The feminist Silvia Federici achieved the status of a pop intellectual some time ago. Her work, which borrows from Marxism to preach that the domestic and care work performed by women is in fact work, became a slogan even printed on tea towels, with the captivating phrase “What they call love, we call it.” Work that is not paid.”
The debate has intensified since the first publication of the Italian in Brazil, “Calibã ea Bruxa”, in 2017 by the publisher Elefante. Women’s invisible work was the subject of the Enem editorial this year and is occasionally included in pension reforms and changes to parental leave laws.
Now it returns materialized in the female body in “Beyond the Skin,” released this month by the same publisher as the debut and the author’s other two books published here, “Point Zero of the Revolution” and “Reencantando o Mundo.” and Federici goes to Paraty to take part in Flip’s parallel program Flipei, run by independent publishers.
While Federici’s work to date has aimed to highlight domestic service and the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy, the Beyond the Skin conference series brings the body more directly to the center of the debate than topics such as prostitution, surrogacy and plastic surgery.
“Feminism has politicized the body and understood that it is not a biological reality, but a social and cultural reality,” says the author in an interview with Sheet, edited here for better understanding. “The body structures power relationships.”
Along the way, she gets into controversy by criticizing identity politics and gender as performance, a notion coined by Judith Butler and adopted by the LGBT community.
How does Mrs. view the understanding of gender as identity? The limit of identity politics is the body. We can transform our bodies, but we must transform all the material conditions that make the body’s existence possible. Being a woman is an important identity. It implies a particular experience, a particular relationship to work, a particular form of exploitation different from that of men, and requires a particular form of struggle.
Woman. Do you think women can be considered a social class? I don’t see women as a class.
Woman. criticizes the popularization of Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performance. The reality is that most women had no alternative. For decades they were not allowed to pursue certain jobs or go to school or university. Even after the French Revolution, women were not considered human beings in society; they had legal representation. Marriage was a way to ensure survival in society. You can’t speak of performance in this context, the genre was an imposition. Of course it is possible to rebel, but the performance emphasizes too much the voluntary aspect, it has an aspect of choice, you can do it or not.
How does this uprising work today? Women are organized by the demand of domestic workers, they are at the forefront of campaigns for the environment and in the fight for land, this is what is happening in Brazil. Today we need an international feminist organization, and we are beginning to recognize this in the context of the genocide in Palestine. We need a feminism that fights against war and militarism.
Should having children be politicized and used as a form of protest by women? I have decided not to have children, but I don’t think that should be a political goal. It would be another form of impoverishment, since for many women having children is fundamental. We don’t want to fight for a situation in which only rich women can reproduce. Women in Africa and Latin America are often accused of creating poverty because they have many children, but it is the scarcity of resources that makes it necessary to have many children. If you live in an uninsured state, you must have children. We have to fight not to have children if we want and to keep them from destroying our lives.
How does technology participate in this process? An example of this is the issue of surrogacy. It’s seen as an act of altruism from women who can get pregnant to those who can’t, but guess what, it affects people who need money. I see this as creating a baby market, but that is not the fault of pregnant women. Feminists should not support the idea that having a child is the only way for others to make money. It is a colonial practice, as Angela Davis put it.
How do you view prostitution and the question of decriminalizing the profession? It upsets me to see feminists condemning legalization. Of course it is an abomination, every form of exploitation is. Surrogacy exists, but I don’t blame the pregnant woman who is in financial trouble. For the same reason, I cannot condemn a woman who decides to make money this way.
Historically, marriage is an economic transaction. Of course, many mothers have always told their daughters to marry someone who will support them. It is moralism to view the sale of the body as the most violent abomination.
Is there a dichotomy between the way the female body is viewed when we talk about prostitution, where it is seen as a violation of something sacred, and when we talk about sex as a commitment in marriage, which is expected? It took the entire feminist movement to establish that marital rape existed, because until then it was believed that men had an absolute right to a woman’s body. Under capitalism, the celebration of women’s bodies also enables their devaluation. Women are seen as bodies, good for sex and good for bearing children. Black people are seen as bodies. It is a sign of inferiority, as if the body were separated from the mind.
Woman. said that in the 1960s, female orgasm and female sexual release entered the equation of marriage expectations. Is it another form of unpaid work for women? Secure. There was pressure to orgasm. And sex has always been painful for women. Because we weren’t on the pill for a long time, we couldn’t relax during sex. Furthermore, female sexuality has always been devalued and humiliated. A woman has no freedom to say what she wants. Women are always afraid of looking sloppy, but men are not. There is a disciplinary divide between good women and sluts.
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