Leopoldina Fortunati

Leopoldina Fortunati is a Marxist feminist, activist, and theorist.

She is the author of The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital. She was active in the student movement of 1968, then in Potere Operaio, and finally in Lotta Femminista (Women's Struggle), which later evolved into the Wages for Housework Committees.

She co-authored Brutto ciao. Direzioni di marcia delle donne negli ultimi 30 anni (Edizioni delle donne, 1977) with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, and Il Grande Calibano. Storia del corpo sociale ribelle nella prima fase del capitale (Angeli, 1984) with Silvia Federici, as well as several articles on the mechanization of the reproductive sphere.

The Historical Temporalities of Reproductive Labor"

9:45 AM
Duration: 30 minutes
Discussion with the audience: 15 minutes

In this talk, I propose to distinguish three historical phases of reproductive labor in order to show how capital has progressively and radically reorganized the reproductive sphere.

• The first phase spans from 1945 to the late 1960s. It is characterized by the predominance of commodity production, which dictated the rhythms, modes, and time structures of the entire capitalist system and social organization, relegating reproduction to a subordinate role.
• The second phase, from the late 1960s to the 1990s, is marked by successive waves of the feminist movement and women's struggles to reduce domestic labor. Capital responded by increasingly employing women in external jobs and by deindustrializing Western countries while relocating capital to regions with cheaper labor, such as China and former Soviet bloc countries. In this phase, the reproductive sphere becomes central within the capitalist system.
• The third phase, from 2000 to 2024, is defined by the digital technologies through which capitalism integrates and subsumes more and more immaterial dimensions of domestic labor — such as affectivity, sexuality, education, sociality, communication, information, and entertainment — into a framework of automation and direct control.