Login
Leopoldina Fortunati on The Arcana of Reproduction
Interview was recorded at the Verso office in London during the Historical Materialism Conference, 2025.
The Arcana of Reproduction is a foundational text and essential contribution to today’s discussions of social reproduction and the history of Italian feminism. Fortunati’s 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 women’s lives today. The text remains prefigurative and essential in our era of digital labor.
The Arcana of Reproduction is available now from Verso Books:
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2718-the-arcana-of-reproduction?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=arcana_hm
00:00 Introduction
00:37 Writing The Arcana of Reproduction and the Influence of Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James
20:04 Initial reception of The Arcana of Reproduction
22:42 Housework and the Feminist Movement
25:58 The Arcana of Reproduction today
33:34 On the evolution of social reproduction
44:24 The Arcana of Reproduction for today's feminists
50:39 About the book's cover
