que me suscitan rexeitamento ou enormes dudas. Sigueme parecendo, por exemplo, que idealiza os modos de produción precapitalistas e mistifica a relación coa natureza dunha forma case (ou sen o case) máxica.

[julia dusza · Rating 3 out of 5]

ojoj… Federici zawiodlas mnie, w porownaniu z innymi tekstami, ten wypada bardzo slabo:(
genialna robote wykonała Joanna Bednarek swoimi przypisami, ktore tlumacza bledy autorki

[Sess · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s hilarious that this book was published in 2020 given how dated, mundane and quite frankly unacceptable some of the content is. Has Federici been living under a rock for the last 20 years ?? She should have quit while she was ahead (after Caliban) - for at most to save us from her rogue opinions but at least to be able to blame them on “the 80s”. Nearly gave it 2 stars, mainly because I liked the length and format (more lectures or talks than dense essays), but actually I wouldn’t really recommend it as I’m sure there are far better works to read on similar topics.

[Katrina Montgomery · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am ostensibly a Federici stan, but this collection was… bad. Very surface-level arguments/ kinda transphobic/ anti technology but not in a smart way. Idk. I liked the essay on sex work and not much else. Read Revolution at Point Zero instead.

[liv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely disappointing. Some of the arguments she makes in here are lazy and boring which honestly took me by surprise. Federici’s writing is often thought-provoking and incisive. Did not get that from this book.

[Briar Wyatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The afterword of the book (“On Joyful Militancy”) just reached in and grabbed my radically left political heart and gave it a bloody big squeeze. What an excellent book.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays, some newer, some older. Caliban and the Witch (of course) is a much better starting place on Federici.

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

The body is a concept that has been on the agenda continuously since the first period of man until today, is constantly kept in the foreground and will continue to be so. The human body, in fact, it is necessary to include animal and plant bodies in this, but to go from the specific book, the human body is an argument that has been constantly tried to be controlled and dominated, tried to be hidden and shaped with pressure and force. Governments were formed through the body, political economy emerged. In this work, Federici also took a very broad opposition stance by considering the capitalist system, which is shaped through the body of modern people and dominates the body, the powers created by this system and the missions that vary according to geography. Especially in today's body in a different format than it used to be when it comes to shaping referring to the case of a sanction from a psychosocial perspective, and no longer just the body itself rather than imposed a system of human psychology and the problems that arise due to the lifestyle of drugs, methods of treatment and suppression of fear, violence reveals that the way is working to educate solving with increasingly large crowds. Federici says that at this point you are expressing ideas that do not belong to you, as if they belong to you, and you are not aware of it either. It is no longer just about the body itself. Today's order reveals that it has gone beyond the boundaries of the skin and has begun to create manufactured minds and selves.

In explaining this, he clearly reveals how individuals who have been taken under control are guided in the face of every phenomenon that works to the benefit of the system, especially sexual orientation. It's a tremendous book. He has processed the emotional state disorders of today's people so well that the state of coming to himself occurs like a slap. My advice to the interested person.

[Áine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Overall everything is poorly developed, it's hard to tell what exactly is the point she's trying to make with this book. Her inability to develop a point and actually get to that point makes the book so useless, like there's not a single idea I can take away from this because it's generally all over the place. I can understand why some people are interpreting her arguments as TERFy and others think they're not, because she does not elaborate fully on any of her thoughts it's hard to deduce what she's actually trying to say. Everything is so vague and generalised it's open to interpretation.

At one point she brings up animals and their relevance to feminism, except she barely explores this idea, writing about it for maybe a page and a half where she goes on to say that basically meat factories are exactly like the holocaust – very fucking weird take.

She also presents some almost fringe ideas such as the meat we eat is poisoning us and giving us cancer because the animals are abused.....okayy. Also not a fan of her takes on surrogacy, poorly developed and came across strange - like everything in this work.

Her misinterpretation of Butler's theorisation of gender performativity is actually crazy, if you're going to mention it so much, at least have a really good grasp of it.

[roz_anthi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Δε θα σταθώ στα καθ' εαυτά επιχειρήματα του βιβλίου, που σε αντίθεση με τα πιο γνωστά έργα της Φεντερίτσι, σε αυτό εδώ δεν είναι πάντοτε σαφή. Τις σκέψεις της για την παρένθετη μητρότητα, τη θέση της σεξεργασίας απ' τη βιομηχανική εποχή και ύστερα καθώς και για τη σχέση του καταμερισμού της εργασίας με την κοινωνική αναπαραγωγή τις βρήκα αν όχι καθοριστικές για το πώς μπορούμε να συζητάμε, σίγουρα αφοπλιστικά πρωτότυπες.

