We will organise three SSCT Workshops, preferably one in each of the partner institutions on the topic selected by the SSCT branch.

The idea of the workshop is to introduce and work on a new concept, or investigate and experience the practice of a methodology. It is also an opportunity to spend time with an invited scholar or activist who will run the workshop, and to study and discuss their work in depth. 

2020

OCTOBER

(un)Doing Research: Feminist Decolonial Provocations, with Dr. Rosalba Icaza

SOLD OUT!

Join the celebrated decolonial feminist activist-scholar Dr. Rosalba Icaza in the unlearning of the violent foundations of Critical Theory. About this Event About the Workshop: What would it mean to acknowledge the extraction, expropriation, and erasures that sustain our present possibilities for critical thinking within academia? Is it possible to respond to the possibility of an ethical life that is not structurally implicated with the suffering and the consumption of life of earth and others? In this workshop, we will explore the conditions for the possibility that emerged for (un)learning when feminists and non-feminist academic-activist Women of Color committed to epistemic justice collectively dealt with two intertwined challenges: the violence of critical thinking and the violence of re-presentation. Defying dominant frameworks of political intelligibility centred on the authoritative “I”, we are speaking as yosotridades (weus) and through this we are pluralizing the places from where we are thinking with/from. Our point of departure is the (im)possibility of speaking if we haven’t heard first.

Event Conveners: Callum Cockbill and Maria Jose Ventura Alfaro Contact: cc758@bath.ac.uk, mjva20@bath.ac.uk

The workshop is sponsored by the new network Decolonising Knowledge in Teaching, Research and Practice (DECkNO), convened by Dr Ana C Department, University of Bath.

About the Speaker: Dr. Rosalba Icaza is a decolonial feminist activist-scholar of Mexican origin and Associate Professor in Global Politics, Gender and Diversity at the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam where she also serves as Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Team and co-convenes the reading/learning group "Nurturing (each) Other". She is member of the Red Transnational Otros Saberes (RETOS) - Transnational Networks Other Knowledges and member of the Board of Editor of RETOS non-commercial cooperative Publishing House. She collaborates with Unitierra Oaxaca, Mexico and with Tejiendo Saberes para la Vida Comunitaria, Sinanche, Yucatan, Mexico She has published widely in academic and activist outlets, her publications have advanced a feminist decolonial re-thinking of the modern/colonial notion of region and regionalism via the notions of epistemic struggles and resistance/re-existance as learning; and through a enfleshed and experiential enquiry of the knowledges and cosmovisions that have been actively produced as backward or subaltern by established knowledge. She recently co-edited with Xochitl Leyva En tiempos de Muerte. Cuerpos Rebeldias Resistencias [In times of Death. Bodies Rebellions Resistances]; a collection of essays in Spanish by women and non-binary people of color-academic-activists from across Abya Yala, Europe, the Caribbean and Australia. The book is the fourth volume of the non-commercial cooperative Publishing House RETOS and is available at https://editorialretos.wordpress.com/ Her latest article ‘Decolonial feminism and global politics: Border thinking and vulnerability as a knowing otherwise’ will be re-printed in 2020 in a collection of essays edited by Doerthe Rosenauw (ed) Vulnerability and the Politics of Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press. In 2016, Rosalba acted as Senior Researcher of the University of Amsterdam Diversity Commission.

Study Group Reading (by M. Jose Ventura Alfaro)

• M. Lugones (2007) Toward a Decolonial Feminism

• R.A. Icaza Garza (2017) Decolonial Feminism and Global Politics: Border Thinking and Vulnerability as a knowing otherwise (Chapter 2)
  << eventbrite>>

NOVEMBER

Critical theory for pandemic times: The Arcane of Reproduction Then & Now, with Leopoldina Fortunati

Thu, 26 November 2020 - 17:00 – 19:00 GMT

Main speaker: Leopoldina Fortunati (University of Udine) Discussants: Katie Cruz (University of Bristol), Camille Barbagallo (University of Leeds)

On 8th March 2020, just days before the Covid-19 pandemic was declared, International Women's day once again saw mass feminist mobilisations that, via the lens of social reproduction and the feminist strike, linked gender, class and racial oppressions. Six months on, the Covid-19 pandemic and the movement for black lives have further highlighted the importance of feminist organising at these intersections. The pandemic has not only intensified the deep crisis of social reproduction that has made the feminist and social strikes strategic pillars of radical politics today. Moreover, they have made a new common sense of the importance of social reproductive work (now accurately termed ‘essential work’) and, crucially, of the heavily racialised, gendered and classed dimensions of the economies in which it is situated. In this context, we are delighted to reschedule our celebration of the foundational work of Leopoldina Fortunati in elaborating social reproduction feminism, a major influence on the contemporary feminist strike movement. Fortunati will join us in discussion with Katie Cruz and Camille Barbagallo.

