| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | |
| Publication Year |
Beyond the Periphery of the Skin
Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism
More than ever, “the body” is today at the center of radical and institutional politics. Feminist, antiracist, trans, ecological movements–all look at the body in its manifold manifestations as a ground of confrontation with the state and a vehicle for transformative social practices. Concurrently, the body has become a signifier for the reproduction crisis the neoliberal turn in capitalist development has generated and for the international surge in institutional repression and public violence. In Beyond the Periphery of the Skin, lifelong activist and best-selling author Silvia Federici examines these complex processes, placing them in the context of the history of the capitalist transformation of the body into a work-machine.
Building on three groundbreaking lectures, Federici surveys the new paradigms that today govern how the body is conceived in the collective radical imagination, as well as the new disciplinary regimes state and capital are deploying in response to mounting revolt against the daily attacks on our everyday reproduction. In this process she confronts some of the most important questions for contemporary radical political projects. What does “the body” mean, today, as a category of social/political action? What are the processes by which it is constituted? How do we dismantle the tools by which our bodies have been “enclosed” and collectively reclaim our capacity to govern them?
Contributors
Silvia Federici
Silvia Federici is a feminist writer, teacher, and militant. In1972, she was cofounder of the International Feminist Collective, which launched the Wages for Housework campaign. In the 1990s, after a period of teaching and research in Nigeria, she was active in the anti-globalization movement and the U.S. anti–death penalty movement. She is one of the cofounders of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa. From 1987 to 2005, she taught international studies, women’s studies, and political philosophy courses at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY.
