マザリング［Mothering］の現在
――をめぐる議論と実践の動向

“From the spread of new forms of witch-hunting to the worldwide escalation of the number of women sexually abused, even murdered on a daily basis, evidence is mounting that a war is being waged against women. What are its motivations? What is the logic behind this phenomenon? Silvia Federici addresses these questions by relating the intensification of violence against women, the new forms of capital accumulation and women’s labor, and the different ways in which women are resisting victimization.”

“With Silvia Federici, professor emerita for Political Philosophy at Hofstra University, Long Island, NY; political activist and author of several books, including "Caliban and the Witch" Facing mass unemployment, precarisation, evictions and cuts in social services, more and more people in the US and other parts of the world are reconquering public spaces in order to create new forms of production and reproduction: the Commons. In cities like Detroit and New York urban gardening is flourishing. This is not only about food, according to Silvia Federici, but also about reconstructing the social fabric and reclaiming control of our lives. These "communities of resistance" could become - when they join into networks - a vital force of social and ecological transformation.”

“The witch hunts responsible for the deaths of thousands of women in past centuries are just as cruel today, Federici says. But this time, they are aimed at female activists whom society and governments deem to be the “new witches.””／“If we have children, even if the man helps out, there is no question that, especially when the children are very young, the overwhelming amount of work is still being done by women. The work is done by women, and yet we have an entire government, an entire social structure, that offers no assistance whatsoever. None whatsoever. That system exploits women. It takes advantage of their labor, but it does not provide the support system that is needed. So that, just for an example, it would be possible to experience motherhood in a way that does not destroy our lives.”／“The question of reproduction, in one way or another, will influence a woman’s life for a long time. Unless you’re a capitalist woman, a bourgeois woman, and then you can hire another woman to do this work. But, obviously, that is not the solution.”

“The staff at St Benedict’s Hospital, Tooting, South London, began an official work-in to prevent closure of their hospital on November 15th 1979. A strong support committee was organised in the local community with backing from Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Council, local pensioners and others who wanted to maintain the high level of geriatric care at St Ben’s. Local London Ambulance Service ambulance drivers pledged their support and refused to cross the picket line except for normal transport.”

“One of the biggest ironies of the right-wing trope accusing socialists of wanting “free stuff” is that in reality, the entire capitalist economy would immediately collapse if it couldn’t continue to rely on free stuff. Without free or artificially cheap access to things like natural resources, care work, labor and a whole array of other elements, capitalism could not stay afloat. In fact, the only way that capitalism was ever able to even emerge was through a process of “primitive accumulation” ― where things like slavery and colonialism were utilized to extract free labor and resources.”／“So the way to reclaim power is by recognizing ― as, for example, the international peasant movement Via Campesina does ― that a struggle for food sovereignty and against cheap food is also a struggle against patriarchy, against racism and against colonialism. That, I think, is a great source of hope, because not only do you grow your numbers by recognizing that there are many more people involved in the struggle than you initially thought, but you become much more theoretically and practically sophisticated in appreciating how it is that capitalism works, how it seeks to divide, and how victory may yet be won in this long, long struggle for a better planet.”

“In 1994 an indigenous revolution was a dream for the guerrillas who launched the attack; for Zapatista teenagers today, this revolution is the only reality that they know. Because of the Zapatistas, they have grown up in fully autonomous communities with their bilingual schools, workers and growers cooperatives, and independent health clinics and hold rotating volunteer roles in their government. They tell their own stories through media production, and women and men participate in the government as dictated by the women’s revolutionary law. This law was implemented shortly before the uprising in 1994 and guarantees that “Women have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in the place and at the level that their capacity and will dictates.” It also has clauses against forced marriage and in defense of women’s rights to work and be compensated, to choose how many children they want, and to have access to health care and education.”

