Re-enchanting the World Feminism and the Politics of the Commons Silvia Federici In ancient Greek philosophy, kairos signifies the right time or the “moment of transition.” We believe that we live in such a transitional period. The most important task of social science in time of transformation is to trans- form itself into a force of liberation. Kairos, an editorial imprint of the Anthropology and Social Change department housed in the California Institute of Integral Studies, publishes groundbreaking works in critical social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, geography, theory of education, political ecology, political theory, and history. Series editor: Andrej Grubačić Kairos books: Practical Utopia: Strategies for a Desirable Society by Michael Albert In, Against, and Beyond Capitalism: The San Francisco Lectures by John Holloway Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism edited by Jason W. Moore Birth Work as Care Work: Stories from Activist Birth Communities by Alana Apfel We Are the Crisis of Capital: A John Holloway Reader by John Holloway Archive That, Comrade! Left Legacies and the Counter Culture of Remembrance by Phil Cohen Beyond Crisis: After the Collapse of Institutional Hope in Greece, What? edited by John Holloway, Katerina Nasioka, and Panagiotis Doulos Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons by Silvia Federici Occult Features of Anarchism: With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples by Erica Lagalisse Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language by Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater Re-enchanting the World Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons Silvia Federici © 2019 PM Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978–1–62963–569–9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931520 Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com Interior design by briandesign Cover painting by Elizabeth Downer Frontispiece art by Erik Ruin 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org Autonomedia PO Box 568 Williamsburg Station Brooklyn, NY 11211-0568 USA [email protected] www.autonomedia.org This edition first published in Canada in 2018 by Between the Lines 401 Richmond Street West, Studio 281, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8, Canada 1–800–718–7201 www.btlbooks.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher or (for photocopying in Canada only) Access Copyright www.accesscopyright.ca. Canadian cataloguing information is available from Library and Archives Canada. ISBN 978–1–77113–377–7 Between the Lines paperback ISBN 978–1–77113–378–4 Between the Lines epub ISBN 978–1–77113–379–1 Between the Lines pdf Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com Contents Acknowledgments ix Foreword xiii IntroductIon 1 Part One On the New Enclosures IntroductIon to pArt one 13 On Primitive Accumulation, Globalization, and Reproduction 15 Introduction to the New Enclosures 26 The Debt Crisis, Africa, and the New Enclosures 34 China: Breaking the Iron Rice Bowl 51 From Commoning to Debt: Financialization, Microcredit, and the Changing Architecture of Capital Accumulation 60 Part Two On the Commons IntroductIon to pArt two 77 Beneath the United States, the Commons 78 Commons against and beyond Capitalism 85 The University: A Knowledge Common? 99 Feminism and the Politics of the Commons in an Era of Primitive Accumulation 102 Women’s Struggles for Land in Africa and the Reconstruction of the Commons 116 Women’s Struggles for Land and the Common Good in Latin America 134 Marxism, Feminism, and the Commons 151 From Crisis to Commons: Reproductive Work, Affective Labor and Technology, and the Transformation of Everyday Life 175 Re-enchanting the World: Technology, the Body, and the Construction of the Commons 188 BIBlIogrAphy 198 ABout the Authors 217 Index 219 Acknowledgments This book is thoroughly indebted to discussions I have had with dozens of compañer@s in different parts of the world. Here I will only mention some of the women and men who, over the years, have inspired me with their research, their activism, and their vision of a different world, translated into a practice of mutual support and friendship. My deepest gratitude goes to George Caffentzis, with whom I have collaborated for many years, rethinking the history of the commons and reflecting on the political prin- ciples involved, including as part of the Midnight Notes Collective; Hans Widmer (alias P.M.), who was one of the first to introduce me to the politics of the commons, with his writings, his imaginative paintings document- ing the enclosure of urban space in New York, and his collective housing experiments in Zurich, from Carthago to Kraftwerk; Nick Faraclas, whose study of the African and Papua New Guinean pidgins brought to light for me the commoning dimension of language; Chris Carlsson, who, in the face of a triumphant