A feminist manifesto of resistance against intellectual property regimes: reclaiming the public domain as an open-access information commons

Abstract

This commentary article examines how the commodity form of knowledge – enclosed within the rigid structures of intellectual property (IP) – bears the imprint of Eurocentric, patriarchal, and capitalist forces which produced IP regimes. The commoditization of knowledge is a process mediated by historical asymmetries of power. This manifesto makes the argument that liberating knowledge production from oppressive histories and hierarchical structures – instead, locating it within a reclaimed public domain – is a necessarily feminist and decolonial enterprise. Knowledge producers everywhere are invited to interrupt the continued appropriation of knowledge by capitalism by refusing to participate in corporatized intellectual property regimes. Those who inhabit or are adjacent to dominant structures of power can affirm alternative mediations of intellectual value rooted in feminist and decolonial theories of community, commons, and exchange, rather than legalistic and capitalist property regimes that favour corporations and hyper-individualism.