Seminar: Conversations on Social Reproduction

When: Friday, 9 May 2025, 1 - 2:30pm BST / 5:30 - 7pm IST 

Where: Online (MS Teams)

The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital. 2nd expanded and revised edition, Verso. By author Leopoldina Fortunati, and with readers Gowri Vijayakumar, Shraddha Jain and Emma Dowling

Abstract: Originally published amidst the radical feminist movements of the 1970s, The Arcana of Reproduction remains a groundbreaking analysis of reproductive and caring labor within capitalist society. Drawing from Italian autonomist feminism, Fortunati dismantles conventional distinctions between paid and unpaid work, revealing how housework, sex work, and other forms of ‘invisible’ labor sustain capitalist accumulation. Decades ahead of its time, The Arcana of Reproduction introduced critical concepts such as ‘immaterial’,‘affective’, and ‘caring’ labor—now central to feminist and Marxist thought. She also interrogates the role of technology in social reproduction, offering insights that remain urgent in today’s digital economy. This edition presents Fortunati’s work in its unabridged form, complete with historical annotations and contemporary commentary.

Author: Leopoldina Fortunati Marxist feminist, activist and theoretician, Italy Fortunati is best known for The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Work, and Capital (Verso). She was active in the 1968 student movement, Potere Operaio, and Lotta Femminista, later helping form the Committees for Wages for Housework. Her research focuses on the intersection of women, labor, and technology, particularly the machinization of reproduction. Over the past 30 years, she has examined digital media, social representations, and affective labor from a feminist perspective. She co-authored Brutto ciao (1977) with Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Il Grande Calibano (1984) with Silvia Federici. Fortunati is a senior professor of Sociology of Communication and Culture at the University of Udine, where she founded the NuMe research lab on new media. She has authored six books and co-edited 15 volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Communication, Culture, and Information (2020). Her work has been widely published in leading journals, translated into 11 languages, and recognized by Academia Europaea and ICA.

The Laws of Social Reproduction project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (under grant agreement No. 772946). For more information about the project, please email prabha.kotiswaran@kcl.ac.uk.