Reencantar el mundo: El feminismo y la política de los comunes

by Silvia Federici (Autora), María Aranzazu Catalán Altuna (Traductora), Carlos Fernández Guervós (Traductor)

Común, procomún, comunes, comunales... las denominaciones varían, pero todas ellas apuntan a formas de propiedad, uso y aprovechamiento de los recursos, la vida y el planeta que no pasan ni por la mercancía ni por el Estado. En este libro, Silvia Federici explora la noción de lo común. Nos dirige la mirada hacia la gran expropiación, todavía en curso, que supone la inacabable imposición del capitalismo. Los comunes, las formas de organización comunitaria de los ecosistemas humanos, existen desde que se formaran las primeras sociedades. Y los comunes han sido el objeto prioritario de sucesivas rondas de rapiña y cercamiento capitalista, que todavía hoy persisten sobre a tierra, el cuerpo, la vida y el conocimiento, especialmente cuando estas materias se dicen en femenino.

Federici apunta, de este modo, a un futuro posible de emancipación, de organización no patriarcal y no capitalista de la reproducción social, que pasa necesariamente por una ampliación y reinvención de los común. Como ella misma dice: "El horizonte que nos propone el actual discurso y política de los comunes no consiste en la promesa de un retorno imposible al pasado, sino en la posibilidad de recuperar el poder de decidir colectivamente nuestro destino en esta tierra". Esto es lo que ella llama reencantar el mundo.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Politics, History, Philosophy, Economics, Theory

312 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2018

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

[juch · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 Marxists/accelerationists who believe that primitive accumulation is a necessary step in the communist revolution. I think we can look around us and see that actually, things going downhill seems to just mean, things going downhill. Federici says this more eloquently (yet without much academic jargon, which I appreciate): "It would be absurd in fact to view the demise of such villages, tracts of land, and neighborhoods as necessary, ultimately positive sacrifices to the development of a truly ‘universal’ proletariat. Living proletarians must put their feet some place, must strike from some place, must rest some place, must retreat to some place. Class war does not
happen on an abstract board toting up profits and losses, it needs a terrain."

Nice! However part of her worldview is that the technological advancements that have come with capitalism/globalization, too, are undesirable. Which like yeah, technology has lots of downsides, but it's hard for me to make a wholesale argument against it as a concept rather than advocating for it to be used/developed better. I think the way it has improved standards of living is pretty... important. Particularly for disabled/queer people (poet Franny Choi writes about this in Soft Science, I've been wanting to read Sophie Lewis on surrogacy). She has a good point that mechanization isn't a solution for everything in that a lot of domestic labor can't and shouldn't be mechanized. But it's leap from mechanization won't solve everything to what at some points feels like technophobia (I'm thinking about when she talks about how technology has affected interpersonal relationships, which like yeah there are downsides, but also many benefits -- Jia Tolentino's review of Cal Newport and Jenny Odell in The New Yorker is really balanced about this, and also poignant when she talks about how technology enables her to talk to her grandmother in the Phillipines). This is murky though, because Federici's vision of the ideal commons is rather vague, and it's hard to ascertain what she sees the role of technology in it to be.

The second part of her book is on commons and what they look like. The intro acknowledges "the difficulty to give words to such a powerful and rare experience as that of being part of something larger than our individual lives" and like I can tell; she struggles to really define the term. It's unclear to me the scale; she claims that they can be large and non-exclusionary, but is also against globalization. She claims that they should be stateless but also regulated, which I don't really get -- doesn't a body that makes regulations eventually become a state, even if it's run by chill earthy ladies? And she is really into subsistence farming (though does mention other commons, like digital commons, I wish she explored more) when I, selfish capitalist that I am, really don't want to be a farmer. Her impulse for this seems to be that 1) she wants to center women who traditionally do this type of labor and 2) she bases a lot of her analyses on pre-Columbian through present indigenous commons, in a way that I really wish were more rigorous and not just a few examples, and wonder is maybe kind of fetish-y... idk, I would really want to read an indigenous critic on this. I don't want to farm. I like to buy my groceries with money. I should pay more for them, eat organic/vegan. I don't want to farm!

