Dalla Costa is an Italian
marxist-feminist theorist who teaches political theory at the University of
Padova. A member of Antonio Negri’s group Potere Operaio in the late sixties
and early seventies, Dalla Costa left the group and formed Lotta Femminista
(Feminist Struggle) in 1971 to address the deficencies in Potere Operaio’s
militancy.
Selma James
Antonio Negri
Franco Berardi (Bifo)
Vandana Shiva
autonomist Marxism
radical feminism
Lotta Femminista
Disobbedienti
Dalla Costa joined Potere
Operaio in 1967 and militated in the organization for four years. In 1971, she
and others formed Italy’s first feminist extraparliamentary organization,
Lotta Femminista. Subsequent to the repression of Italy’s radical left
in 1979, Dalla Costa remained within the academy, teaching at the University
of Padova.
Dalla Costa’s best-known
work is The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, co-authored
with Selma James in 1972. In it, they critique the excessively masculinist marxist
approaches to labour, suggesting that a comprehensive and feminist approach
to the production and reproduction of capital must necessarily take into account
the predominantly unwaged labour performed by women, labour that is then used
in the reproduction of capital. Dalla Costa has continued to focus on the notion
of reproduction through an analysis of the land as key to human reproduction,
particularly as this regards developing countries, transnational agriculture
corporations, and genetic engineering. Her most recent focus has been on the
widespread and over-prescribed practice of hysterectomy, one she has tied to
patriarchy and the male domination of the medical establishment.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of
the Community, Falling Wall Press, Bristol, England 1972, 2a ed. 1973, III ed.revised
1975.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, All Work and No Pay, Women Housework and the Wages Due,
in A General Strike, Power of Women Collective and Falling Wall Press publishers,
London, 1975
“Domestic Labour and the Feminist Movement in Italy since the 1970s”,
in International Sociology, vol.3, n.1, March 1998, Sage Publication.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Famiglia Welfare e Stato tra Progressismo e New Deal,
FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1983, 3a ed. 1997.
Dalla Costa Mariarosa e Dalla Costa Giovanna Franca (ed. by), Paying the Price.
Women and the Politics of International Economic Strategy, Zed Books, London,
1995, pp. 127
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Capitalism and Reproduction in W. Bonefeld, et al. (eds),
Open Marxism, 3. Emancipating Marx, Pluto Press, London, 1995, pp. 1-16.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, “Development and Reproduction”, in Common
Sense n.17, 1995.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, “Capitalism and Reproduction" in Capitalism,
Nature, Socialism, CNS, USA, vol. 7, n. 4, 1996.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, “Some Notes on Neoliberalism, on Land and on the
Food Question”, in Canadian Woman Studies, Les Cahiers de la femme, North
York, Ontario,Canada,Spring, 1997.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, “The Native in Us, the Land We Belong to”,
in Common Sense n.23, 1998; and in The Commoner n.6, 2002, at www.thecommoner.org
Dalla Costa Mariarosa. e Dalla Costa Giovanna F., (ed. by), Women, Development
and Labour of Reproduction. Issues of Struggles and Movements, Africa World
Press, Lawrenceville, N. J., USA, 1999.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa (Ed.) Isterectomia. Il problema sociale di un abuso contro
le donne, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 1998, 2a ed. ampliata 1999.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Seven Good Reasons to Say Locality, in The Commoner n.6,
2002, in www.thecommoner.org