neoliberalism, dared to say that the commons are not a utopia and put that into practice retaking the streets through Critical Mass; Kevin Van Meter, Craig, and the Team Colors Collective, with whom, in New York at ABC No Rio, we began a long discussion on commoning and self-reproducing movements; Maria Mies who taught us that at the heart of the commons is a profound sense of responsibility toward other people and the land, and that commoning is reuniting those parts of our social life that capitalism has divided; Peter Linebaugh, lifetime brother and comrade, who has made ‘commoning’ and the lives of those who have struggled to build communitarian worlds the main theme of his historical work—to him I owe my understanding of history as a common; Massimo De ix Acknowledgments Angelis, who has not only written classic texts on the commons but has put commoning into practice in a village on the Italian Appenine Mountains (Massimo lives a daily life that is ‘outside of capitalism,’ something which in his view is recreated through our daily acts of individual and collective refusal); the Unitierra Center in Oaxaca and its founder and promoter Gustavo Esteva, who even in the darkest moment of our recent history has never tired of asserting that the commons are already all around us; Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, whose powerful account of the rhythms of Pachakuti in the water wars in Bolivia has brought to life the insurgent power of com- munitarian forms of reproduction; Mina Lorena Navarro, who has shown us that the preservation and recreation of collective memory is a key con- dition for the defense of the commons; Gladys Tzul Tzul, who has given us an insightful description of how in communal regimes politics emanates from the reproduction of daily life and made it possible for me to better understand the meaning of communitarian relations. I also owe to Gladys the possibility of meetings recently in Guatemala with women from differ- ent indigenous organizations. My gratitude also to Beatriz Garcia and Ana Méndez de Andés, who have introduced me to the Quinzeme and organ- ized my journey through the Spanish villages that had seen the infamous war on the commons that was the witch hunt; Joen Vedel, who has intro- duced me to Christiania and other commons in Copenhagen. My gratitude also to Lucia Linsalata, Verónica Gago, Natalia Quiroga, Betty Ruth Lozano, Marina Sitrin, Richard Pithouse, Caitlin Manning, Iain Boal, Mercedes Oliveras Bustamante, Rosaluz Perez Espinosa, Raúl Zibechi, Mariana Menendez, Noel Sosa, Yvonne Yanez, Jules Falquet, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Ariel Salleh, and, not least, Elizabeth Downer, whose powerful paintings provide a visual text of the ongoing reclamation of communal spaces and activities on the American continent. Thanks to Josh MacPhee and to Erik Ruin of Justseeds for his painting of the Maypole dance Reclaiming the Commons. I also want to remember the late Rodolfo Morales, one of the most important twentieth-century Mexican artists, who dedicated his life to celebrate women’s community building capacity, representing their bodies and activities as the elements that hold the community together. Thanks also to the many who over the years have shown me or sent me their work on the commons or directed me to important sources. Thanks to Kasia Paprocki for sharing with me her research on microcredit in Bangladesh and to Ousseina Alidou for her notes on the management of microcredit in Niger, to Betsy Taylor for sending me her coauthored x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Recovering the Commons, to Giovanna Ricoveri for giving me her book Beni Comuni, Fra Tradizione e Futuro, and Órla Donovan for organizing a conference on the commons in Cork, Ireland, in 2015. And I wish to express my gratitude and solidarity with the activists that I have met in different parts of the world and whose struggles have been directed to the defense of communal forms of life and the construc- tion of new forms of solidarity. My solidarity above all to the activists of the NO TAV Movement in Val di Susa, Italy, the Clandestina network in Greece, Acción Ecológica and the Colectivo Miradas Críticas in Ecuador, the Frente Popular Darío Santillán and the women of the Movimiento por la Dignidad and the Corriente Villera Independiente of Villa Retiro Bis in Buenos Aires, the CIDECI-Unitierra Center in San Cristobal de Las Casas, and especially its founder and coordinator Raymundo Sánchez Barraza, the Abahali movement in Durban, South Africa, the compañeras of the Colectivo Minerva and the journal Contrapunto in Uruguay, the compañeras of Mujeres Creando in La Paz, especially María Galindo, the Bristol Radical History Group, Bob Stone and Betsy Bowman and the Center for Global Justice in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the CUTE movement in Québec, which is struggling to deprivatize education.