[Quin Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 named no specific tribes, relied almost exclusively on the work of one author (Paula Gunn Allen), and seemed to be almost an afterthought. Lastly, Federici sometimes lapses from a Marxist critique of the historically specific forms technology takes to a conservative antipathy to technology as inherently oppressive. Her points that technology cannot be separated from the social relations that produce it, that it is incredibly socially and ecologically destructive in its current manifestation, and that techno-optimism among (non-feminist, male) Marxists is horribly misguided are all well taken. But that doesn’t justify some of the strangely conservative claims she makes about, for example, computers.

All of this said, this remains an excellent text on both the commons and primitive accumulation in our current political moment, and I wish more (especially male) Leftists read it and Federici’s other work. There is a disturbing affinity for state-managed economic planning, high tech futurism, egoistic individualism, and/or a fetishized, militaristic vision of state socialism among too many on the contemporary anti-capitalist left. Federici’s consistent advocacy for a feminist vision of the commons as a form of collective social relation necessary to the reproduction of everyday life remains a compelling and urgently needed alternative to all these masculinist follies.

If you are interested in feminist visions of the commons, collective solidarity, and a world beyond the horrors of racist and patriarchal capitalism, this is an excellent starting place, as are Federici’s other books “Revolution at Point Zero” and “Caliban and the Witch.” Another excellent texts similar themes is “Ecosufficiency and Global Justice” edited by Ariel Salleh. It is these feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, ecological, autonomous/anarchist/grassroots, and humanist visions of Marxism/anti-capitalism that hold true promise for our collective future, not unions of egoists or apologists for state capitalist regimes.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 whole world to even exist. As such, they possess a deep understanding of what is needed and what must be! A re-enchantment: land reclamation, liberation, revalorization of reproductive work, reconnection with nature and our bodies. Power that comes from the ground rather than from the state and relies on solidarity, cooperation & collectivity. The commons is a political frame by which we must remake the world and is the act of “recovering the power of collectively deciding our fate on this earth”.

[Katja Vartiainen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enlightening read, and pretty depressing. In the beginning of the book, we learn about the International Monetary Fund's demands of termination of free education in Africa. Then we learn about the hell created by the so praised microloans. When the women in Bangladesh can't pay the interest rate of 20% weekly back, they take away their biggest pot, which is the worst way of shaming the women. WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE BANKS WANT TO PROFIT WITHOUT ANY REMORSE AND USE THE POOREST WOMEN, AND THEY TAKE AWAY THEIR POTS. WTF. If this doesn't bring you Weltschmerz, I don't know what does. Oh, and between 2001 and 2011 20000 children were killed in USA by their families. Just pull yourself up from your boot straps!

There is the hope in the downtrodden yet strong women, the way they connect, organize, endure. The book is about the commons created and the possible way of reorganizing the society in the future. This option seems to appear, when no other option is left, and brings about it a dignified way to live. It is easy to be an asshole, it takes integrity to be human.

Still, There are practical issues. These movements are small, and the world still is the same, and the commons is a minor annoyance to the powers that be. Re-structuring the society to be more egalitarian is a huge thing. Growing your own food is great- it's also very seasonal at some places, and made expensive in many places. And how to organize then the production of medicine, for example? And what about the risk of tribal wars, which comes with idea of small communities? At worst it could be like Madmax Fury Road.
I would love it, the commons, owned by the people themselves, NOT the state, to work, I think it just needs a lot of details. Anyway, It is a good book.

[Juan · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 book because she provides an analysis with examples that allows for self-reflection as I aspire to work towards a better world.

[Ebrar Beyza]

beni çok içine aldı diyemem.
belki toprak sahibi olmak ve feminizm arasındaki ilişkinin daha yoğun anlatılması ile alakalıdır.
çünkü toprak benlik bi şey değil, belki o kaosun içinde büyümekle alakalı ama topraktan kendin üretmenin romantik tarafını göremiyorum. ama üretmenin romantik bi tarafı var, ve kitap ana bağlamda bundan bahsediyor denilebilir. üretmek insan için lazım. ve bunu yapmasını olanaksız kılmak ya da üretme eylemini parçalara bölüp asla bütün bi sonuç ortaya çıkaramamasını sağlamak bi şeyleri hasarlıyor. ne olduğunu bilmiyorum ama bi şeyler eksik kalıyor. ve o eksik kalan şeyler toplumu parçalara ayırıyor.

