The Domestic Sphere

Leopoldina Fortunati’s book ‘The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital’ (originally published in 1981), stands as one of the most important texts within 1970s feminist critique. This book has evolved and informed Fortunati’s subsequent work on domestic and affective labor as well as her interaction with politics and technology. In this text, Fortunati argues that today the most important place of politics is the domestic sphere, the ‘ground zero’ of reproduction. As she writes in this beautiful and important essay: “Personal and social reproduction has completely changed the identity of the domestic sphere: from being considered by traditional political organizations as a place of political backwardness, it has become the beating heart at the social and political level of the entire capitalist system. Personal and social reproduction emerges as an immense laboratory of social and political experiments, dangers, dreams, initiatives, and visions.”