Leopoldina Fortunati, The Arcana of Reproduction

Leopoldina Fortunati is a radical feminist activist and theorist. She was active in the 1968 student movement, and in the early 1970s she was one of the founding members of Lotta Femminista, a feminist collective that formed part of the international Wages for Housework movement. She is the author of The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital, originally published in Italian in 1981 and rereleased in an expanded English edition by Verso in 2025. She is coauthor, with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, of Brutto Ciao: Direzioni di marcia delle donne negli ultimi 30 anni (1977), and coauthor, with Silvia Federici, of Il grande Calibano: storia del corpo sociale ribelle nella prima fase del capitale (1984). She is a senior professor of the Sociology of Communication and Culture in the Department of Mathematics, Information Science, and Physics at the University of Udine in Italy.

Arlen Austin received his PhD from the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University in 2024. His work addresses questions of media, value production, and reproductive labor. He is co-editor, with Silvia Federici, of The New York Wages for Housework Committee, 1972-1979: History, Theory, and Documents, and has collaborated with Sara Colontuono and Leopoldina Fortunati on an updated and expanded translation of the latter's classic work, L'arcano della riproduzione, which was released by Verso in 2025. His writings have appeared in The Sage Handbook of Digital Labor, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Viewpoint, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, among others. He is co-editor with Jaleh Mansoor and Sara Colontuono of Gendered Labour and Clitoredean Revolt. Carla Lonzi and Leopoldina Fortunati (Vancouver: Fillip, 2024). His works as a research-based artist have been presented at Redcat Gallery, The Bard Hessel Museum, and Exit Art, among other venues.

Andreas Petrossiants is a writer and editor living in New York. His work has appeared in Social Text, New York Review of Architecture, Lux Magazine, The New Inquiry, AJ+ Subtext, Bookforum.com, Frieze, Roar Magazine, the Verso and Historical Materialism blogs, and e-flux journal, where he is the associate editor. He is a PhD candidate in performance studies at NYU, where he is writing about circulation struggles from the perspective of the urban environment and tenants’ movements.