““Our women’s group is very strong. We are now in the front because the men put too much trust in the authorities.［私たち女のグループはとても強力だ。私たちはいま〔戦いの〕最前線にいる。なぜなら男たちはあまりに権力を信用してしまうから。］ We think differently. We think it is up to us to protect ourselves. We don’t expect the government and police to do that.［私たちを守るのは私たち自身だ。政府や警察が守ってくれることは期待していない。］””／““We are trying to show the men there is another way to make a living［私たちは〔鉱業以外に〕生計を立てる別の方法があることを男性に気づかせようとしている。］,” she says. “It’s true that mining makes more money, but we argue it destroys the future for our children. It is true that mining brings death, not a future, to our children.［鉱業が金になることはたしかだが、それが子どもたちの未来を破壊することを、私たちは訴える。鉱業は子どもたちに未来ではなく、死をもたらす。］ Some of our people can be persuaded, but others won’t listen.［…］””／“She has also taken the fight ― along with her baby ― to the capital, Brasília, where she compared the forest to a mother: “Because of the government, our forest is shedding tears. Tears that fall like milk from our breast.［彼女はまた自分の赤ちゃんを抱えて、首都ブラジリア〔の政府〕にも戦いを仕掛けてきた。そこで彼女は森林を母親になぞらえてこう言った。「政府のせいで、私たちの森は涙を流している。その涙は、私たちの胸から出る母乳のようにこぼれ落ちる」。］””

［スペイン語→英語］“There is a situation of anxiety for the future, of unhappiness, and what the medical institution calls health is something very limited, a service so that we can continue working, not so that we enjoy real well-being.［〔国家的な機関が提供する〕限定された医療的なサービスは、私たちが健康な生活を楽しむためではなく、私たちが働き続けることを可能にするために設定されている。］”／“In the US, domestic workers have been coming together for ethnicities for years, but that movement grew, they began to understand the language and now they have created a multinational organization［家事労働者の運動が成長し、多国籍的な組織化が進んできた］. It is a one-to-one job, but when you are part of a strong organization, with a law that gives you some protection, that recognizes you as a worker, it is important, so when you have the solidarity of other women, that gives you more strength［他の女性たちと連帯することはあなたを強くする］. And that has made today the organizations of working women are present in the movements, in the manifestations by the climate, by the migrants［気候や移民の問題に関する運動において働く女性たちの組織化がなされている］. They have put the issue of reproduction on the table［再生産の問題を協議の対象としてきた］ in these years, saying "Without us nothing moves［私たち抜きには何も動かない］." They continue to put the issue of reproduction work as a pillar［再生産労働の問題を中心に置く］. For me, the solution is a strong, broad movement that brings together those who work with pay, to change the form of social reproduction and start a broad front that can face the State.［私からすれば、解決策は、社会的再生産の形態を変化させ、国家に対峙しうる広範な戦線を立ち上げるための、賃労働者を結合した強靭で広範囲の運動だ。］”

“At the time when I wrote "Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Motherhood," I lacked a critical frame for understanding neoliberalism. Instead, my concerns over the ideological reshaping of twenty-first century reproductive lives gravitated towards my dissatisfaction with so-called third wave feminism and its practitioners’ uncritical celebration of "choice."”

“Drawing on rich historical research, she maps the connections between the previous forms of enclosure that occurred with the birth of capitalism and the destruction of the commons and the “new enclosures” at the heart of the present phase of global capitalist accumulation. Considering the commons from a feminist perspective, this collection centers on women and reproductive work as crucial to both our economic survival and the construction of a world free from the hierarchies and divisions capital has planted in the body of the world proletariat. Federici is clear that the commons should not be understood as happy islands in a sea of exploitative relations but rather autonomous spaces from which to challenge the existing capitalist organization of life and labor.”

“In The Origin of Capitalism, a now-classic work of history, Ellen Meiksins Wood offers readers a clear and accessible introduction to the theories and debates concerning the birth of capitalism, imperialism, and the modern nation state. Capitalism is not a natural and inevitable consequence of human nature, nor simply an extension of age-old practices of trade and commerce. Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the relationship between humans and nature.”