Θα επιμείνω όμως σε ένα απόσπασμα από το τέλος του βιβλίου ίσως επειδή μέσα στην απαισιοδοξία μου αυτή τη στιγμή, αυτό είναι που χρειάζομαι περισσότερο:

«Η αρχή της χαρούμενης στράτευσης είναι ότι η Πολιτική μας, είτε είναι απελευθερωτική είτε αλλάζει τη ζωή μας με θετικό τρόπο που μας κάνει να εξελισσόμαστε, πρέπει να μας δίνει χαρά. Σε αντίθεση περίπτωση κάτι πηγαίνει στραβά. Η στενάχωρη πολιτική συχνά προέρχεται από μια αίσθηση υπερβολής σχετικά με το τι μπορούμε να καταφέρουμε μόνες μας, ατομικά, κάτι που οδηγεί στην υπερφόρτωση των εαυτών μας. [...] Το λάθος εδώ είναι να θέτουμε στόχους που δεν μπορούμε να φτάσουμε και που πάντα αγωνιζόμαστε «ενάντια», αντί να προσπαθούμε να φτιάξουμε κάτι. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι προβάλλουμε πάντα προς το μέλλον, ενώ η χαρούμενη πολιτική είναι εποικοδομητική ήδη στο παρόν».

[Nora F · Rating 3 out of 5]

very mixed feelings. enjoyed the first three chapters on body politics and abortion, etc. and i thought the chapter of gender performance and the critique of butler was really well done and useful, i liked the chapter on surrogacy and i loved chapter 8 - origins and development on sexual work in the us and britain. but some of the other chapters were kind of troubling. federici valorizes women’s suffering in the pain of childbirth, because it demonstrates connectedness to the body ? and also seems to be against modern medicine and wants people to embrace cancer diagnoses because medical treatment is disconnected from the body’s natural state. concerning, especially given that she talks about the contemporary threat of the rise of christian right wing movements, and as we are seeing today, these modern christofascist trad communities are all anti vaxxers raw milk drinkers, etc. frustrating because federici offers so many useful and insightful ideas for women’s liberation.

[Ερωφίλη · Rating 4 out of 5]

H Federici μιλάει «για το σώμα και τις δυνάμεις του - τη δύναμη να ενεργεί, να μεταμορφώνεται - αλλά και για το σώμα ως όριο στην εκμετάλλευση». Τα άρθρα εξερευνούν μια σειρά από θέματα που αφορούν το σώμα, όπως τη σχέση του σώματος και της καπιταλιστικής παραγωγής, το σώμα στην βιομηχανική ανάπτυξη, το σώμα της συζύγου κατά τον 20ο αιώνα και το σώμα της γυναίκας στο παρόν, το σώμα στο διάστημα. Προσωπικά, διάβασα για θέματα που με απασχολούν άμεσα: οι συνειρμοί της Federici πάντα με αφήνουν έκπληκτη και θίγουν ζητήματα με τρόπος που δεν είχα φανταστεί καν. Αγαπημένο μου σημείο αποτελεί η ερμηνεία της συγγραφέως για την τέχνη του τατουάζ, ως μια μορφή αντίδρασης των νέων απέναντι στην εργασιακή, καπιταλιστική πειθαρχία.
Μου άρεσε πολύ ο επίλογος, στον οποίο η συγγραφέας όρισε την χαρούμενη μαχητικότητα και ανέφερε οργανωσιακά ζητήματα παρμένα από την ζωή.
Υπήρχαν σημεία στο βιβλίο που θεώρησα ελαφρώς άστοχα, ωστόσο, ακόμη και αυτές οι μικρές υπερβολές κατά τη γνώμη μου δεν αφαιρούν από την αίγλη του έργου της Federici.

[Evan Williams]

Although it's pretty basic, I was definitely misled about this book by people with suspect values. It's a brief but solid hit at a lot of the hot-button academic issues (though pre-covid) with the background of Caliban and the Witch's insights. That book has aged well in my mind, and this one gave some clarity and direction to where my thought is heading in part thanks to that book's criticism of linear progressive history. Federici's critiques of cosmetic surgery, surrogacy, psychoanalysis, libfem sex-positivism, and antisocial political organizing are very reasonable if a little bare.

[zoe arenós · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un llibre fantàstic per entendre des de molts vessants com els nostres cossos són la base del sistema capitalista, sobretot en clau de gènere, i com ha de ser l'alliberament. A partir de capítols curts i específics, Federici parla de la reproducció, del gènere i la performativitat, els cossos com a força de treball i del treball sexual des d'una visió sistèmica. He gaudit moltíssim llegint-lo i, tot i que hi ha certes coses que m'agradaria debatre, m'ha semblat un molt bon text per començar a llegir sobre el tema sense saber-ne gaire.