When The Arcana of Reproduction first appeared in the 1980s, it entered a world where feminist theory was already challenging the invisibility of reproductive labor—housework, care, and the embodied work of producing and sustaining life. By deconstructing the main Marxian categories, the book exposed how this labor, though systematically devalued and naturalized, is productive and indispensable to capitalism. Today, revisiting The Arcana of Reproduction allows us to see both continuities and transformations. The “arcana”—the hidden mechanisms of reproduction—have not disappeared; instead, they have taken on new forms. While the backbone of reproductive labor continues to be unpaid, an increasing part of it has become globalized and commodified, with migrant women often sustaining the care needs of wealthier nations. Digital technologies have reorganized both productive and immaterial reproductive work: platforms mediate childcare, domestic work, dating, sociality, and even sexuality.
 

Leopoldina Fortunati is a radical feminist activist and theorist, and 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, where she founded and directed the research laboratory on new media (NuMe) and directed the University's doctoral program in multimedia communication. From 2002 to 2014, she was a leading member of COST, (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), an organization that sponsors innovative research in science and technology. In 2016, she was nominated as a member of the Academia Europaea for her contribution to gender studies and new media and became a fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA). Her works have now been published in 11 languages. 

Konzept & Organisation
Bianca Prietl, Anna K. Kraft & Jasmin Schmidlin