The doctor's knife

Silvia Federici is one of contemporary feminism’s celebrity thinkers, and with good reason. Her work since the 1970s on capitalism and gender has been of fundamental importance in developing theories of social reproduction. She is known as both a scholar and an activist, as a founding member of the Wages for Housework campaign. Her writings have reached a new audience in recent years through a series of essay collections published by PM Press, helping to galvanise a popular revival of Marxist feminism that offers a valuable counterpoint to the shallow neoliberal individualism that has underlaid much of feminism’s mainstream resurgence. Federici remains distinctive in Anglophone feminism for her attention to environmental issues and to feminist justice on a global scale; her concern with elder care and ageing is similarly unusual and praiseworthy. Her work on social reproduction has taken on a renewed urgency in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, with women disproportionately bearing the burden of homeschooling and increased demands for unpaid care.