Fortunati began her activism in the context of workers' struggles in the 1960s and 1970s in Italy and was a key member of the feminist movement for Wages for Housework. She then authored the classic book The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital (1981), and, with Silvia Federici, Il Grande Calibano: Storia del corpo sociale ribelle nella prima fase del capitale (1984).

Katie Cruz is a senior lecturer at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on Marxist feminist theory and the legal regulation of sex work.

Camille Barbagallo is a feminist activist and researcher. Her research, situated within Marxist feminist theory, explores how the reproduction of labour-power is valued, what it costs, and who pays the bill. She is co-editor of Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici (Pluto, 2019) and editor of Women and the Subversion of the Community: A Mariarosa Dalla Costa Reader (2019). 

Following the panel’s contributions, we will open the virtual floor to audience questions and comments. These can be submitted live on the day, or in advance to j.hooker@bath.ac.uk. To register for this event: Eventbrite. Registrants will receive instructions for joining the event by email closer to the time. 

Convenors: Lorenzo Feltrin, Maud Perrier and Josie Hooker

<<More Information>>

Study Group Reading for the Webinar (by Josie Hooker)

1. Fortunati, L. (1981) Ch. 1 Arcane of Reproduction. https://libcom.org/files/Leopoldina%20Fortunati%20-%20The%20Arcane%20of%20Reproduction%20-%20Housework,%20Prostitution,%20Labor,%20and%20Capital.pdfOf all early autonomist SRF, this text is seminal in that it re-works Marx's value theory via social reproductive labour. This chapter covers the primary points of this re-working. 

2. Gonzalez, M., 2013, The logic of gender: on the separation of spheres and the process of abjection, Endnotes 3: https://endnotes.org.uk/issues/3/en/endnotes-the-logic-of-gender
This article contributes to the value theory debate, while also critically addressing the sex/gender binary via a combination of Butler and Marxism theory of fetishism. 

3. Ferguson, S., Ch. 8 of Women and Work: feminism, labour and social reproduction (2020)
Ferguson discusses the subtle difference in preferred political strategy between the two dominant currents within the renewed SRF of the past two decades (autonomist and ‘Marxian’/socialist), a difference she traces back to their respective positions on the question of value. 

4. Bhattacharyya, G., Ch. 2 of Rethinking Racial Capitalism: questions of reproduction and survival (2018) ; e-book available at Bristol University libraryDiscussing people of colour thought on social reproduction, Bhattacharyya introduces the links between race-, gender- and ecological-violence under racial capitalism, via social reproduction. 

 Further materials/reading

 Short introduction to SRF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apO3B_o6dz8&t=61s

 Susan Ferguson and Tithi Bhattachayra analyse pandemic politics through the lens of social reproduction theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg5ASSAjMCc

Weeks, K., 2020. Anti/Postwork Feminist Politics and A Case for Basic Income. Communication, capitalism & critique 18(2). Available at: https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/1174

Dinerstein, A.C. and Harry Pitts, 2018. From Post-Work to Post-Capitalism? Discussing the Basic Income and Struggles for Alternative Forms of Social Reproduction. Journal of Labour and Society, 21(4). Available at: https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/from-post-work-to-post-capitalism-discussing-the-basic-income-and

Lewis, S., 2019. Full Surrogacy Now: feminism against family.

Barbagallo, C. (ed.), 2019. Women and the Subversion of the Community: a Mariarosa dalla Costa Reader

Barbagallo C. and N. Beuret, Starting from the social wage. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/4579455/Barbagallo_C_and_Beuret_N_2012_Starting_from_the_Social_Wage_Care_work_and_the_Commons

 Dalla Costa, M. and S. James, 1971. The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community. Available at: http://www.e-flux.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/2.-Dalla-Costa-and-James-Women-and-the-Subversion-of-the-Community.pdf?b8c429 

Davis, A., 1983, Women, Race and Class

Fortunati L., 2015, Social Reproduction but not as we know it, Viewpoint magazine (5). Available at: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2015/10/31/social-reproduction-but-not-as-we-know-it/

 Federici S., 2012. Revolution at Point Zero

Gonzalez M., 2013. The gendered circuit: reading The Arcane of Reproduction. Viewpoint magazine (5). Available at: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2013/09/28/the-gendered-circuit-reading-the-arcane-of-reproduction/ We would have included this article in the core readings, as it speaks directly to Fortunati, but  unfortunately Viewpoint's site is down at the time of writing.

James, S., 1975. Sex, Race and Class. Available at: https://libcom.org/library/sex-race-class-james-selma 

Viewpoint issue 5, 2013: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2015/10/31/