günlük hayatın robotlaşması bu kadar yıllık emeğin ve yaratımın geldiği son nokta olmamalı.
yaratma kısmını robotlara ya da yapay zekalara bırakıp; anlamsız ve fikirsiz, saf işlevsel emeğin insanların üstüne kalması anlamlı değil.

kürtaj ve kapitalizm.
‘devletin kadın bedenlerin, ve üreme yetilerini temellik etmesi, insan kaynaklarını tanzim etmesinin, esasen proletaryanın çoğalması anlamına geldiğinden sermaye birikimine katkıda bulunmasının başlangıcı olmuştur.
geliri güvenceye alma ihtiyacının kısırlaştırıcı bir etkisi olduğundan artık kadınların doğurduğu çocuk sayısı da azalmaktadır.
ama kendi üremelerini kontrol etme yetileri her yerde saldırı altındadır.’
şu cümle. hayvan mıyız biz? inek, kedi, köpek.

“küreselleşmeyle birlikte cadı avcılığı geri dönmüştür.”

‘kapitalist birikim emek birikimi olmaya devam ediyor. ve böyle olduğu için de hala dünya çapında sefalet ve kıtlık üretme ihtiyacı duyuyor. zira iş gücünü yeniden üretmeyi başaramayan ve ona daha fazla krizden başka sunacak hiçbir şeyi olmayan bir sistem mahvolmaya yazgılıdır.’
iş gücü yeniden üretilmek yerine başka 3. dünya ülkelerinden kolayca sağlanıyor. bu sakat sistemin dönmesinin tek sebebi belki de dünyanın her yerinin çok ulaşılabilir olması.

‘kapitalist sistemin elinde kalan tek şeyin kaba kuvvet olduğu ve artık sadece muhaliflerine karşı seferber ettiği şiddetle baskın çıkabileceği açıktır.’
o zaman tek çözüm bi şiddetin önünde şiddetle dikilmek mi? luigi?

sermaye uzun zamandır bizi uzaya çalışmaya göndermenin, bize iş makinelerimizden, seyreltilmiş ve baskıcı iş ilişkilerinden başka bir şey bırakmayacağı bir ortamın hayalini kuruyor. ama aslında dünya milyonlarca kişinin uzay kolonisi koşullarında yaşadığı bir uzay istasyonu haline geliyor; soluyacak oksijen yok, sosyal ve fiziksel temas sınırlı, hayat cinsellikten sıyrılmış, iletişim zor, güneş ve yeşil yok.

işçilere liberalizm mi yoksa emperyalizm mi diye iki seçenek sunularak sınıf mücadelesi birinci dünya savaşı öncesindeki duruma getirilir.
liberal seçenek, hayatta kalma becerilerimizi arttırmanın hayattaki tek gayemiz haline geldiği adeta bir triyaj ortamı içinde, çalışma sürecinim işlevleri olarak bir araya geldiğimiz piyasa mekanizmasını kabul eder.
emperyalist seçenek, fetih ve yağmanın uluslararası hale getirilmesini teşvik eder. biz de bu sayede diğer proleterlerin sömürülmesinde patronların suç ortağı oluruz.
muhtemelen bu ikisinin tehlikeli bir karışımını alacağız!

‘özel mülkiyet, burjuva siyasal felsefesinde özgürlüğün koşulu ve medeniyet ile yabaniliği birbirinden ayıran işaretken, yerli ulusların özgürlüğü mülkiyetin yokluğuna dayanıyordu.
insanların sahip olduğu şey toprağın kullanımı ve ekinlerdi: ticareti yapılan şey buydu ve zilliyet hakkı geçişleri engellemiyordu.��

neoliberalizm ve küreselleşme çağında ilksel birikim ve ortak zenginliğin özelleştirilmesi kalıcı bir hal almıştır. bugün varoluşumuzun her alanına uzanmaktadır. görülmemiş boyutta bir toprak gaspı olarak görünen bu süreçte araziler, ormanlar, balık sahaları ticari amaçlarla sahiplenilmekle kalmıyor, içtiğimiz sudan bedenimizdeki hücrelere ve genomlara her şeyin fiyat etiketinin olduğu, yani patentlendiği bi dünyada yaşıyoruz.


