The Crisis of Social Reproduction

by Silvia Federici, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Louise Toupin

In a series of interviews with Louise Toupin, groundbreaking feminist thinkers Silvia Federici and Mariarosa Dalla Costa return to the movement they co-founded in 1972—the International Feminist Collective. The feminist collective originated the radical and controversial demand for wages for housework. From these powerful roots, they continue to explain how their political thinking developed over time, formulating an intersectional critique of neoliberal capitalism with a crisis of social reproduction at its heart.

Genres: Feminism

72 pages, Paperback

Published January 21, 2025

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

[GwenViolet · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of interest in these interviews (particularly in Dalla Costa and the influence of autonomist theories of the factory, social reproduction, etc.)

BUT, I can't but help find that Dalla Costa's emphasis on "biological" motherhood/fatherhood contra (non-specifically defined) reproductive technologies betokens a certain underlying conservatism which often crops up in "eco-feminism." The repeated use of "castration" to describe the land is also something ...

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a disappointing little volume. I read it in 15 minutes; I can hardly call this a book. I was expecting a series of in-depth interviews with feminist champions from around the globe and outside of the English-speaking context. There are two, short and bereft. And the galley copy was a nightmare! Paragraphs cut and dashed together haphazardly, warnings not to resell shoved into sentences here and there … I barely got through it, despite its size. I will only say that at least we get access with some storied history to a couple of leaders many may not know. But this would be better off an article in a paper.

Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Between the Lines for the advance copy.

[Arturo Perez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good intro to the topics they write about, but requires some previous knowledge to get the best out of it. It is a bit too short, you would like to have a more in depth conversation with these two very important scholars and activists. I would give it a 2.5 stars if the system allowed it.