The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and caring labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s
Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of labor globally in the 1970s, Leopoldina Fortunatis classic work expands and transforms how we analyze the sphere of reproduction, redefining the value of the individuals life and the labor performed in the home.
Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical notation and contemporary commentary, The Arcana of Reproduction is a foundational text and essential contribution to todays discussions of social reproduction and the history of Italian feminism. Fortunatis work provides some of the earliest theorizations of immaterial, affective, and caring labor, and of the role of technology in reproduction, articulated decades before their popular reception in English academic literature.
Reading this work some 50 years after its original publication gives us the tools to analyze the contemporary state of capitalist development and of womens lives today. The text remains prefigurative and essential in our era of digital labor.