KADINLARIN ERKEKLERİN MÜŞTEREĞİ OLARAK NİTELENDİĞİ, KAPİTALİSTLERİN DOĞANIN ZENGİNLİKLERİNİ SAHİPLENDİĞİ GİBİ ERKEKLERİN SERBESTÇE SAHİPLENDİĞİ DOĞAL BİR ZENGİNLİK VE HİZMET KAYNAĞI OLDUĞU, KOLEKTİF BİLİNCİMİZİN DERİNLERİNE KAZINMIŞTIR.

erkeklerin her şeyi kendine hak görmesini, ‘benim’ fikrini, tabiki kararı ben veriyorum tavrını, namus saçmalığını yaratmalarını, rahmimize kadar bedenimizdeki her milim hakkında söz sahibi olduklarına inanmalarını açıklar gibi.
kapitalizm erkek icadıdır, modern bir cadı avı olmasının yanında hemcinslerine de dönmüş bir silahtır. o tetik çekilmiştir, çekilmektedir, çekilecektir.

[Joannie Blais · Rating 5 out of 5]

Federici est phénoménale

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

It feels like a building block in the hand, but a building block with further instructions written on it. Near-perfect summations of the contemporary issue of disconnect, but with beautifully useful case studies and rethinkings of old theories. Debt chapter and Africa chapter were very eye-opening. Something is coming together. I hope it's us, with the land.

[chloe prasetya · Rating 4 out of 5]

just as natives does with race and class, this book disaggregates industrial from reproductive labour. rather than lumping them together as 'proletariat', federici articulates their distinct relationships with capital. she asserts that reproductive labour is the more affective and un-mechanizable of the two, and therefore lends itself to more cooperative living. plus, using reproductive resources - to clean, to cook, to raise a child - requires an acute awareness of planetary limits. i’d heard of ecofeminism before, but wasn’t sure what it entailed until i read this.

federici debunks lots of myths about the neoliberal order: that capitalism is not, in fact, a necessary precondition to communism; microfinance as, under the guise of self-investment, individualizing subsistence livelihoods and the burden of repaying debt; IMF and world bank-touted forms of development as expropriating land and people and only allowing those who can pay (like ecotourists) to access the commons.

what i liked was that despite federici’s many delineations of what’s wrong with our today, she doesn’t endorse any one future trajectory, like a return to a pre-technological past. what she endorses is the power to communally imagine some future, any future, outside capitalism’s logic.

i would just note that the introduction is deceptively inaccessible – its jargon-heaviness nearly made me put down the book entirely, had i not decided to read the rest of it before returning to the intro. that worked out better because the intro is pretty much the entire volume compressed, meaning it uses the same terminology, just without the accompanying explanations.

[Ceren]

The problem of technology, particularly its role in ecological crises of our period, is a significant challenge — of which I'm still trying to develop a nuanced understanding.

In my experience, even within the academic setting of graduate-level critical theory courses, raising concerns about the human and environmental consequences of technology can provoke accusations of romanticizing a bygone era, being disconnected from reality by envisioning utopias, or even being labeled as an extreme primitivist, deemed ready to confiscate everyone's phones (how dare they!). The 'positive' attitude of accelerationists is more easily adopted.

That is why, I think, one of Federici's insights resonates deeply, when she highlights society's tendency to overlook or be surprised by the level of scientific and technological knowledge that existed before the rise of capitalism. This oversight reflects the entrenched belief equating capitalism with progress in these domains.

The main task, it seems, is to be able to see that capitalism often violently suppresses alternative forms of knowledge and technology that don't serve its profit-driven agenda — forms that resist being subsumed under an exchange logic.

[Bookish]

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, of course, but also cooking, cleaning, farming, and everything else that we need to sustain ourselves. For her, reproductive labor is being transformed by women around the world to create communities that are more deeply connected to each other, to their natural surroundings, and to the natural cycles of the world. If you like the way that Rebecca Solnit maps out pockets of resistance, resilience, creativity, and community, I recommend picking up Re-Enchanting the World. —Nina (excerpted from Bookish's Staff Reads)

[Hannah Wattangeri · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 impacted in different parts of the world is crucial. Her explanation of how the concept of the development of 'commons'; of communality and of our interaction with each other and with nature is a way forward to revolutionize and defeat capitalist patriarchy can give us all some hope.

