Totality and Feminist Life: Reading Silvia Federici’s Writing on Lukács’ Aesthetics

Totality and Feminist Life: Reading Silvia Federici’s Writing on Lukács’ Aesthetics
Reading & Discussion Event Series January – April 2025

Silvia Federici is best known as an autonomist feminist and theorist for her groundbreaking work on the intersections of gender, labor, and capitalism. She has been a leading voice in the global feminist movement, particularly in articulating the role of reproductive labor in sustaining capitalist economies, and as one of the founders of the Wages for Housework movement. Federici’s seminal work, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004), examines the historical subjugation of women during the rise of capitalism, linking the witch hunts of early modern Europe to the broader exploitation of women’s unpaid labor.

For this series of events we will engage an underappreciated aspect of her work, namely her work on Lukács’ aesthetics, which she carried out for her PhD. Her dissertation, The Development of Lukács’ Realism, examines the philosophical evolution of Georg Lukács thought, focusing on his conception of realism. Federici challenges the conventional division of Lukács’ intellectual life into distinct phases, neo-Kantian idealism, Marxist-Hegelianism, and “diamat” aesthetics, arguing instead for the continuity of his work. Lukács’ philosophy is shown to revolve around realism as an ontological belief in an objective reality, evolving from subjective idealism to objective idealism, grounded in his lifelong effort to reconcile idealism and Marxism.

What resonances can we find between Federici’s philosophical and aesthetic analysis and her better known work on social reproductive labor and feminist politics? And what might be able to learn from this work in the context of reading it today?

The first two of these events will take place online via Zoom. The final event will be held in person at MayDay Rooms.

Session 1: Introduction and Chapter I: The Romantic Antithesis
29th January @ 4PM, online

Session 2: Chapter 2: The False Adventures of Consciousness
26th February @ 4PM, online

Session 3: Chapter 3:The Pacified Reflection and overall discussion
2nd April in London, May Day Rooms, London

Organized by Minor Compositions & the University of Essex COVER Research Centre

To register and obtain the readings email coveres@essex.ac.uk