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Silvia Federici | |
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.jpg) Federici being interviewed in 2014 | |
| Born | 1942 (age 81–82) Parma, Italy |
| Partner | George Caffentzis |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University at Buffalo, NY, USA (PhD) |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions |
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| Notable works | Caliban and the Witch (2004) |
Silvia Federici (born 1942) is an Italian-American scholar, teacher, and feminist activist based in New York.[1] She is a professor emerita and teaching fellow at Hofstra University in New York State, where she was a social science professor.[2] She also taught at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria from 1984 to 1986.[3] In 1972, with Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, she co-founded the International Feminist Collective, the organization that launched the campaign for Wages for Housework. In 1990, Federici co-founded the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA), and, with Ousseina Alidou, was the editor of the CAFA bulletin for over a decade.[4] She was also a member of the Academic Association of Africa Scholars (ACAS) and among the voices generating support for the struggles of students across the African continent and in the United States.[citation needed] In 1995, in the course of the campaign to demand the liberation of Mumia Abu-Jamal, she cofounded the Radical Philosophy Association (RPA) anti-death penalty project, an organization intended to help educators become a driving force towards its abolition.[citation needed] From 1979 to 2003, she was a member of the Midnight Notes Collective.[citation needed]
For several decades, Federici has been working in a variety of projects with feminist organizations across the world like Women in Nigeria (WIN), Ni Una Menos, the Argentinian feminist organization, and Feminist research on violence in New York.[citation needed] For the last five years,[when?] she has been organizing a project with feminist collectives in Spain to reconstruct the history of the women, who were persecuted as witches in early modern Europe, and raise consciousness about the contemporary witch-hunts that are taking place across the world.[citation needed]
Federici is considered one of the leading feminist theoreticians in Marxist feminist theory, women’s history, political philosophy, and the history and theory of the commons. Her most famous book, Caliban and the Witch, has been translated in more than 20 foreign languages, and adopted in courses across the U.S. and many other countries.[citation needed] Often described as a counterpoint to Marx's account of "primitive accumulation," Caliban reconstructs the history of capitalism, highlighting the continuity between the capitalist subjugation of women, the slave trade, and the colonization of the Americas. It has been described as the first history of capitalism with women at the center.[citation needed] Federici's work in Caliban has crystallized her reputation as a member of the Marxist and feminist theoretical canon.
- ^ "Silvia Federici biography". Interactivist. 28 September 2007. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- ^ "Silvia Federici biography". Democracy Now. Archived from the original on 20 April 2006. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- ^ Federici, Silvia (2021). Caliban and the witch: women, the body and primitive accumulation. Penguin modern classics. London: Penguin Book. p. x. ISBN 978-0-241-53253-9.
- ^ "On capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics". Politics and Culture. 2 (Special Issue on Food & Sovereignty). 2009.[dead link]