[Taciana Pontual · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essa foi uma leitura que eu só consegui fazer em grupo, com mediação e explicações. Meu primeiro contato com a filósofa italiana Silvia Federici, autora do famoso Calibã e a bruxa, que eu ainda não li. As teorias dos comuns, aliadas ao feminismo e, de certa forma, ao marxismo (em alguns aspectos), são difíceis de entender e digerir. Podem parecer, na maior parte do tempo, utópicas, mas a intenção de Silvia é justamente mostrar que não o são. E ela consegue nos fazer acreditar que um outro mundo é possível. Mas mais do que isso, ela nos faz nos dar conta do absurdo que é o capitalismo, e das estratégias cruéis e aprisionantes adotadas pelas grandes potências mundiais para dominar e explorar, muitas vezes disfarçadas de ações humanitárias e "desenvolvimentistas". Conhecer a visão de Silvia mudou para sempre meu modo de ver o mundo, e isso já faz a leitura valer muito a pena.

[Jenna Haver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I overall enjoyed the concept of the book and her feminist/Marxist perspective on commoning. But I was not 100% on board with everything she said—some of her essays were stronger than others and I did feel at times the overall thread got a little lost since the book was made of essays over a large time span.

[Sheisheioh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessant anàlisi de com les polítiques i reivindicacions del comuns s'han mostrat quasi instintivament front al desenvolupament del sistema i com, dins d'aquests moviments, les dones han sigut part de les accions clau.

[Alex Betsos · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 standards, but that's a pretty low-bar. It is thought-provoking, and I will have to chew on a lot of Federici's ideas for awhile.

There's a tension I couldn't shake reading "Re-Enchanting the World", but I need to unpack it and read more before I feel confident in it.

[W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feels a bit outdated pre 2020 politics ... still has some relevant chapters

[myuh · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’m a changed person, i enjoyed economic theory.

[Becky Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 really had a profound effect on me as she posited her vision for a relational, sensual commoning with visions other Marxists have for a more mechanized, techno future. She also, throughout the book, makes compelling arguments for creating autonomous, open commons that cannot be coopted by capitalism or the state. She leaves readers with the question "How to reconstitute the social fabric of our lives and transform the home and neighbourhood into places of resistance and political reconstruction?" I think I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure this out! One critique is that the essays are written from the 80s-the present, but this wasn't made clear until you started to dig into the essay. I think this will be confusing for some people, an indication of when the essay was originally written would have been helpful.

[Mathilde Hdt · Rating 5 out of 5]

«(…) les communs constituent autant la fin que les moyens de nos luttes et de notre vie quotidienne. Sous leur forme embryonnaire, ils représentent tout autant les relations sociales vers lesquelles nous voulons tendre que les conditions de leur construction. La lutte pour les communs n’est pas une lutte à part, mais une perspective que nous pouvons adopter dans toutes les luttes et tous les mouvements sociaux auxquels nous participons. (…) “résister, ce n’est pas seulement refuser de soutenir un mauvais gouvernement ou cesser de payer ses impôts ou ses factures d’électricité. Résister, c’est construire tout ce dont nous avons besoin pour maintenir notre peuple vie”»

[Auden White · Rating 5 out of 5]

quite good!

