Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of
labor globally in the 1970s Leopoldina Fortunati’s classic work expands and transforms how we
analyze the sphere of reproduction redefining the value of the individual’s life and the labor
performed in the home. Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical
notation and contemporary commentary The Arcana of Reproduction is a foundational text and
essential contribution to today’s discussions of social reproduction and the history of Italian
feminism. Fortunati’s work provides some of the earliest theorizations of ‘immaterial ’
‘affective ’ and ‘caring’ labor and of the role of technology in reproduction articulated
decades before their popular reception in English academic literature. Reading this work some
50 years after its original publication gives us the tools to analyze the contemporary state of
capitalist development and of women’s lives today. The text remains prefigurative and essential
in our era of digital labor.
