Actualités

THE STRIKE – The Power of Not Doing

Toolkit of Social Reproduction # 1
with Verónica Gago
(#NiUnaMenos Argentina, Universidad de Buenos Aires)

PROGRAMME
– Screening of « Joyful Militancy » (excerpt from workshop with feminist activist Silvia Federici in October 2020), edited by Aïlien Reyns in collaboration with Jesse Jones, Omar Jabary Salamanca, Julie Carlier, Siggie Vertommen and Kunsthal Gent.

– Strike videoblogs by participating activists and groups:
The Debenhams Workers (Ireland), Artist Repeal Campaign (Ireland), Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational, Solidarity Centre (Georgia), Women’s Strike Assembly (UK), Sara O’Rourke (Ireland), etc.

– Keynote and Critical Responder by Verónica Gago

As we approach the 8th of March – International Women’s Day – we gather to explore how ‘the strike’ is being used as a feminist and anti-capitalist tool to reorganise and redistribute the work of care and social reproduction in more just and emancipatory ways. What is the potential of the strike in laying bare the global divisions of labour in keeping our families and communities alive and healthy and our workplaces up and running? What kind of work do we need to undo or stop doing during a feminist strike? How do we merge the politics of intersectional feminisms with the tool of the strike? And what kind of work does it take to actually organise a feminist strike?

After watching short video blogs by activist collectives from across the globe who have organised strikes in the realm of social reproduction, Verónica Gago will share her own experiences as one of the key organisers of NiUnaMenos and the Feminist Strike in Argentina. Verónica will also talk about her new book ‘Feminist International: how to change everything’.

This evening is part of a series of events on ‘Toolbox of Social Reproduction’, that emerged from a workshop with Silvia Federici organised by Kunsthal Gent and Ghent University in October 2020 on how to joyfully and militantly reimagine and rebuild infrastructures of social reproduction in pandemic times. Audio-visual artist Aïlien Reyns made an edit of the 6-hour workshop with Silvia Federici, which will be screened at the start of the evening to spark our imagination on how the strike can serve as an important ‘tool’ or strategy/tactic in our toolkit for social reproduction and community building.

Verónica Gago is an organiser in Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos movement (Not One More!), as both a theoretician and an activist. She is also a Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Professor at the Instituto de Altos Estudios, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, and Assistant Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). She is the author of Feminist International: how to change everything (Verso Books), Neoliberalism from Below Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (Duke University Press) and Feminist Reading of Debt, co-authored with Luci Cavallero.