The Commons: An All-Day Seminar with Siliva Federici

While evoking a pre-capitalist past, the idea of the “common(s)” is embraced today by feminists, anarchists, greens, Marxists/socialists as the formative principle of a non-capitalist society.

The workshop will examine :

• A. What the concept of “the common” has represented historically, especially in the Marxist/socialist as well as the anarchist and feminist traditions and the social consequences of the capitalist process of enclosure
• B. What has prompted its recent revival in militant circles, beginning with the ‘new enclosures’ driven by theglobalization process
• C. What it signifies practically and theoretically in the politics of contemporary social movements and the main issues it raises and has raised (the question of scale, the threat of institutional co-optation, the relation between commons-building and other struggles)
• D. Most important, we will discuss how the politics of the commons is being realized today and the different forms of commons that are being constructed with special emphasis on “reproductive commons” and their contribution to the construction of communities of resistance.

  Silvia Federici is a feminist activist, writer, and a teacher. In 1972 she was one of the co-founders of the International Feminist Collective, the organization that launched the international campaign for Wages For Housework. From 1987 to 2005 she taught international studies, women studies, and political philosophy courses at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. All through these years she has written books and essays on philosophy and feminist theory, women’s history, education and culture, and more recently the worldwide struggle against capitalist globalization and for a feminist reconstruction of the commons.

  Suggested donation: $35 to $55
  No one turned away for inability to pay