“In this majestic tour de force, celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh takes aim at the thieves of land, the polluters of the seas, the ravagers of the forests, the despoilers of rivers, and the removers of mountaintops. Scarcely a society has existed on the face of the earth that has not had commoning at its heart. "Neither the state nor the market," say the planetary commoners. These essays kindle the embers of memory to ignite our future commons.”

“As Lewis writes, it does seem mad that the countries with ‘plummeting’ birthrates are also the ones ‘prone to complaining about the very “migrant crisis” that is saving them from demographic decline’. ‘Somehow ... the “objectively” crowded earth ... is always imagined “out there”. And it is this anxious fantasy that is literalised in Atwood’s sterility apocalypse.’ Surely lower than replacement birthrates in rich countries only make it easier and more necessary for such countries to open their borders to everybody who might want to come in? ‘Reproductive justice and water justice are inseparable ... Surrogates to the front!’”

“For Brown and Federici both, reproductive rights must be only one aspect of a broader set of demands. If the capitalist system requires the reproductive labor of those it assigns as women, then there is no capitalist-friendly way for us to reclaim bodily autonomy. Brown cites the model of “reproductive justice” as an alternative to the outdated notion of “pro-choice.””／“Liberal feminism will not win this fight for women because it is not fighting for the liberation of all women, but for maintaining individual rights granted by the status quo. Brown urges us instead to remember that feminism and anti-capitalism are inextricably linked. No more “safe, legal, and rare,” but, as the popular Redstockings slogan goes, “Free abortion, on demand.””

“Building on three groundbreaking lectures that she delivered in San Francisco in 2015, Federici surveys the new paradigms that today govern how the body is conceived in the collective radical imagination, as well as the new disciplinary regimes state and capital are deploying in response to mounting revolt against the daily attacks on our everyday reproduction. In this process she confronts some of the most important questions for contemporary radical political projects. What does “the body” mean, today, as a category of social/political action? What are the processes by which it is constituted? How do we dismantle the tools by which our bodies have been “enclosed” and collectively reclaim our capacity to govern them?”

“In a just society, in other words, there could be no ‘surrogacy,’ because children would not be exclusive goods. We are the makers of one another, and we could learn to act like it. So, surrogates to the front! It is the holders ― not the delusional ‘authors’, self-replicators, and ‘patenters’ ― who truly people the world. By surrogates I mean all those comradely gestators, midwives, and other sundry interveners in the more slippery moments of social reproduction: bridging or creating gaps; refusing to be temporary; insisting on being temporary; swimming across borders; standing in; carrying; miscarrying. I call ‘amniotechnics’ the art of holding and caring even while being ripped into, at the same time as being held. Amniotechnics is protecting water and protecting people from water in the spirit of ‘full surrogacy’ ― an impossible, necessary lodestar.”

“An indispensable guide to building a fighting feminist movement for reproductive freedom”

“ Jenny Brown discusses her new book Without Apology with Lillian Cicerchia, Nona Willis Aronowitz, Fahmida Azad and Allison Guttu.
With an anti-abortion majority in the Supreme Court and several states with only one abortion clinic, many reproductive rights activists are on the defensive. Organizer and author Jenny Brown highlights the history of legal abortion in the US up until 1873―and the century of illegal abortion that followed. Without Apology offers a spirited exploration of how the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s won abortion rights. Drawing inspiration and lessons from that radical movement, Brown illuminates the struggle for abortion rights the world over―including the successful fight to make the morning-after pill available over the counter and the recent mass movement to repeal Ireland’s abortion ban.”

“Silvia Federici on Witches, The Commons, Reclaiming the Body and Discovering Our Power in conversation with Jenny Worly at the Howard Zinn Book Fair from 2:15pm to 3:45pm in Room 106.”