This essay focuses on the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. We show that neoliberalization and the dismantling of community health services played a major role in turning Northern Italy into a shattered “lazaret”. Moreover, considering Italian activists’ responses to the pandemic, we suggest that they point toward a reinvention of reproduction along two main axes. First, they bring feminist insights to bear with the ecological crisis that created the conditions for COVID-19. In so doing,…
Read moreThis essay focuses on the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. We show that neoliberalization and the dismantling of community health services played a major role in turning Northern Italy into a shattered “lazaret”. Moreover, considering Italian activists’ responses to the pandemic, we suggest that they point toward a reinvention of reproduction along two main axes. First, they bring feminist insights to bear with the ecological crisis that created the conditions for COVID-19. In so doing, they direct attention to reproduction as a multidimensional matrix of power relations involving both social and ecological aspects. Second, activists have strived to build infrastructures for the redistribution of care from below. Creating and developing mutual aid networks, activist groups designed a feminist logistics, that is central for creating alternatives to prevalent neoliberal models of circulating care whose flaws have fully emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
