Caliban and the Witch

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Editor's Recommendation: A history of women's bodies during the transition to capitalism. A seminal work that explores gender and reproduction within the context of primitive accumulation, a female perspective in dialogue with Marxism. A classic Marxist feminist text that complements the missing female perspective in Capital. Highly recommended by scholars including Xia Ying and Yan Fei of Tsinghua University, Lan Jiang and Yang Qiaoyu of Nanjing University, and Ni Zhange of Virginia Tech!
Recommended by scholars Well worth reading… enables us to better understand the close relationship between modern patriarchy, the rise of the nation-state, and the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
—The Guardian
A groundbreaking work… Federici has become a key figure… in a new generation of feminists.
—Rachel Kushner, author of "The Mars Club" In describing the abhorrent state terror unleashed against women, Federici has written a book truly for our times. Neither compromising nor overbearing, "Caliban and the Witch" conveys the unwavering impartiality and dignity of a global scholar. It is both a passionate work of recovered memory and a historical hammer.
—Peter Linebaugh, Professor at the University of Toronto This book, by situating witch-hunting within the historical process of capitalist society's growth, presents the disenchanted growth of modern capitalism. Its perspective is unique and powerful. Theory finds its fleshed-out expression here, not only offering a unique gender perspective but also imbuing its critique of modernity with a personal pain. Capitalism's birth and development were precisely driven by this personal pain, achieving its own rationalization.
—Xia Ying, Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University. "Caliban and the Witch," by tracing the question of witches, fills in a missing link in the history of women in the transition to capitalism, long overlooked by Marxism and other theories. Federici makes us understand that in the development of modernity, the oppression of women formed the bloody foundation of capitalist primitive accumulation. Only by uncovering this mystery can feminism truly find a crack in its resistance.
—Lan Jiang, Professor of Philosophy at Nanjing University. The church's suppression of witchcraft, along with the rise of the capital market and the construction of the nation-state, is a cornerstone of the rise of modern society. Witch-hunting targeted the social organizations and folk knowledge led by women, aiming to discipline women's bodies, exclude them from paid labor, and trap them in newly constructed domestic spaces, engaging in unpaid social reproduction. Witch-hunting, the slave trade, and the exploitation of nature together constitute a truth about the primitive accumulation of capital that has been overlooked by traditional Marxism. "Caliban and the Witch" not only reveals the complex interweaving of gender, race, ecology, and religion in the history of global capitalism, but also reminds us to analyze and reconstruct the power relations that permeate every aspect of daily life.
—Ni Zhange, Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. Within the cultural power dynamics between colonial powers and colonies, Caliban symbolizes resistance to the colonizers and a change of fate. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, when over 100,000 common women were executed for being accused of witchcraft, many more rose up, and through the women's movement, they sought to dismantle the social disciplines imposed by capitalism and reclaim control over their sexuality, bodies, and labor. Federici shows how each independent and courageous woman, in the process of dismantling witch-hunts, used her own body to drive historical change.
——Yan Fei, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University Content Introduction This book revolves around a core question: How to explain the execution of hundreds of thousands of "witches" in early modern Europe? Why did the rise of capitalism coincide with the war against women? The book is divided into five parts: the daily struggles of peasants and workers before the 15th century; the impact of land privatization and expansive population policies; the rise of the mechanical view of the body; large-scale witch hunts on the European continent; the recurrence of witch-hunting strategies in the Americas and the counterattack of local women.
By reviewing this 300-year history, Federici argues that witch-hunting was a manifestation of capitalism's rationalization of social reproduction, providing essential support for two core principles of modern social organization: labor capacity and self-ownership. In other words, control of women's fertility and bodies (represented by witch-hunting) was a key step in capitalism's achievement of primitive accumulation.
Federici's dialogue with Marx's theory of primitive accumulation and Foucault's body theory from a female perspective poses a powerful challenge to traditional historical narratives and theoretical paradigms.

2023-05-01

上海三联书店

the new wave

392

9787542680525