The subversive potential of witchcraft: A reflection on Federici's self-reproducing movements
The subversive potential of witchcraft: A reflection on Federici's self-reproducing movements
This is a theoretical contribution that draws on the work of Silvia Federici, and particularly her book, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation to discuss crises, struggles over social reproduction, and feminist activist organizing. We refer to incidents of women's organizing namely the Parisian pétroleuses (the female supporters of the Paris Commune), the Kurdish Women's Movement in Rojava, the Urban Land committees in Venezuela, and the 21st century witch‐hunting in Africa, and discuss colonial and patriarchal strategies of exploitation and feminist resistance across different space‐times. We then suggest that the struggles over social reproduction are intertwined with resistances that enable women to participate in communities that re‐embed them in the spheres of feminist activism. The article concludes that the crises, including the gendered effects of the Covid‐19 pandemic, should be discussed in relation to our capacity to organize in ways that nurture values of cooperation, equality, solidarity, and care, and eliminate unjust access to rights driven by patriarchal and statist repressive modes of social organization.
Federici, feminism, social reproduction
1643-1660
Daskalaki, Maria
6c5ac39d-95f5-4dc1-98cc-ad2f80b3f0fa
July 2021
Daskalaki, Maria
6c5ac39d-95f5-4dc1-98cc-ad2f80b3f0fa
Daskalaki, Maria
(2021)
The subversive potential of witchcraft: A reflection on Federici's self-reproducing movements.
Gender, Work & Organization, 28 (4), .
(doi:10.1111/gwao.12654).
Abstract
This is a theoretical contribution that draws on the work of Silvia Federici, and particularly her book, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation to discuss crises, struggles over social reproduction, and feminist activist organizing. We refer to incidents of women's organizing namely the Parisian pétroleuses (the female supporters of the Paris Commune), the Kurdish Women's Movement in Rojava, the Urban Land committees in Venezuela, and the 21st century witch‐hunting in Africa, and discuss colonial and patriarchal strategies of exploitation and feminist resistance across different space‐times. We then suggest that the struggles over social reproduction are intertwined with resistances that enable women to participate in communities that re‐embed them in the spheres of feminist activism. The article concludes that the crises, including the gendered effects of the Covid‐19 pandemic, should be discussed in relation to our capacity to organize in ways that nurture values of cooperation, equality, solidarity, and care, and eliminate unjust access to rights driven by patriarchal and statist repressive modes of social organization.
Text
witchcraft
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Accepted/In Press date: 25 February 2021
Published date: July 2021
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© 2021 The Authors. Gender, Work & Organization published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords:
Federici, feminism, social reproduction
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 448388
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/448388
ISSN: 0968-6673
PURE UUID: 22d2f1fb-f36d-44b3-b28b-30b3d4918559
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Date deposited: 21 Apr 2021 16:32
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 11:54
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