Women, social reproduction and struggles for the common. Echoes of Silvia Federici’s visit to Mexico in autumn 2013

Abstract

In this article, we bring together some important reflections on Silvia Federici’s work; which we discuss during her visit to Puebla on October 2013. The key we all share to understand Federici’s perspective is to take the activities and processes that are necessary for the life reproduction as the departing point to think about social, economic and political transformations. We argue that when that traslation from the canonical starting point is done, we manage to understand what can be called politics of common. Therefore, we understand the common not as a specific bounch of material possessions or things, but as the result of a production-reproduction process which is both, intentional and collective. We understand “the common” as a special kind of social relation which can be perceived and understood mainly by the way people link between each otrher and by the way they use the things they create. Looking from this perspective we find new clues to understand the recent cycle of socio-environmental movements, the every day efforts and struggles women do to reproduce life and the importance of the struggle against forgetfulness and for remembering that links emotion and reason.