[17CECO · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 to apply to a mercurial present.
Highlights of Federici's economic history: microfinance isn’t about empowering female producers but destroying their collectivist survival strategies to link individual small producers to global markets of debt and commodity. The financialization of everyday life eclipses mutual support and solidarity with competition for market shares and the resultant elevation of a few winners (to appear on an NGO poster!) and the total dispossession through mounting of many many more.
The counter-narrative in regard to China’s economic transition: part of the 1989 crack-down on students and their demands for social liberalization was the state’s crackdown against workers demonstrating against the assault on their rights and crucial social programs that were being scaled back as part of state-engineered economic liberalization. Federici: “Economic liberalism not only is compatible with but, at crucial times, requires social fascism” (45).
It is difficult to tell if Federici proposes a “conservative” version of the commons or an “emergent” model. I’ll try to outline her movements in both directions. A flexible commons emerges in her chapter written with George Caffentzis, “Commons Against and Beyond Capitalism” in which they develop principles to define anticapitalist commons against bourgeois commons (often cooperative spaces based on exclusion) and technocratic mystifications such as “the global commons.” The principles: equal access to the means of reproduction; commons are not things but social relations; commons require community (they are no things); the social relations of commoning are anti-hierarchical and involve direct democracy; commons do not require the state; commons should be a locus from which to explore the communalization of other facets of life (they must be interested if not merely self-maintenance but proliferation). Elsewhere Federici charts emergent commoning in concrete forms: womens’ claiming of public space in South America for economic purposes, including the destruction of walls that obstruct their easements, and urban agriculture in African cities coupled with a serving of Raúl Zibechi’s spicy takedown of Mike Davis’ jaundiced term “planet of slums,” suggesting rather a planet of emerging urban commons and folks, especially women, asserting and winning in everyday acts a right to the city (turning public space to commons?). Cool cool cool. In my reading, the book came to life in these portraits of urban commoning as they describe the adaptation of commoning principles with specific historical contexts. And even when Federici turns to traditional agricultural commons, she affirms how resistance itself often involves forging novel tactics and social relations.
Throughout the final three chapters, Federici spends a great deal of time writing against technological optimism and her prime example of emergent commoning, the urban garden (no chance of bourgeois cooption of this one, eh?), still looks a lot like traditional commons (or some discussion of what makes them so novel would be useful). So this, I think, is a fundamental tension in the work: a celebration of emergent forms of urban commoning and an insistence on traditional forms of commoning based in a valorization of soil and land.
This tension must also be considered in light of Federici’s claim that “the destruction of communal land regimes is still the backbone of the present phase of capitalist development” (3). From many points in the US, this destruction may seem like history, replaced by what Dyson calls superexploitation of minoritized communities.
I’d like to see someone or Federici herself linger longer on the implications of the idea that “the public”/public spaces are intermediate terrains between anti-statist commons and a totally privatized neoliberal hellscape.

[Lisa Pontén · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone who wants to imagine a different world.

Federici's book is a collection of essays and reflections on responses to the crisis of racist, misogynist, predatory and all-encompassing capitalism and neoliberalism where individualist, private property concepts are refused - instead organising reproductive sphere collectively to reduce cost of living for all; acting and producing outside of the capitalist sphere whenever possible; and reclaiming / reappropriating urban and rural places for collective use. Recognising the undeniable role of indigenous communities and practices, she denounces ideas of 'progressive modes' of capitalist modes of production, rejecting also the universalisation of knowledge and mechanisation of the world.

pp. 7-8

"Commoners today repudiate the progressive role of capital, demand control over the decisions that most affect their lives, assert their capacity for self-government, and reject the imposition of a unitary model of social and cultural life, in the spirit of the Zapatistas' "One No, and Many Yeses", that is, many roads to the common, corresponding to our different historic and cultural trajectories and environmental conditions. Furthermore, 150 years after the publication of Capital, we can verify that the technological development to which Marx consigned the task of constructing the material bases of communism is destroying not only the remaining communitarian regimes but also the possibility of life and reproduction on this earth for a growing number of species.

Furthermore, we must ask: Is the mechanization and even robotization of our daily life the best that thousands of years of human labor can produce? Can we imagine reconstructing our lives around a commoning of our relations with others, including animals, waters, plants, and mountains - which the large-scale construction of robots will certainly destroy? This is the horizon that the discourse and the politics of the commons opens for us today, no tth epromise of an impossible return to the past but the possibility of recovering the power of collectively deciding our fate on this earth. This is what I call re-enchanting the world."

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 the workforce, framed around the idea of commons (historically) but that focuses more on Marxist theory than on the historical commons.

Some of the essays are tremendously weighted and meticulously researched. Two favourites were the insightful and in-depth "Women's struggle for land and the common good in Latin America" that uses examples from across the continent of women's use of commons as a mode of resistance, and the broad analytical critique of history and politics in "From Crisis to Commons" which covers reproductive work, some of the paradoxes of capitalist-led feminism, and the practice of everyday life. Unfortunately, as with most anthologies, there are good and bad essays. Some of these are either repetitive of other sections in the book, or (particularly with the older essays) make broad claims that are not fully substantiated within the research. There is also a tendency toward the American type of labelling, using broad terms like "Africa" to substitute for a small section of countries covered. This last point, I suspect, is more of an editorial decision than a writer's one.

