8 Minutes with Silvia Federici

to speak of feminism today you know it's a complex question because the feminist movement has being so appropriated these dolls that manipulated that today when you speak of feminism of feminists you have to clear the way from a lot of assumption and misunderstanding so to me feminism it's a political position that it's very much connected to a certain understanding a certain viewpoint a certain history of struggle and it's connected with the history of struggle the women of a generation have made you know starting on the terrain of reproduction so to me feminism is very much

connected you know feminism is not related to any biological category but it's related to a history of experiences of work in Spago and to also the rejection you know of a particular form of exploitation to which women have been subjected in capitalist society and also in many ways before capitalism right so it expresses a particular type of struggle it expresses also a vision of another type of society you know a type of society that is not based on the exploitation of human labor is not based on the construction of hierarchy like gender hierarchy racial hierarchy

and all the recuperation of our relationship with the natural world with animal with other people for me feminism is embedded you know particularly what we call popular feminism you know in the kind of star goals that we see in many parts of the world and certainly in the indie American continent certainly all through the South women are in the front line you know in the struggle against landed creation land privatization so to me this is what feminism means I've been very critical I think is very important today to fight against this other conception of feminism

which is basically women having a piece of the pie so this feminism that is been what I call state feminism or United Nations feminism that has been you know used and manipulated you know to give women a kind of illusion that the system is concerned with their well-being and is concerned with giving them a place and in reality has used feminism and the old idea of emancipation through labor to basically you know integrate you know women into the Machine the capitalist world machine exploiting the desire for autonomy to basically expect a huge immense amount of

cheap labor and recruiting women in millions and millions of mochilas in millions and millions of factories and cheap cheap work that in fact destroy women's life and and women so we really need all the time to clarify what we mean by feminism and to hide within this appropriation of the feminist agenda you know when the women's movement began in the early seventies in the perhaps confused way but many many women had well convinced that you couldn't change the condition of women without changing the hold it was the whole of society they had to be turned

upside down worlds of Sojourner Truth like you know but that that is tremendously has changed and so that's why the confusion today so it's not the feminism of equality with men or is not the feminism of you know a better share of them of the capitalist pipe whatever there is or the feminism of women join in the me and now having the right to kill I still am very optimistic I think that there is another feminism that is still really strong in the very life and we saw it in the 8th of March in places

like Spain Argentina where millions of women I got into the state saying noona Mina no to the violence against women and and this demonstration was very impressive because they were very intergenerational I saw a lot of young women and all the women and in Latin America also very multinational I think for the first time a lot of my puja women is a feminist movement that is now very multinational be very careful with this social media I've been very critical for a long time you know of the position this says that oh now we have the

social media and Twitter and all of this and they're bringing us together they are really helping us move along the revolution I remember there was a time when they used to say the Twitter or Facebook created the Arab Spring and I've been very very critical because when we see what's behind you know these this technology we see that this technology really you know they are the expression of the of the heights of capitalist power when we see the results of this technology how it is used we see the fans from uniting it divides people it

isolates you my message is a real mistake to think that this technology is what is empowering as you know the world empowerment this technology is an empowering technology what is not seen is there is another wealth there is a social wealth that is lost is forgotten you know the social wealth or the coming together the social wealth of you know of creating a kind of a social fabric where you connect with people in your community you connect with the people that you're doing work and there's something also they think is really detrimental to politics this

fetish about you know digital technology and the social media it's created illusion that you know that because you can communicate I don't know with China or you can communicate with places far away they somehow you know you know about these places you know they because you have a little bit of contact and you can read here in there you know and in reality when you begin to travel when you go with people when you see the situation with your own eyes you see half a different you see how far different so it creates this does

the conception of reality it creates a lot of elegance because you know this illusion of knowing all and being so you know on top of the global situation