As a theoretical book by one of the most outspoken feminist theorists of our time, this would be a good introduction to many high-reaching topics. As a more in-depth study on the commons it falls a little short.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

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, and somehow living while doing it. Federici points out the social networks and urban farming and informal labor and trade practices that so many people have relied on to live are generally operated by women. Early essays point to micro-lending as almost a predation on those social networks, and then show similar incursions into commonly farmed lands and urban farming practices through 'development' programs which threaten the basics of living. There's good excerpts and examples from Africa and Latin America, some discussion of Asia and great footnotes. Definitely one of those books where finishing inspires a few more, in this case some Dolores Hayden and Compañeras: Zapatista Women's Stories.

Read through my Kobo e-reader, purchased from the publisher and as part of a political book club, although I forget which one. Sunrise Movement maybe?

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

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, however, Federici's chapter women's struggles in Latin America after the crash of the pink wave of rebellions is worth the price of admission alone. She does a great job of prioritizing resistances in the Global South and Africa that are often overlooked. She attentively writes, "The new paradigms may come from those in the fields, kitchens, and fishing villages across the planet struggle to disentangle their reproduction from the hold of corporate power and preserve our common wealth" (195). She correctly observes that social reproduction serves as a core concept in understanding a broader array of resistance, which Marx had largely overlooked. Women, in other words, who are most associated with this type of reproductive labor even today, play core roles in resistance since the feminization of labor in many ways places their experiences and resistances at the forefront. I cannot recommend enough people interested in sophisticated Marxist analysis purchase anything that Federici has produced. This book is no exception.

[Pierre-Olivier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnifique plaidoyer pour le travail reproductif (en périphérie de l’autovalorisation de la valeur et à l’extérieur de la forme marchandise ) et la reprise de notre pouvoir collectif et individuel dans la vie de tous les jours, ici et maintenant. La politique des communs promu par federici se veut encrée dans la remise en place de la subsistance, de l’action transformatrice du quotidien , des relations sociales du care, de la résistance aux rôles de sexes et de genre historiquement assimilés et socialement déterminés, et de la remise en question de la modernité des lumières et de ses dérives technique. La première partie sur la permanence des enclosures me laisse un peu sur ma faim mais la deuxième partie du livre est magistrale. Surtout le texte : marxisme, féminisme et communs. Comme le dit si bien federici en conclusion : « en tant que base matérielle de notre vie et premier terrain sur lequel nous pouvons mettre en pratique nos capacités d’autogestion, le travail reproductif est le « point zéro de la révolution » . À lire conjointement avec le travail des féministes de la subsistance de l’école de bielefield et les écrits de Genevieve Pruvost.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely benefited from learning about the commons, especially in South America, Africa, and South Asian regions, but like the other Federici essay collections that are part of this series, Re-Enchanting the World also suffers from the fact that many of Federici's essays 1) are dated/have not been sufficiently updated, judging by the references (there are no publication dates given for individual chapters which would have been useful), 2) use a pretty narrow Marxist lens that tends towards binaries (resistance/oppression, enchantment/alienation, capitalism/communitarianism, reproductive labor/industrial work), 3) repeat the same arguments, evidence, and ideas verbatim without pushing them further (and why does every single piece include a plug for Caliban and the Witch?), and 4) reprint essays from the other collections without acknowledgement. Annoyingly, the most important theoretical article in this collection--on feminism, Marxist theory, and the commons--can also be found in Patriarchy of the Wage.

[goatmilksoda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do agree that this book is a toughie, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's closer to a journal article to be used in academia than a pop-science book. That being said, I found some of the claims dated by the events of the past few years and some parts based on shaky assumptions and correlation vs causation mistakes that fail to make a convincing argument for some of the claims presented. I also do wish that some of the conclusion had included a bit more practical steps to brining this feminist utopia around, as much of the book focuses more on the negative arguments of the evils of our current society instead of how these problems would be practically remedied (although community gardens and subsistence farming are mentioned repeatedly, I did not find this to be enough given the emphasis on how massive the problems with our current society are.)

[Laura OBrien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend — very interesting critique on Marxism and broader commons literature through a feminist lens. Anyone looking to read this should probably read some of Elinor Ostrom’s writing beforehand to get background on mainstream academic depictions of the commons. In some ways this left me with more questions than answers, and a piqued curiosity to seek out some of the other works cited in these essays.

I was surprised there wasn’t more explicit discussion of the intersectionality integral to any consideration of commons and feminist thought — particularly in relation to queerness and race. The author is scathing in Marx’s neglect of gender and gendered labor, and yet has these glaring gaps in her own writing (at least in this collection of essays).